Just published by Gypsy Daughter Press, Reservoir: Tales from the Other Jersey is a collection of personal essays about growing up in Northwestern New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980s. Tinged with nostalgia and longing for a boyhood lost to time, these stories also grapple with the present---political violence, the racial divide, xenophobia, climate change, religious extremism. Four essays from the collection have already been published: “The Lookout Tree” in Michigan Quarterly Review, "Gas Line" in Boomer Cafe, Steal This Book in The Smart Set, and ”Mythopoesis” in Missouri Review.
Stories from the land that COVID made. Recently completed but still unpublished, this collection of personal essays written during lockdown wonders what lessons if any will Americans learn from this crisis? The book wavers between the satirical and the serious, from my realization that "everyone is a localist in a pandemic" to my failed quest to learn how many ventilators are owned by my local hospital to my probing inquiry into why so many people in my age group participated in the January 6 insurrection. Still looking for a publisher.
My next essay collection will revolve around the 400 letters my grandfather sent home from an island north of New Guinea when he was private in the army during World War II. What do the grandchildren of the “Greatest Generation” do with the world they bequeathed to us—a world that is both poignantly real and dissolving before our eyes? This collection will move back and forth through time to answer this question, interspersing letters, artwork, and sketches from my grandfather throughout.
