The Secret Wife
FAMILY ALBUM about the writer’s father’s second wife, Dorothy Gribetz, who died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1954, In 1953, nine years before the writer was born, her father, Paul Shapiro, fell in love...
View ArticleA Day In the Life
Talk story about Rabbi Philip L. Sherman, who performs brises (or ceremonial circumcisions) throughout the suburban New York City area... A tall man in his early forties with a neatly trimmed black...
View ArticleBe Mine Dept.
Talk story about matchmaker Janis Spindel... Male clients pay her $10,000 a year for a minimum of twelve dates... Describes how R., an attorney, and Janis Spindel, hung out by the Chanel counter in...
View ArticleAdulthood Ahoy! A Floating Prom
Talk story about Landmark High School's senior prom, held on the yacht Mystique... For the first time in the school’s seven-year history, the seniors were to be allowed to choose a prom king and queen....
View ArticleA Memoir Is Not a Status Update
In the middle of my writing day, I sometimes take a Facebook break. I know I shouldn’t do this. I counsel my writing students not to do this. But writing is a solitary business, and—well, let’s face...
View ArticleTweet, Memory
I am a private person. Given that three of the eight books I’ve written are memoirs, this may come as a surprise. When people ask if I feel exposed writing about my life, it always slightly baffles...
View ArticleA Convention for the Bookish
“He is, at heart, a formalist.” “They often say when you get stuck in a story, throw an alligator in.” “Omigod. I just saw Alice McDermott in the hall.” To walk any part of the eight miles of skyway...
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