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  • A couple of weeks ago I finally read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.

    It turns out Angela didn’t have any ashes.

    Sadly, McCourt died earlier this summer. It was in the news. Only thirteen years earlier, Angela’s Ashes had rocketed out of nowhere as a memoir without a particularly focused plotline, much less sympathetic characters, much less what is known in normal circles as HOPE.

    It’s the language. It’s well-written. McCourt was a high school English teacher.

    However, it’s also the genre and what it says to those of us literate readers of the industrialized world: there is suffering in the world. And, like McCourt, a middle-class educated American for almost sixty years, we do understand suffering.

    Now more than ever. . .

    Read the full essay on Pulp Rag.

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Preditors & Editors

Clients’ Successes

Scott Warrender
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.

Clients’ Books


Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.


I've edited a number of nonfiction essays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)


The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.