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For years I’ve encouraged my writing students not to be afraid to use proper nouns in their work: the names of friends, family members, and especially places, such as streets, towns, cafés, stores, and so on. Not only do these words ground the reader in a specific time and

I first drafted these words last night, at the end of a frustrating work day—yet another day on which I had no idea where the hours went. Minute by minute the days get away from me, because I am interrupted and then interrupted again—someone buzzes the apartment, the

Last year was the first in a decade that I did not go to see the Bluebell Wood in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The garden, of course, was closed to visitors then; until I saw these photos by Scott Heins at Gothamist of a seemingly emptied-out Manhattan last

My Writers Studio colleague Lisa Bellamy often describes the “healthy jealousy” that arises when a writer encounters work that excites them. The writer feels inspired in their jealousy: I want to do that, too! Recently I observed to my husband that sometimes the line is slight between healthy jealousy and

Maxwell’s Demon, a being postulated by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in his 1871 book Theory of Heat, plays a central role in The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and is explained to Oedipa Mass, the protagonist, by Yoyodyne employee Stanley Koteks as follows: The Demon could

Since last summer I’ve been a student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College. Preparing for a career change in middle age feels aberrant in itself; preparing for a career change in the midst of a pandemic feels foolish. But trying to maintain my