If you live anywhere near Manhattan, don’t miss this — One of the deep pleasures of living in Manhattan is that the City tends to give you gifts. Sometimes the gift is a new sun-drenched coffee shop even closer to your front door than the last one. Sometimes the gift is a random appearance on your Facebook feed (that you…

seeking lost joy? remember the stacks — I run a weekly Zoom for writers to reconnect to their creative selves and hold each other accountable to their writing goals, and today I asked a questions that caused such an outburst of joy that I thought I’d share it to the universe. We can all, after all, use…

with my love, after looking deep into the eyes of its mermaid — I was a brief resident of 1 Užupis g., the apartment above the Border Patrol of this delightful micro-republic. I loved everything about the place, especially the fact that the constitution is posted publicly in more than 20 languages (including Braille!) …

wherein I explore a mythical activity that no longer exists in America — When I was in Lithuania at a local high school, presenting as a “visiting author,” the question most frequently asked of me was “What are your hobbies.” This question shocked me because I realized that everything I had loved as a dedicated amateur, I either dropped or turned into a…

how this shiksa came to love the mezuzah on her door The guy who owned this lower Manhattan apartment before my spouse and I bought it was something of a shady guy. An art dealer, the realtor told us. There were indeed huge pieces of art on the walls of…

I’m visiting a country where historically, writers are revolutionaries. In Lithuania, the Sajudis was bolstered by the publication of a newspaper. Writers are national heroes, and book-smugglers are folk heroes. …

Part 2: Avoid the Living Room — I have been to a lot of immersive art experiences in NYC. I have been to rooms at the MoMA that were textured and scented. I have been to mirrored spaces at various Biennials, I have been to art barges with room after room of “experiences,” and Instagram tourist traps…

Everything applies to everyone in one way or another, so why don’t we write shorter things? A war in Ukraine excuses price gouging by billion-dollar gas companies that leads to higher food prices that make your kid’s English teacher quit right before finals to get a better paying job and then the school says they’ll just cancel the English test altogether and you wonder what this…