On Pandemic Writing, Journeys Within, and Creative Possibility (Princeton Arts Alumni)
A look at my creative work during the pandemic, for Princeton Arts Alumni’s new online space, On Craft & Process.
In the Cave (Kyoto Journal)
An essay about the connection between the Tibetan idea of bardo (the interval between death and rebirth, as well as any period when our ordinary reality is suspended), COVID-19, and the Japanese concept of ma: empty space with creative potential. "The epidemic interval we're experiencing is an in-between like ma, like bardo...space charged with possibility."
Fata Morgana: Reinaldo Arenas, Writers in Exile, and a Visit to the Havana of 1987 (The Paris Review)
Late on a warm night in 1987, I left Miami for Havana to report on contemporary Cuban writing and see Arenas's environment firsthand. I'd met Arenas in 1983, when I interviewed him for my comparative literature thesis one fall afternoon at Princeton. The thesis included my translations of some of his work, one of which, a novella entitled “Old Rosa,” was later published in Old Rosa: A Novel in Two Stories.
HuffPost Blog
My HuffPost blog, on topics ranging from my family's life in Spain to the Japanese 3/11 earthquake to pilgrimage in India.
Writing and The Tibetan Book of the Dead (AGNI Blog)
I think a lot about death and faith and the creative process. This started some years back when I began writing a novel related to the Tibetan Buddhist belief in bardos, between-states when everyday life is suspended…