"Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival" Anthology

Writing fiction was my emotional test kitchen

 -"How I Wrote My Way Out of the Closet"

Really honored to be part of the anthology Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival, edited by Sandra Lambert and Sarah Einstein, who created it in response to last year's election, and that sinking, frustrated feeling we'd be fighting again for the things we thought we'd already secured: equal rights in employment, housing, and relationships, freedom from the specter of violence

Also, thanks to Jennifer Haupt for originally publishing this essay, "How I Wrote My Way Out of the Closet," in Psychology Today. At the time of publication, I thought I'd written it in retrospect, glad that my generation was probably the last to really to have come out of the closet, that the world was a more accepting place. Just like Obma, I hope these days are just a small dip in the great arc that bends toward justice.

You can read the essay here.

Essay in Psychology Today: "How I Wrote My Way Out of the Closet"

I have a new essay up at Psychology Today called "How I Wrote My Way Out of the Closet." I think the title speaks for itself. I hope you enjoy it:

The conversation was one of the hardest of my life and didn’t go the way I’d written it, but somehow, seeing the words on the page was comforting—they were solid, firm, ready to back me up should I waver. I had written them, and they could never be erased.

To read more, go here. Thanks to editor Jennifer Haput for believing in my work!

5/28/13: Essay in Psychology Today

I was thrilled to contribute an essay to Psychology Today in commemoration of Memorial Day about my grandfathers, who served in World War II. I wrote about their service and how they were the inspiration for my forthcoming novel, The Tide King, out this month:

As Mitch Albom so aptly wrote, “It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.” Likewise, it took some time before I began to consider the sum of my grandfather’s life outside of his narrow role in mine.

To read more, go here.