I wrote an essay for The Washington Post! It’s about how becoming a mother has made me a better writer. A sample: Throughout my pregnancy, I weathered comments about how difficult writing would soon become, all while obsessing about how…
I have a new Learn To Write From The Movies up at Barrelhouse. It’s about Kill Your Darlings, a movie about Allen Ginsberg starring Daniel Radcliffe. A sample: Lesson 4: Do Weird 1940s Drugs. Naturally, Burroughs suggests they do drugs.…
A couple of weeks, friends invited us to spend the night in a cabin in Mt Tamalpais. Can you believe the view off the balcony? We had a great time: lots of hiking, board games, listening to people playing music,…
I wrote an essay for the Poetry Foundation on the poet George Sterling and the Carmel artist colony. It’s a crazy story about artistic utopia, California Bohemians, scandals, affairs, and a suicide pact. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and HL Mencken…
Here are some things we’ve been doing lately: Disneyland Even though I’ve lived in California all my life, I’ve never been to Disneyland. So we took Gideon down there, and had a great time. They do what they do well.…
Check out Learn to Write from the Movies: Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story. Here’s a sample: Lesson 3: Don’t Bother To Write Until A Creepy Ghost Appears To You In A Dream. Good news. You don’t have to…
While everyone was moaning about 2016, personally it was a great year for me. But 2017 was pretty dumb. Just before Christmas, Kyle’s grandmother Ruth passed away. We just came back from her funeral in Kentucky. For much of the…
I forgot to post this on here! I wonder what else I’ve forgotten. Back in August, I was Interviewed By CNN about Donald Trump. They wanted my opinion because of my article on Vice about How Reality TV Made Donald…
It’s the next installment of my Barrelhouse column, Learn To Write From the Movies. This time it’s about the movie Genius. Genius is a 2016 movie about Thomas Wolfe, who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. The…
I wrote an article for the LA Review of Books on Tight Wires Between Us: On “Difficulties of a Bridegroom” by Ted Hughes. Excerpt: ON FEBRUARY 9, 1963, two days before the poet Sylvia Plath killed herself, a radio play…