July 25, 2016
Majestic Waste
Jay Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne (2011) album was a watershed moment in hip hop, specifically, and American culture broadly, though to say this is a bit redundant, […]
July 22, 2016
Libraries, Little and Free (Part One)
I live in a town, Ann Arbor, that values reading. We have a handful of lovely bookstores; we have several handfuls of excellent university and public libraries. We also have […]
July 21, 2016
Histories of Our Faces
I recently returned home from teaching for two weeks in the Between the Lines program at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in Iowa City. The session in which I taught […]
July 20, 2016
Speak Us Into Life: A Tribute to Elie Wiesel
Must we be reminded that, in the end, all works of literature, even despairing ones, constitute an appeal to life? —Elie Wiesel I didn’t want this tribute to […]
July 20, 2016
La Fin du Monde at Bristol Bar
There was a bar called Bristol. On the corner of 4th and Summit, all brick with a couple window walls, a former speakeasy back in the Prohibition days, when the […]
July 16, 2016
These Writer Types Are a Scream: Songs about Writing
In the mood to listen to music about writing? In a matter of seconds, the wondrous Internet will pull up a list of 95 songs about writing, books, or authors. […]
July 16, 2016
The Best Place on Earth: In Conversation with Ayelet Tsabari
Recently, I had the pleasure to correspond with Ayelet Tsabari, whose debut short story collection, The Best Place on Earth, won the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and was a 2016 Editor’s Choice in The […]
July 12, 2016
Identity In Flux: On Jewishness & Poetry
In late 2014, I asked six different poets of various ages and backgrounds questions about Jewish identity and poetry. I had answered some questions about poetry and faith on The Best […]
July 12, 2016
Temporary Talismans
There’s a postcard I’ve kept propped on my desk, on a bookshelf, or protected in a drawer—since middle school. I don’t know what attracted me to that particular postcard from […]
July 11, 2016
KR Writers Workshop: Eight Reasons I Keep Coming Back to Kenyon
2016 was my third time at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. We’ve all ruined things by trying to repeat them, so I keep trying to take a summer off—but the […]
July 11, 2016
Why We Chose It
“Walt Whitman and the Bohemians” by David S. Reynolds appears in the July/Aug 2016 issue of the Kenyon Review. Let me begin simply by saying that David S. Reynolds is […]
July 9, 2016
Trump Card
I’m writing this post on a Wednesday morning, after having just read a spirited debate over the meaning of the Brexit vote in The New York Times. All five of […]