I have often found myself wishing my life were dramatic enough to make a great narrative. Moments in it were that way, but only to the extent that they offered material for a self-indulgent, episodic piece or two. Until recently, there had been no great adventure to my tale that could hold the threads together long enough for me to weave them into a tapestry. That all changed on my recent vacation. I was asked to sail from Rochester, New...

I should write short stories. I keep at this novel ambition while I have yet to produce anything other than pieces of one that please me.  Walk to run to fly. That kind of thing. I haven’t written one in some time. When I did, it was from the perspective of a young black man. I am not joking. It all started when a teacher at grad school, the estimable Colum McCann, gave me one of his savory, lilting maxims. He said something like,...

When I left New York City, just about five years ago, I believed I was doing the right thing for my art. Over and over I insisted that it is better to be a full-time artist in the middle of nowhere than a part-time artist in the center of the universe. This theory has panned out to the extent that I have been more productive since moving back to Muskegon, Michigan than in all the previous years of my work combined. Unfortunately, that...

James Feller Around 1 am, after my parents had gone to sleep–mom in bed, dad passed out to the Discovery Channel on the couch–I quietly tiptoed out of my bedroom. The whole downstairs smelled strongly of cigarettes and I remembered my childhood. Summer mornings, obsessively examining my baseball card collection, I would call out to my mother. After no response, I knew she was in the basement again, half-heartedly attempting to hide...