If you don’t know the above phrase, it’s from a 70s special teaching kids about individuality and how we are all…”Free to be you and me.” Yeah, it was HELLA 70s but the expression stuck because it’s still true. We are always free to be ourselves—within legal and cultural parameters, of course. But when we […]

When I was at University of Florida, I was privileged to take creative fiction writing with Harry Crews. He’d published numerous novels, his own memoir and essays for publications like Esquire and Playboy. He knew his stuff. A favorite teaching technique of his was to drop gruff bon mots whenever someone would read their piece […]

I’ve always been a storyteller. For as long as I can remember, I could spin a yarn off the top of my head. I even included some interpretive dance back when I visited my family in Yugoslavia. I was five, but it was amazing. Just ask my cousin Ivica. Five-year-olds don’t have much to say, […]

Do you hate Twitter? Do you think it’s a waste of time? Do you feel lonely and ignored? Don’t you just hate that your best friend has 5,000 followers who retweet and “favorite” his stuff all the time while you only have 50 even though you follow at least three times as many people as […]

As an undergrad at the University of Florida, I had the good fortune of spending a year learning creative writing from the late novelist Harry Crews. If you’ve never read Harry, you should. He was the living embodiment of “Southern Gothic,” and if he hadn’t existed, Flannery O’Connor would have created him. He was also […]