
The rush. The sweat. The response. I love live readings.
I’ve done live readings in LA, Portland, San Antonio, Philadelphia, and online, and am always looking for more opportunities to read my stories and essays.
Israeli poetry evening
On March 23, I greatly enjoyed and helped to facilitate an evening of Israeli poetry in Los Angeles, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the state. For my portion, I read – in Hebrew and English – a poem by a young Mizrahi writer, Adi Keissar. Her “For Those Who” /”Le-Mi Sheh…” is a combative spoken…
Publishing an essay in Parabola and reading it at CWCLB
Delighted to see my travel/spirituality essay “Out of the Dark Depths” come out in the current, Winter 2023 issue of Parabola: The Search for Meaning. Parabola is a popular, New York-based magazine dedicated to the world’s religious, cultural, and mythological traditions. The issue theme is “Darkness and Light,” and in my essay, I recount an…
At AWP22: Moderating a Panel and Reading
#AWP22 was a swirl of activities as the literary world is emerging from the downtime of the pandemic. What a difference from the last live AWP convention, March 2020 in San Antonio, the so-called #AWPocalypse of 2020 – a conference on the edge of a world shutting down, which I wrote about for the California…
Reading a New Story Live at AWP21
Read “The Grass Eater,” my new personal essay as part of a live virtual reading organized by the AWP Creative Writing Caucus at the virtual AWP 2021 on March 4. At the center of the story is a devilish 7-year-old who wrecks his mother’s seaside honeymoon. The setting is the Republic of Georgia; the time…
“The iPad Wars” in City Tales 2020, a YouTube storytelling show
This was a new performance format for me to learn – I’d taped myself reading the essay “The iPad Wars” for City Tales, the annual storytelling reading by LACC students and faculty, and sent it to the organizers for post-production. The show went live on YouTube June 4. Previously published in The Citadel, “The iPad…
AWP 2020: Two Panels and a Reading
Every year, thousands of writers flock to the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference, the largest literary convention in North America. This year, however, was special. The coronavirus pandemic cast doubt on this giant event until March 2, just two days before its start, when the organizers and the host city of…
Speaking Out on Gay Parenting and Writing at Lambda LitFest
Loved being part of the “Our Families, Our Stories: Writing and Parenting in the Trenches” apanel t 2019 Lambda LitFest with Michael Kearns, Carla Sameth, Pat Alderete, and Aimee Rowe, and reading there the opening chapter of my book Dispositions. From a lesbian Mom with a child from a short-lived straight marriage, to a pioneering,…
Reading “Saviors or Vultures?” at AWP 2019 in Portland
On the closing night of the conference, I read my new short story “Saviors or Vultures?” based on a chapter from my memoir Dispositions, at a reading organized by the AWP College Writing Caucus at Café Marino Adriatico in the Division district. Such a warm, receptive crowd, and a joy to hear other writers read…
“The iPad Wars” published in The Citadel and read live
“The iPad Wars” was read at the unveiling of the annual issue of The Citadel Nov. 14 in front of about 100 students and faculty in the campus Quad. After a few years on hiatus, our venerable literary journal is back! Published at LACC for more than 50 years, The Citadel features juried fiction and poetry…
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