Beyond the Library: The Quiet Evolution of Literary Buffalo
When visiting the city earlier this month, I learned that over the past half-century, Buffalo has become quite the literary town.
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Secrets of the Scajaquada? Treasures of Tonawanda? Or…
This month I am asking readers, what are the undiscovered gems in Buffalo and the surrounding area that I need to visit this year?
Publishing My West Side Story: It’s About to Get Real
Like every would-be author discovers, if writing a book isn’t difficult enough, the ordeal of trying to get it published tests all one’s powers of endurance.
Merry One-armed Christmas!
I have a friend named Omar who paints houses. He also happens to have only one arm. He fell out of a tree when he was a child in his native Honduras, and his family didn’t have the money to have it fixed. Gangrene set in, and he had it amputated above the elbow. The […]
Change is Gonna Come
When I go home to Buffalo, I never pass up an opportunity to visit my old neighborhood on the Upper West Side. Photo courtesy of Maria Eley.
Root Bound
I am headed to Valledolmo and Montemaggiore Belsito in Sicily, to learn more about my great grandparents.
So You Think You’d Like to Write a Book…
Four years ago, when I decided to write a novel set in Buffalo, I did the worst thing I could possibly do. I looked up “what it takes to write a novel” on the Internet. I did not find loads of encouragement.
The Buffalo I Have Lost and Found
I went back to my hometown this summer to visit family and friends, and to do research for my nearly completed novel, set in Buffalo during the late 1960s. As is so often the case when I write stories, I learn things about myself in the process that surprise me. I discovered, for example, that […]
What I Learned About Writing from a Tomato
I am a gardener. And I’m a writer. So naturally, every day from 9 to 5, I am wracked with guilt and mild self-loathing. When I am outside in the garden, I feel guilty that I am not at my desk, butt-in-chair, working on my next blog or novel. When I’m at my desk, I […]
Let Me Introduce Myself
Please call me Moxie. No, it’s not the name I was given at birth. It was bestowed upon me late one night after a drinking contest in a bar…but that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say it is the name I prefer to be called. Here are a few things you should […]