Blog

The 960s bring me to Africa. Another part of the world that I know very little of the history of. The selection of options was somewhat uninspiring, and I decided to take a look at this book. I knew very little about colonialism in Africa. I was most familiar with the history of colonialism in […]

At some point in the late ’90s I decided that I wanted to read a history of India. I think it might have been a result of reading the themed issue of Granta on the country. Whatever my motivation, it never went beyond putting “some history of India” on the long list of books that I […]

The 940s are the history of Europe and I decided to pick up something that might be useful for the novel. One of the things that I’ve learned in the course of researching the novel is that women’s accounts of the Holocaust have been largely marginalized. There is an explicitly stated claim that to treat […]

I finally finished the rewrite of Chapter 26 this month. I have two books covering the events that this chapter hangs on with numerous dog-eared pages indicating useful information that I need to go through and make sure that everything in the book is historically correct or includes some useful details to enrich the narrative, so […]

The 930s are the history of the ancient world (not surprisingly,  ith the majority of the numbers reserved for the ancient world that was under the rule of the Greeks and Romans). Looking over the options, I spotted this collection of the works of Josephus.  Josephus is best-known as being one of the earliest non-Biblical attestations […]

The 920s are biography. My library, like  any others, shelves most biographies separately, alphabetically by author (this is one of the things that I like about the Library of Congress system—there, literature, for example, is shelved by country/language and grouped by era and biographies and critical work are shelved alongside the authors’ work. Similarly, biographies of […]

This story was one that unfolded itself gradually over time. It started with the title which came to me one day during a residency  for my MFA. I wrote down the title and even got so far as writing down a list of self-destructive behaviors, but put it aside for a while after that. I picked […]

Progress has slowed but not stalled on the novel. Rewriting chapter 26 is a challenge since I’ve also been reading multiple books about the Exodus 1947 which is at the center of the chapter which has often revealed details that required rewriting scenes as well as occasional direct contradictions between one source and the next. Rewriting the […]

I’ve (finally) released the first post on my mailing list. It’s about microwave lasagna. There’s also a recommendation and a link to my latest story.