Coffee, with a Side of Deadline Hectoring (The New Yorker)
A “Talk of the Town” piece about The Manuscript Writing Cafe in Tokyo. You can only enter the cafe if you have a deadline and you can’t leave until you’ve met your goal.
How Awakening to Our Ancestors’ Stories Fuels the Creative Process (Narrative Healing)
The stories of our ancestors lie dormant until we awaken to them. And their greatest power lives in how we engage with them, in the nexus between what they meant to our ancestors and what they mean to us.
Lessons from My College Son, While We Were Home Together (The Washington Post)
This is what happened when my son flew back to the nest from college because of COVID-19. “We fell into familiar rhythms — meals together, walks around the city, long talks — but with one big difference: My son is now an adult. He’s also part of the politically aware generation born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s that includes environmental activist Greta Thunberg and gun control advocate Emma González.”
On Pandemic Writing, Journeys Within, and Creative Possibility (Princeton Arts Alumni)
A look at my creative work during the pandemic, for Princeton Arts Alumni’s new online space, On Craft & Process.
In the Cave (Kyoto Journal)
An essay about the connection between the Tibetan idea of bardo (the interval between death and rebirth, as well as any period when our ordinary reality is suspended), COVID-19, and the Japanese concept of ma: empty space with creative potential. "The epidemic interval we're experiencing is an in-between like ma, like bardo...space charged with possibility."