Selected Publications and Activities
My review of Cargill Falls: A Novel by William Lychack
Two young boys find a handgun in the woods, a fact that forever changes their lives. One of them, decades later, will take his own life. The other, who long ago had moved away from their hometown, will return to speak at the memorial service honoring Brownie, his childhood friend, in the “old crappy mill town” of Cargill Falls, Connecticut, a place where “it seemed that nobody was allowed to have only one name” and where people had known young William as Mouse: “It was a law of nature: all things had to have more than one identity, more than one truth.” The reader joins a grown-up William on a pilgrimage — a journey of heart and mind to find truths amid life’s suffering —and that quest becomes the driving force of William Lychack’s new novel, Cargill Falls. Read my full book review in Necessary Fiction here.
My interview with C.D. Albin
Like the characters in Hard Toward Home, his debut short fiction collection, C. D. Albin lives in the Ozarks, a place that can have an almost mystical hold on the hearts of its people, despite the hardships that life there can bring. Albin tells the stories of people who know this power of the Ozarks and also their struggles to survive hard situations, some of their own making, and to overcome the distances we humans can create among ourselves. Read my full interview in Necessary Fiction here.
Essays and other writings
I contributed essays to Safe Passage: A Global Sourcebook for Care at the End of Life edited by Mark Lazenby, Ruth McCorkle, and Daniel P. Sulmasy, Oxford University Press.
Some of my work appears in Beyond Absence: A Treasury of Poems, Quotations, and Readings on Death and Remembrance edited by Edward Searl, Skinner House Books.
Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) Affiliate
I'm certified to lead writing workshops in the AWA method as described in Writing Alone & With Others by Pat Schneider, Oxford University Press.
