Citizenship | Literature

Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.

PROFILES IN SERVICE

Novels


  • Vote for your favorite Peace Corps Book of 2014. People in the Peace Corps community know well the agency’s three goals: To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served To promote a better…


  • A lot of excuses have been made on behalf of Brian Williams since his fabrications went public last week. None of them are good. None of them can buy back the credibility every journalist requires as their professional stock in trade. But I was surprised to find one of the worst excuses in The New…


  • I don’t plan on writing porn any time soon. Probably never. But this article from today’s New York Times Magazine, about the life of one prolific pornographer, had me thinking about what I write and how I write it. The piece helped me calibrate the struggle against my greatest bane: The lack of time. I’m a career man with a job…


  • Two weeks until the February 15th deadline for submitting your manuscript to this year’s Dundee International Book Prize. Curious about what floats their boat? Read last year’s shortlisted works: My manuscript Sea Never Dry, thick with crooked cops, fetish priests, Internet fraudsters, and orphans turning a buck off a West African e-waste dump, made last year’s cut. Read the excerpt below. Now,…


  • What if W. Mitt Romney is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016? And what if Sarah Palin joins the race? What if Mittens chooses Palin as his running mate? I give you their chit-chat: Palin: Who hijacked the term ‘Feminist’? A cackle of radicals who want to crucify other women with whom they disagree. M: I went to…


  • This review appears in the latest issue of Crime Factory magazine–the excellent Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by Douglas Lindsay. Enjoy, coffee drinkers and Beatles lovers! Before Douglas Lindsay’s Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! descends into nightmare, the narrative hints at a story about the ho-hum life: the humorous musings of a middle-aged man resigned to a tired…


  • This brilliant debut was released January 21: Beneath the surface of Black River, the taut debut by S.M. Hulse, flows the grey enigma of ultimate justice. The narrative forces  the reader to ask: Does a recidivist criminal capable of torture, yet claiming to have found Jesus, deserve parole? Or would such redemption be an injustice to the…


  • The killing of Charlie Kirk ignited a firestorm over freedom of expression and speech rights in the United States.


  • A compilation of posts recalling my Peace Corps service in Malawi (1996-1998). Crossing Paths with Paul Theroux in Malawi I’ve always felt a strong connection Paul Theroux, due largely to our shared legacy as Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. When I expressed reluctance about taking an assignment teaching English there in the 90s, the recruiter suggested I read My Secret…


  • The following was published January 6 at Atticus Review. REDEMPTION UNDER ICE: A REVIEW OF RYAN W. BRADLEY’S WINTERSWIM The prologue to Ryan W. Bradley’s Winterswim strikes quick and brutal: a violent pastor, a forced conversion to Christ, a victim on a frozen lake in the arctic night. The pastor murders his young female prey by pushing her…