I had an unhealthy relationship with poetry as a teenager, and Poe is to blame. Right about the time I was learning there was such a thing as poetry, The Simpsons aired the first of its “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episodes, the third act of which was a dramatic reading
I grew up in North Florida. I wouldn’t disagree too strongly with those who consider it South Georgia. After all, Georgia is only a 45-minute drive from my childhood home. When I was in the fifth grade my class took a trip to a historical farm museum in
As the year draws to a close, so do many opportunities to attend events hosted at a number of unique and historical sites scattered about the five boroughs. I was looking for a means to cross from my list a visit to the Van Cortlandt House Museum in the Bronx.
Most of what is truly historic in New York has been pushed to the margins of the city. As the city grew outward from Manhattan, the modern world (of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries) covered or dismantled the foundations laid by New York’s earliest European inhabitants. My trips
I’ve lived in New York for just over five years. And in all that time—like a lot of New Yorkers I’ve met—I’d never been to Staten Island. I don’t know anyone who lives on New York City’s much-maligned borough to the south,
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I swear that when I began writing this series, I had no intention of becoming a historical re-enactor. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the kind of people who dress up as Union and Confederate soldiers, say, and spend their
On Saturday I took the subway farther north than I ever had, coming to the 5 train’s end at the Eastchester–Dyre Avenue stop. Technically I wasn’t even in the Bronx anymore, but in Westchester County. Walking about 10 minutes north from the stop put me at the
This week we’re introducing a new column, “New York’s Roadside Attractions,” in which TMN Editor Erik Bryan travels to historical homes around the five boroughs and, among other things, tries to get historical re-enactors to break character and submit to an interview. The weekend of Sept. 17
Florida is America’s most-abused state, and Tallahassee its biggest target for bi-coastal writers who pick low-hanging fruit—rednecks, old people—and wouldn’t know an alligator from their elbow. The slander has gone far enough. On behalf of every Tallahussey and T-Town man, let the corrections begin
Carmela Ciuraru’s first nonfiction work, Nom de Plume: The (Secret) History of Pseudonyms, was recently published by HarperCollins. The book explores the biographies of several writers—Patricia Highsmith, Mark Twain—who adopted pen names and their various reasons for doing so. Ciuraru has written for the New York Times,
