ABOUT THIS PLACE
Once, when I was training to be a hospice volunteer, they asked us to write our own obituary. Try it. It’s a good exercise — not just in how you want to die, but how you want to be remembered.
For the first part, I figured a heart-attack while laughing at a camp fire, surrounded by friends and family and the cat (who could never handle a campfire, but whatever).
The second part is trickier. For those that came to this site wanting to know more about me, here’s the summary:
At April's Wedding, together for an brief moment in NYC harbor
I was born in Princeton New Jersey, seven minutes behind my twin brother Colin. We lived in rural New Jersey, which no one thinks exists but it did. When I was 4, my parents divorced, and Mom moved into Princeton with all of us, my brother and sister and me. I had a rock collection. I ignored the rock collection. I used to fall asleep listening to a record “Sounds of Terror” given to me by my mother. I wanted Dracula to be my father or best friend. From Fangoria Magazine, I bought a tiny glass coffin of dirt from “Transylvania” and wore it like a necklace.
Shirt from Kohl's
I have worked as a writing teacher, boat carpenter, game designer for reality television, columnist, book ghostwriter, journalist, and nearly always as a volunteer at something. I graduated from Yale and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop (I’m even on the homepage).
These days, I am an assistant professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I work with some fairly awesome colleagues, including Caitlin Horrocks, Patricia Clark, and Sean Prentiss.
My twin brother Colin is a musician and graphic designer in Chicago. He is not, as has been rumored, struggling with his weight or insane. My sister April teaches second grade in New Jersey, and she’s been the inspiration for a story or two.
I write fiction, essays, plays, performance pieces and books. I always struggle writing a publication list because what interests me is sort of a sprawl: fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, drama…
My fiction has been in The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, FiveChapters, Zoetrope, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Fantasy, The Sun, One Story, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
My nonfiction has been in the New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Village Voice, and many other magazines now dead to me.
My plays have been developed at The Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, The New Harmony Project, The Playwrights’ Center, The Playwright’s Theatre of New Jersey, The Lark, and The Orchard Project. I’ve performed at The Moth (NYC), Highways (CA), Riverside Theatre (IA), Urban Institute of Contemporary Art (MI), The Grand Rapids Art Museum (MI), and elsewhere.
My original screenplay, Kill Your Darlings (written with the director John Krokidas) — about the origins of the Beat generation — is being produced by Killer Films (NYC).
While I was at Iowa, I also started a program called The Patient Voice Project to teach expressive writing to people struggling with chronic illness. The program has received grants from Johnson and Johnson/The Society for Arts in Healthcare and The Iowa Humanities Council, and I’ve spoken about it at conferences across the country.
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