"The Naked Foundation" in Jellyfish Review

My latest flash fiction, "The Naked Foundation," has been published in issue 42 of Jellyfish Review and is available to read online here.

R.I.P., Larry Cohen

This is a tough one. Larry Cohen––consummate old-New Yawwk indie-auteur, master of exploitation and horror, father of the IT'S ALIVE trilogy, progenitor of the only Yaphet Kotto chamber drama, facilitator of Michael Moriarty method performances in movies with stop-motion monsters, inventor of THE STUFF (a movie so good, I reviewed it twice), creator of MANIAC COP, the force behind the exquisitely unnecessary (in all the best ways) sequel to SALEM'S LOT (co-starring Sam Fuller!), the person ballsy enough to star Adam and Alan Arkin in the same movie and not have them play father and son, and the final director to match wits with Bette Davis––has died at 77.

I was lucky enough to almost work with Larry as a production assistant on an indie thriller he was going to make in 2006 called SURVEILLANCE. Though I was interviewed, hired, and ready to go, the film was stopped short before principal photography began. [A major network was able to kibosh it due to surface similarities with a pilot they were pushing (based on an Alfred Hitchcock movie) that never came to pass either. Ah, show biz.] Regardless, Larry and his partners were delightfully old-school in a very "New York moxie" kind of way that I somehow can only compare to the spunky, screwball newspaper comedies from the '30s and '40s. Fitting for a guy who grew up on Bogart and Cagney, made the journey from NBC page to show creator in less than a decade, and managed to make some of the most whacked-out, socially important horror films of the '70s and '80s with little more than shoestrings and elbow grease. I don't think we'll ever see his like again.

"A Fine Green Thread" in The Los Angeles Review of Books

My latest book review––of the essay collection The Writing Irish of New York, edited by Colin Broderick––has been published by The Los Angeles Review of Books and is available to read online. Happy early St. Patrick's Day!

"The Statement of [REDACTED], Revised" Wins 2019 Gail B. Crump Prize

Pleiades has announced that my short story "The Statement of [REDACTED], Revised" has won their 2019 Gail B. Crump Prize in Experimental Fiction, and will appear in print this June in Pleiades 39.2.

Pleiades: Literature in Context is a literary biannual published by the University of Central Missouri featuring "poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews by authors from around the world. Past contributors include winners of the Nobel, Ruth Lilly, Pulitzer, Bollingen, Prix de la Liberté, and Neustadt Prizes, recipients of Guggenheim, Whiting, National Book Critics Circle and National Book Awards."