Writings / Interviews

1. “The Book Banners and I Have One Thing in Common”

   The New York Times (August 2023)

2. “The Third Force: On Stupidity and Transcendence”

   Harper’s Magazine (September 2021)

3. “Labor’s Last Stand”

   Harper’s Magazine (September 2018), with thanks to the many people who assisted me.

4. “Public or Private, It’s Work”

   New York Times (25 June 2011)

5. “When the Snake Became a Man”

   The New Yorker (30 March 2009)

6. “Spiritual”

   The Hudson Review (Winter 2023)

7. “No Smoke for Camilo”

   Lapham’s Quarterly (Spring 2014)

8. Interview with Diane Rehm

   WAMU (30 June 2010)

9. Interview with Stephen Colbert

   The Colbert Report (6 July 2010)

10. Interview with Erica Heilman

    Vermont Public (27 July 2025)

11. Interview with Violet Lucca

    Harpers.org (6 September 2018)

12. Interview with June Thomas

    Slate Magazine (30 August 2012)

13. Interview with Krys Boyd

    KERA (28 August 2018)

Recent News

1. The launch for Starting from Paterson will take place at the Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, Vermont, on June 16 at 7:00 p.m.
2. My poem “I Heard the Crystals Singing” appears in the Winter/Spring 2026 issue of Poetry Northwest.
3. My essay “Raspberry Heaven” appears in the Spring 2025 issue of The American Scholar and is a finalist for a 2026 National Magazine Award, and my essay “Lost in Totality: On the Lure of Big Events” is in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Salmagundi.
4. Two poems of mine appear in the final issue of Raritan. I lament the regrettable passing of this excellent journal. Other poems have appeared recently in On the Seawall and Artful Dodge.
5. Issue 62 of Harvard Review includes my essay “Burning Days.”
6. My friend Ethan Marcotte has published a groundbreaking book on labor organizing in the tech sector called You Deserve a Tech Union. Here’s a review by veteran union organizer Peter Olney.
7. A recent essay, “On the Tyranny of Opinion,” can be found in the summer 2024 issue of Raritan and a short story, “Raymond Loses His Bishop,” in the summer 2024 issue of The Hudson Review.

Talks

Over the years I’ve given a variety of public talks, most of them based on the subject matter of my books. A few examples of past topics and venues appear below. (A fuller list of talks is also available.)

1. Skidmore College, 2025. Author reading and dialogue with Professor Linda Hall.

2. Vermont American Civil Liberties Union, Annual Meeting, 2012. On privacy rights. The so-called “death of privacy” is cant in the service of powerful interests.

3. Institute of Noise Control Engineering, “Inter-Noise 2012” (New York). On noise and social justice. The lower you are in the social hierarchy, the more noise you suffer.

4. Colgate University, 2007. On “organized religion.” Flawed as it is, “organized religion” is a stronger agent for social change than bourgeois “spirituality.”

5. Dartmouth Medical School, 2006. On midwifery and metaphor. The profession of midwife offers profound insights into the true meaning of “help.”

6. Smith College, 2005. On the universal moral dilemmas revealed in teaching. One day in a typical classroom amounts to an introductory course in philosophy.