Book Projects

Nonfiction:

F*ck Art (Let’s Dance): An East Village Memoir

Due out in 2013 from Water Street Press.

Beastly Life: A History of American Working Animals.

Walt Whitman supposedly wrote that here in this country, we think we’re big people because we’re from a big place. That’s easy enough to digest, but by this author’s account, popular histories always leave something out. This nation was built not just by people but by animals—lots of them. To settle this land and build its cities, in fact, we had to engender a lot of creatures very quickly. In a sense, we made our working animals. And in an even-greater sense, they made us.

Extensively researched and acrobatically written, Beastly Life describes how working animals came to be here, how they lived and died, and where they are now. The creatures emerge with real physical presence, and what stories they tell. Some are sad: a special chapter details the fate of working animals in war. And some tales are triumphant. You’ll discover the fragrant torpor of raking hay on a summer afternoon with a mule team, the nervous excitement of logging with colossal Belgian draft horses, and the mysterious calm of walking the woods with the strangest and largest creatures of all: oxen.

Jive:

The sequel to “F*ck Art,” beginning with a decadent party and ending with an escape from New York.

My Night At Price Chopper:

The last exurban adventure.

Fiction:

House Of Deer:

An Adirondack noir, with a cast of characters including five sisters, indigenous flora and fauna, and a guy in bear suit.