...: books are central to a well-lived life, but so is a warm childhood memory or a favorite brand of liverwurst.
Let’s Hear It for Databases
To See the Huge World Outside Us
Discovering the economy of phrasing necessary for a screenwriter to tell a story in 110 pages or less, is akin to my discovering the poetry of Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath...
A Litbreak Anthem
Litbreak publishes writers. The poems and stories that appear here represent those writers. That’s like the paintings of Jackson Pollock personify Pollock. They’re traces of the soul.
I Couldn’t Help Being a Writer
By the time I was 12 or 13, I was writing my own stories and poems. Seeing that I was serious, my parents bought me a typewriter, an old Royal that in memory seems as big as an upright piano. It took real strength to depress those keys.
On Why Teen Poetry Should Come with a Self-Destruct Button
Poetry became real to me not through the classics, but through my contemporaries in a college workshop.
Love: How I Became a Writer
Perhaps it was because of Jerry Harrison that I became a writer. Harrison (of Talking Heads fame) once attended a party at my home, where he feverishly examined the shelves of books that lined my childhood bedroom.
"What's your major?" He didn't look at me when he asked but continued to let his fingers linger over each book's title.