Revisiting the Woods (for new paid subscribers)(sorry if you are getting this 2 or 3 times)
On October 21st, Gris Tormenta will publish a book version of my essay "Into The Woods," with a new Introduction, translated into Spanish by Isabel Zapata. If you read Spanish or know someone who does, you can order the book here, and I would love it if you did! If you want to read the essay in English, here it is. It makes more sense if you read "Into The Woods" before or after - it lives online here, and is also included in the n+1 anthology MFA vs NYC, which only gets better with age.
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My husband’s sibling Masha lives in this cavernous giant apartment way uptown. It has twenty-foot ceilings painted in bright colors and what they claim is the longest built-in bookshelf in Manhattan. We went over there for dinner one night recently. My husband’s family all have the same attitude towards food: casual and utilitarian, and then when it’s in front of them they fall on it like wild animals and clean their plates in an instant. My sons and their cousin scarfed down their plates of carryout jerk chicke. As I watched their jaws moving almost in synch, I momentarily snapped into conscious awareness that they are technically half-brothers.