New Book Review in Los Angeles Review of Books
Over the summer, I began a new adventure. I started to earn a second MFA, this one in creative nonfiction from the Vermont College in Fine Arts! It’s a low-residency program, which means that most of the degree is earned long-distance. Each semester, students are paired with faculty advisors. The semester begins with a campus residency (which, in the COVID era, has temporarily been converted into an online, mostly Zoom residency). And then, the rest of the semester involves sending packets–five of them, to be exact–to one’s advisor. These packets contain a mixture of creative and critical work. In my case, my advisor asked that part of the critical work be book reviews.
And this is how I came to write a review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s latest book, Three Rings. Mendelsohn’s work has had a big influence on me, ever since I read The Lost back when it was first released in 2006. His writing explores Judaism, the power of the classics, generational transmission of trauma, and queerness–all of which are subjects that matter a great deal to me. So, I’m really happy that my review has just appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books. You can read it here.