About

PROJECTS

Current

A biography of W. Eugene Smith for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, working title Gene Smith’s Sink.  Manuscript due July 2012.  I’m currently writing a series of pieces for Paris Review Daily, stemming from my work on this book. Pieces can be read HERE.

Chaos Manor, a theater project in partnership with Christopher McElroen, director of acclaimed Waiting for Godot in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans after Katrina and currently directing the first-ever adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Chaos Manor’s first step was an experimental 45-minute incarnation at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn September 15-17, 2011, a Bookend event of the Brooklyn Book Festival.  The project is now being developed into a growing concern.

Research on jazz pianist Sonny Clark, 1931-63, of Herminie No. 2, Pennsylvania.  Two pieces published by Paris Review in January 2011, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2.  A commissioned new piece on Clark will be published in Tin House magazine December 2011.

Exploring feasibility of a new literary venture based in Chapel Hill-Durham called Rock Fish Stew Institute of Literature and Materials.  RFS would publish a quarterly magazine and vital website, and hold workshops and convene documentary projects locally and nationally.

Jazz Loft Project blog, updated several times per week.

Ongoing

A multimedia project based on the seminal oral history tapes about John Coltrane recorded in the early 1970s by Coltrane’s first biographer Dr. Cuthbert Simpkins.

Research on jazz icon Thelonious Monk and his North Carolina family background.

A TV series pilot set in 1959 in a Manhattan loft building which is an after-hours haunt of jazz musicians, most struggling.

A TV series pilot set in 1955 in a jazz club and restaurant in Hermosa Beach, CA.

Research on jazz saxophonist Zoot Sims, writer Bernard Malamud, and writer Joseph Mitchell.

For Sam Stephenson’s bio, please download (PDF).