OTHER WORK
SHORT STORIES
I find that writing a novel is like building an intricate, beautiful three-masted ship. Writing a short story also is like building a three-masted ship – in a bottle.
When I started writing my first short stories before expanding to novels, I quickly became disabused of the idea that writing short stories would be easy. Short stories take less time to write and offer the benefit of swifter gratification than writing a novel. Still, the intricacies of characterization, plotting, and attention to craft that are key to novel writing are also essential to writing short stories. I found short story writing a challenging, rewarding way to learn the craft of writing and to explore a variety of dramatic situations and thematic ideas, some of which provided the basis for a few of my novels.
I look forward to returning to short story writing after The Radical Radiance of the Fishing Fly and my other two upcoming novels are published.
Bryant Literary Review, 2007
South Carolina Review, 2007
Cottonwood, 2008
Workers Write!, 2008
the rivers of analroa
South Dakota Review, 2005
barrel rider
Southwestern American Literature, 2006
my friend julian
Talking River Review, 2007
the prisoners
Windhover, 2007
the songbird of sidi bou said
Quiddity, 2009
The blooming
Forge Literary Magazine, 2016
safekeeping
Tabula Rasa, 2020-2021
PLAYS
The ideas for most of my plays come from underappreciated personalities and events from history.
I drew inspiration from books like Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built, by Marc Leepson, Sakhalin Island, a fictionalized adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s life-changing visit to the Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island; and Ambassador Dennis Ross’s memoir, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace.
I’m looking forward to additional opportunities to produce these plays, and, perhaps in the upcoming years, write additional dramatic scripts about the lives of other underappreciated historical figures, particularly those from the world of public health.
levy's ghost
Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862, born, Philadelphia, PA) is a largely forgotten American naval hero responsible for preserving Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent Virginia home, Monticello. Levy was the first Jewish American who rose to the rank of commodore in the U.S. Navy. He was responsible for helping to end corporal punishment in the U.S. Navy and contributed to the effort to establish the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD. Despite his contributions, he suffered six courts martial due to religious persecution, triumphing each time.
Levy was a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson. In 1834, he purchased the dilapidated Monticello mansion and restored it to its historic beauty, the first example of historical preservation in American history. Levy’s Ghost brings together Uriah Levy and the ghost of Thomas Jefferson, as Levy struggles to overcome his final court martial, bringing to the stage issues of the true nature of patriotism and the destructive influence of bigotry that remain as relevant today as they were in the days of Levy and Jefferson.
FOURTEEN DAYS IN JULY
Adapted from The Missing Peace, The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace by Ambassador Dennis Ross, U.S. Envoy to the Middle East, 1988-2000, Fourteen Days chronicles the intense, desperate negotiations that came within a hair’s breadth of resolving the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the heart-breaking failure of this effort. President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Palestinian Chairman, Yasir Arafat, along with Ambassador Ross, are the main characters in this Shakespearean-level story of human frailty that continues to have a devastating impact on our world twenty-five years after this last, best hope for Middle East peace.
SHADOW of THE VALLEy
Inspired by the history of an historically important Palestinian family living in Jerusalem, Shadow of the Valley concerns a longstanding friendship between an Israeli, Jacob Ben-Zion, and a Palestinian, Youssef Aboulafia, and examines how that friendship, born of a secret and longstanding obligation between their families, is tested by the hostilities between their peoples.
Chekhov of Sakhalin
In 1890, a 30-year-old Anton Chekhov, already one of Russia’s most important young writers, wrote a play, The Wood Demon, that was savaged by Russian theater critics. Devastated by this criticism, and suffering from the early stages of incurable tuberculosis which had just killed his beloved older brother, Alexander, Chekhov decided to leave writing and return to his medical studies. In service to this goal, Chekhov undertook an arduous trip across Siberia to the harsh Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island where he conducted a socioepidemiological study of the prisoners to fulfill his requirements for his medical degree. During his three months on Sakhalin Island, Chekhov witnessed conditions of unimaginable human brutality that impacted his writing life until his death from tuberculosis fourteen years later. Chekhov of Sakhalin is a semi-fictitious recounting of this little-appreciated, life-changing journey that Chekhov documents in his book-length memoir, The Island of Sakhalin.
photography
Viewing the world through the eyepiece of a camera heightens my awareness of images and events around me. My camera provides me with a kind of sixth, or seventh ‒ or even eighth sense. It freezes time. It captures fleeting emotions that might otherwise have gone unrecognized. It visualizes images in the darkness that even cat eyes would have been challenged to see.
As a medical researcher developing vaccines for tuberculosis, I have had the opportunity to take my camera to many countries around the world. I shot many of my images during these travels. I took others while on family vacations, including backpacking trips through the Sierra Nevada. Some were taken in my figurative backyard, in and around North Bethesda, Maryland.
My experience with photography has helped me immensely with my writing. When setting a scene, I often visualize it in my mind as if I were seeing it through a camera viewfinder. Just as a photo’s composition contributes in a large way to the impact of the image, so, too the composition of a scene ‒ point of view, depth of field (the focus of the prose), the light and shadow ‒ contributes to the impact of the prose on the reader.
I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share some of my favorite photos with you.