Especially The Blacks And The Irish

Next Monday, July 6, I'll be at the Barnes & Noble on 86th Street, reading from my memoir. Actually, I'll be playing wing-man to my dear friend David Carr. He'll be reading from his New York Times best-selling memoir, The Night Of The Gun.

It's fair to say that were it not for Carr, you guys wouldn't be reading this blog. I met him thirteen years ago, when I thought I was on my way to either getting a PhD in history, or an MFA in poetry--2.3 GPA be damned. Carr was then the editor of Washington City Paper, and I had some vague affinity for writing. So I applied for internship there, sending some clips from my college paper and a chapbook full of truly awful poetry. Carr taught me to love the long-form--too much, so. Against his advice, and my parents advice, I dropped out of Howard and went full hog. My calculus was simple if immature--I'd rather get paid to write, than pay someone else to write.

Anyway, here we are all these years later. Come out, if you can. You'll get to see how this insane experiment turned out.