As many of you know, I have, eh-hem, published a book. I have been begging you fine people to buy it (that’s me groveling at your little ankles) and seriously would love to see your mug at any one of my readings. Anyway, I’ve got one of my last NYC readings of the season, [...]

Lately, I’ve been in serious debt reduction mode. We’re talking a no-frills lifestyle. We’re talking PB & J for lunch. Last week you might have spied me on Fox Business News blathering on about how to pinch pennies in these precarious economic times. However, I wasn’t able to fully cover all the ways in [...]

GC: The characters seem exceptionally well-developed. They appear to have a fully formed life before the film begins and they’ll seemingly continue to exist after the film ends. This tends to be unusual for a short film.
AA: A few people have said that they want to know what happens next and they want to [...]

Boerum Hill? Brooklyn Heights? Park Slope? Fort Greene? This is representative of Brooklyn? This six mile radius of privilege? Really? You must be joking. Seriously. If you’re a writer who grew up in Brooklyn or lives in Brooklyn but doesn’t parade around with the ubiquitous laptop, doesn’t network with all the “cool media kids”, [...]

There was the sweatpants intervention of 2007. A day when my best friend took me out for lunch and in a serious, quiet voice (unlike our high-pitched animal calls) she said, you can’t go out like this anymore, Felicia. Park Slope isn’t safe. It’s crawling with people we know. We nod sagely, agreeing, feeling [...]

In Brooklyn, our refrigerator was home to the imitation Idaho potato, sticks of Parkay, and the lone liter of Schweppes ginger ale. One summer, my mother and I subsisted on bags of potatoes cooked every which way one could fix a potato. We cut them into wedges and fried them on the pan. We boiled [...]

Kelly McMaster’s Shirley is a small, run-down town in Long Island that once held a great deal of promise. Shirley’s the child you want to keep saving, but can’t because you find yourself suffocating in all the red tape. From a Brooklyn boy’s grand dreams of a second Hamptons replete with golf courses [...]

In case you weren’t already aware. In case you’ve been in the dark, with towels wrapped around your eyes. In case you have been totally and utterly in a dark. Or in a tree, in a ditch, under a ferris wheel or what not. And clearly I’m traumatized. POOR, POOR WELL-ACCESSORIZED BLAIR.
image via

When I was getting “mike’d up” for my feature on the top three money drains for Fox Business News, a dilemma immediately ensued. I wore a black dress, a cropped cashmere jacket – both pocket-free. Where would one fit a mike pack? I found myself shouting in an underground parking lot: COULD WE FIT [...]

That fox trot to the left is my bff Susan – isn’t she just a talk drink of water?! Don’t you just want to rip that dress right off her and sneak it into your closet? Ah, if only I had her waistline. But I digress. Susan’s modeling for our friend Olena’s very fab [...]

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I stood in the baking aisle of my grocery store covered in flour, sobbing. I had spent the entire day trying to bake the perfect chocolate cake, and it was a dismal failure. This [...]

I’m mad for chocolate. Seriously. Truly. I’ve been known to nosh on a bar of Vosges milk chocolate and bacon bits. I’ve been seen scurrying out for a little ribboned box of Leonidas confections. And I’ve been caught red-handed, in a meeting, with shoving a truffle in my mouth. When it comes to chocolate, [...]

Normally, I’d say – screw that kitty! You already came to one of my readings; you’ve suffered enough! However, I’m doing a great deal of charity work this month to benefit childhood literacy and creative expression, and a small piece of that is reading for the Behind the Book Series this Thursday at KGB Bar, [...]

Tayari Jones has the warmest heart. She’s presently hosting an ebay fundraiser in an effort to help the victims of the Dunbar Village tragedy. Straight from Tayari, who’s got the goods:
Go there now to bid on manuscript critiques by me, George Saunders, Nichelle Tramble,Sarah Schulman, Laila Lalami, Joy Castro, Martha Southgate, D. Nurkse, [...]

Coined the Japanese Warhol, Takashi Marukami made a splash in the nineties for breathing fresh air into the stale Japanese art scene with his “superflat” style, cartoonish characters (influenced by anime and manga), and vibrant colors. Through his art and alter ego “DOB”, Marukami examined the intersection of sex, death and consumerism. His images [...]