Some fiction I take almost whole from my life, some fiction I take almost whole from my imagination. My imagination is part of my life, of course, but the unlived part of it. So: whatever inspires a piece of fiction can come moments after I’ve finished experiencing it or can suddenly arise intact from my […]

Finding Fiction out of Fact: I do not remember where I read the line (or who said it though doubtless it was a smart writer of one kind or another) but apparently someone figured out you should be able to make an Odyssey out of your daily newspaper. True enough, I think, only I would […]

A poem always begins for me with an image, often something I’ve seen or come across that at first seems unremarkable and ordinary but that stays with me, lodged somewhere between consciousness and the world of dreams, until I find myself using it as the cornerstone of a poem. I had seen the box in […]

For the past eight or so years, my poetic (and non-poetic) life has been consumed by the story of Warren, the mill town that once occupied land now covered by Loch Raven Reservoir, the primary source of Baltimore’s municipal water supply. I didn’t choose this subject so much as it chose me: when my grandmother […]

This story is exactly 75% true. Even though I’m mostly known for nonfiction and all its “constraints,” I don’t honestly think there’s a very big difference between fiction and nonfiction. In both forms, I think the main character is always the narrator (or who they want to be) and authors are always just writing about […]

Sometime in 2009 I started writing my semi-autobiographical novel, Drinking Closer to Home. I had a vague idea what would happen and what the conflict would be—in general it would follow the lives of myself and my siblings and parents through the crazy  ’70s,’80s, and ’90s. The story was to take place mostly in Southern […]

When I was growing up, my dad was a truck driver. He’d be on the road for a week at a time and when he arrived home, he’d sink into the couch and tell my mom all about what had happened on the road. Later on in the day, one of his friends might stop […]

If I can recall an incident, or two, I can build a story around it.  Arnie and the guys are part of a period, a semi-quiet time between World War II and the Korean Conflict, as it was called. Young men in their late teens or early twenties, most sons of immigrants, although you wouldn’t […]

There is no simple litmus test to gauge just how much of “Understudy” is true.  The premise is true (and for the record, the girl did say yes to the dance), but even the version that I think I remember, I only think I remember. In total, “Understudy” is three pages consisting of two versions […]

On first attempt, this piece was intended to be an adventure story with a sense of place. But the story that kept coming back to me was the one I actually lived: the horror of traveling with an ill-suited companion. While writing, I looked back at letters and pictures to help me recall details. When […]