WORKS: Books and Manuscripts
Here is a chance to read scenes from five titles-- BWLF and ten other book-length manuscripts. Each scene is short (about ten minutes) and you're invited to browse, much as you would read articles in a magazine, or look at paintings in a gallery. Your thoughts and impressions are most welcome.
Published Books
Books and Manuscripts
The American Stage (Novel)
The American Stage is a lyrical mix of irony and intrigue, with a deliberately humorous touch, in which a determined young woman writes a scathing musical to express her frustrations with the 45th presidency and her concerns for the world.
The American Stage—Lyrics: Global Warning
Two Scientists—S1 and S2—stand beside an EPA Administrator seated before a desk with a laptop on the raised platform.
From Another World (Memoir)
This nonfiction account explores the lives of four members of a poetry workshop at Green Haven in Stormville, NY in 1976-67 – two of whom are still alive, while one became the subject of a Paul Simon Broadway musical. In this passage we see ibn kenyatta’s (K’s) brutal run-in with a transit policeman in 1974 after jumping a subway turnstile in the Bronx led to a struggle for his life. But even more brutal in many respects was the charge of attempted murder that has kept him behind bars for forty-eight years for a crime he did not commit.
A Letter that Inspired “From Another World”
A poetry workshop at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York, taught me that literature could become a shared experience with the potential to make the world a better place. The author of this letter, ibn kenyatta (or K), is himself a testament both to genius and to courage—an artist and poet who is still in jail because he refuses to deny his innocence.
Finding Dimitri (Novel)
While seeking to discover the truth behind his best friend’s disappearance in Pinochet’s Chile, photographer Marten Sorensen ends up playing a game of life and death with the devil.
The Letter that Inspired “Finding Dimitri”
Dimitry (who inspired the character of Dimitri Androv in the novel) became my best friend when I was an exchange student in Concepción, Chile. I was there in 1964-65, and we continued our friendship through a decade of correspondence, as well as a memorable visit to my home in Bergen County, N.J. After a careless move in which much of my personal correspondence was lost, this is the only remaining letter I have from Dimitry.
Silver and the Angels (Novel)
Journalist Constance Graham tries to resolve the many implausible riddles that arise when a family of “angels” (or are they vampires?) war against the industrialization of the human species, in the wake of unexplained, violent murders that rock Stamford, Connecticut.
Sleeping Sickness (Novel)
Blocked in his career at The Myriad Corporation, and betrayed by his wife Yvette, aspiring novelist Rodger Davies tries to reclaim both his life and his fiction.