Today I signed papers to be the 2012-13 Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill.  I’m grateful for the opportunity.  It should be fun.

In January we decided to postpone Bull City Summer until 2013.  But 2012 isn’t dead.  Adam Sobsey and I covered the home stand that opened the Bulls season last week.  My two pieces are here and here.  Meanwhile, Adam wrote an intriguing piece for Baseball Prospectus comparing baseball pitching to literary writing.

My latest piece for Paris Review Daily posted yesterday.  It is about poets Betty Adcock and Claudia Emerson, with an introduction concerning Betty’s late husband, Don.

My writing career began in junior high and high school with sportswriting for the school paper.  For the first time since then I’m returning to sports with a piece about Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo.  I hope this piece will help spring me back into that genre to some degree.  I spent a couple of [...]

We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear tragedy in Japan.  I spent a month in Japan and the Pacific islands tracing Gene Smith’s footsteps.  I was in Saipan, swimming in the ocean off of Red Beach, an American invasion beach, when a bullhorn let us know there was [...]

The kind editors of Tin House have given permission to post this PDF.  My experiences working with Executive Editor (and novelist) Michelle Wildgen on this piece and with Lance Cleland on follow-up blog posts were exemplary.  I hope to work with them again in the future.

Two entries were posted today related to my piece on Sonny Clark in the current issue of Tin House.  One is a list of some of my favorite jazz writings and the other is a Clark playlist on Spotify.

My latest piece in Paris Review Daily on saxophonist Branford Marsalis, with photographs by Frank Hunter.

A report on my recent visit to Gene Smith’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas, with photographs from his childhood home by Kate Joyce.

I’ve got a new piece Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy* in the ‘11-’12 Winter issue of Tin House magazine, #50, the “Beauty,” issue.  Earlier this year I wrote two pieces about Clark for Paris Review Daily (Pt. One and Two).  This piece features new material about the black-owned hotel in Herminie #2, PA where Clark [...]