Writing
Selected published works
Substack
Articles
Critical Work
Abstract: While there are myriad lenses through which we can examine Anton Chekhov’s mastery of the short-story form, one of the clearest is his use of the natural world. The writer often uses descriptions to build story structure and transmogrify the protagonist’s experience, all the while highlighting a theme pervasive throughout his work – that of humankind’s damaging effect on the natural world and the implications of reciprocal damage. A close look at two of Chekhov’s later stories – ‘Peasants’ and ‘In the Ravine’ – reveals his ability to paint, in simple, evocative language, landscapes that do far more than serve as mere backdrops.
Healthcare
Attention Must Be Paid: Compassionate Care for Nurses Addresses the Post-pandemic Healthcare Crisis
UVM and VT Department of Health Making Strides to Improve the Lives of Vermonters with Arthritis
Science/Tech
Profiles
Drawing from Life: Celebrated illustrator Liza Woodruff authors her first children’s book.
Reviews
A Half-life at Home: Review of Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow Numero Cinq, Vol. VI, No. 6, June 2015.
Plays
Produced by Middlebury Town Hall Theater, Complications Company, Vermont Playwrights Circle, Heat and Hot Water Productions
Short plays:
Punk
Safety in Numbers
Market Forces
Mother Mara
Longer plays (in collaboration):
Seeking (with Chris Caswell and Marianne DiMascio): Winner, Best English Language Script at Montreal Fringe 2010.
Translations (devised with director Seth Jarvis for Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, 2016)
Essays
Essays will be added soon.
Other
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“Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to turntables, to microchips. There is no right way, no pure way, of doing it. There’s just doing it.”
– Bruce Springsteen
At SXSW 2012, Bruce Springsteen held a crowd rapt with a sincere and exalted oration about what it means to make and love music in a “post authentic world”. Though the conference is geared toward the denizens of pop and rock, and Springsteen is the hardest working man in both genres, his words ricochet through every type of modern music and echo in the back alleys of New Orleans where American jazz was born.
Speaking about the “genesis and power of creativity”, Springsteen rejoices that an artist’s real work is plumbing the depths of the many influences that shape her or him and letting loose the pure, dirty Truth within. Early jazz artists drew on diverse African and European sounds to create this quintessentially American art form; through it they “blew us all to kingdom come”, to borrow a phrase from Billy Collins’ poem “The Invention of the Saxophone”.
Today’s jazz artists have not only older forms to plumb – Dixieland, bebop, fusion and beyond – they also fearlessly upend other genres and embrace symbiosis in a glorious euphony. One of the bands performing this year – Chicha Libre thinks of this process as cultural cannibalism, a primal (and apt) description of how we consume and digest other cultures and music in order to grow. The Ninety Miles Project is a thrilling union of music separated by physical and political distance. Béla Fleck & the Marcus Roberts Trio unearth the sublime and surprising connection between banjo and piano.
And on and on – a flip through this book will give you an idea of the myriad ways jazz artists today are pulling in influences and pushing past the boundaries of genre and expectation – to turn audiences into sonic dervishes, wild with their own pure, dirty Truth.
One of the most amazing parts of our work is witnessing how our extraordinary local and regional sponsors build a structure of support that is so vital to our community…
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