Richard Grayson's THE EIGHTIES DIARIES published as Amazon Kindle E-book

Dumbo Books today published Richard Grayson's The Eighties Diaries as an e-book available at the Amazon Kindle store for $1.99.

The promo stuff says in part:

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.

Despite the crackpot nature of his lifelong project, the diarist actually did become a writer of sorts. Starting in the mid-1970s, he began publishing his stories in literary magazines and anthologies, and later in webzines. His articles have appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE MIAMI HERALD, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, THE NEW YORK POST, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, and many other newspapers and magazines. He won four state arts council grants for his fiction writing, and in addition to being a lawyer and political activist, has taught writing in colleges in six states since 1975.

ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK (1979) “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”

LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive,” and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”

THE EIGHTIES DIARIES runs nearly 300,000 words, chronicling his life and the lives around him from 1981 to 1989, in Manhattan and Miami and a few places in between.

It includes all of six volumes previously published separately: SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

Grayson has already published his first book of diary entries, BOY MEETS BROOKLYN: 1969-70, and the next six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

Five volumes of THE NINETIES DIARIES published include SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994, and AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE: 1994-1996.

Richard Grayson's "AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Autumn in Gainesville. It is available in a 242-page trade paperback edition for $13.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part:

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.

But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.

ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”

Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.”   THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”

Grayson’s seventeenth compilation of diary entries, AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE, alternates among the three fall seasons during the years he worked as a staff attorney in social policy at University of Florida law school think tank.

Taking place from 1994 to 1996, Grayson's diary chronicles his adventures as a legal researcher, college instructor, gay rights activist, candidate for Congress, local media presence on radio, TV and newspapers, and also a contributor to and columnist for New Jersey Online.

Working for a education project called Schoolyear 2000 and one of the first experiments in web-based journalism projects, fighting an anti-gay referendum in Alachua County, shaping the concept of a center for genome sciences, still questioning himself and the culture at every turn, Grayson moves into his mid-40s and by the book's end, he finds himself surprised with a book contract for a new collection of short stories and prepares to move on to the next, unknown, phase of his life.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996 is the fifth volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, and SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994.

The book is also available on Lulu and Scribd for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Last Summer in Rockaway. It is available in a 204-page trade paperback edition for $12199, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Acclaimed short story writer Richard Grayson has been keeping a diary since the summer of 1969 when he turned 18, a time recounted in his first published book of diary entries, SUMMER IN BROOKLYN.  In LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY, it's 1991 and he's turning 40.

The diary entries begin in Los Angeles, where Grayson goes for the first time to lead workshops at a writers' conference overseen by his oldest friend, a writer and editor he met in a second grade class in Brooklyn's P.S. 203.In California, Grayson learns that his bankruptcy has been finalized and that he has been accepted to law school at the University of Florida.

After a brief stay in South Florida to complete his teaching career at a community college, Grayson flies to New York for three months, living in the now-vacant beachfront apartment in Rockaway that had been his grandparents' longtime home.

Between visits to his grandmother in a nearby Long Island nursing home and excursions to Brooklyn and Manhattan for long lunches, dinners and walks around his native New York, trying to take everything in, knowing he will probably never return except as an infrequent visitor.

Grayson also reflects upon everything from the death of novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer and conditions in Rockaway's ghetto neighborhoods to whether one day the computer, TV and telephone will merge into one device.

Richard Grayson's previous diary books include SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-75; MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1976-79; WINTER IN BROOKLYN, 1971-72; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980; SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-84; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-87; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; EIGHTIES' END: 1987-89; SUMMER IN NEW YORK, 1990; and FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE, 1991.

The book is also available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "SUMMER IN NEW YORK" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Summer in New York. It is available in a 234-page trade paperback edition for $12.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

It's the summer of 1990, and writer Richard Grayson -- about to turn 39 and having recently lost forty pounds -- has come up from Florida to spend the summer in his native New York City, shuttling between a friend's Upper West Side apartment where he's lived for the previous six summers and his grandmother's apartment on the beach in Rockaway, where she is suffering from depression and other problems of old age and is ultimately hospitalized for weeks.

For most of the 1980s, Grayson has gotten by as a writer through combining literary grants and income from part-time college teaching and computer education workshops -- and a scheme relying on constantly moving cash advances from the over 40 credit cards that Grayson accumulated during the Greed Decade.

Now, as the national economy falls into an ominous recession -- and war in the Persian Gulf seems imminent -- Grayson's credit card chassis is spinning out of control, with him $150,000 in debt and meager unemployment benefits his only steady income.

Moreover, he recognizes that his career as a fiction writer, never quite viable despite numerous publications, good book reviews, and critical encouragement, is coming to an end. What to do?

He takes up the cause of the beleaguered Miami hip-hop group, 2 Live Crew, whose As Nasty As They Wanna Be CD has been declared obscene by a Florida judge. Grayson's efforts win him national publicity -- and some hate mail from those offended by raunchy rap music. And his satirical campaign to rescue billionaire Donald Trump from bankruptcy are highlighted on CNN and in The New York Post.

As he moves through the city, taking random graduate courses in computer education and creativity at Teachers College, running from bank ATM to bank lobby to deposit the money in his credit chassis, fretting about the future as he wanders around Brooklyn, desperately trying to stir up interest in his poorly-selling books of fiction, and going out to endless lunches and dinners with his many friends -- mostly other writers, theater people, artists, performers, politically-connected lawyers and religious activists -- Grayson recounts his days in the diary he's been keeping obsessively since he was an agoraphobic 18-year-old boy about to start Brooklyn College in the summer of 1969.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-84; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-87; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-89.

SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990 is the first volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, immediately preceding LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY:1991 and FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991.

The book is also available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

New York Times Sunday Dialogue, "Books in a Digital Age," includes letter by Richard Grayson

We have a letter in today's New York Times ' Sunday Dialogue, "Books in a Digital Age," today, April 22, 2012.

Richard Grayson's "FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's First Fall in Gainesville. It is available in a 420-page trade paperback edition for $19.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn.

In the fall of 1991, Grayson is 40 years old. He's published some well-reviewed books of short stories and has worked as a college English teacher for 16 years, but he also has recently gone bankrupt and feels that his career as a fiction writer is over.

So he enters law school at the University of Florida, moving alone to Gainesville, a town he'd never been in before and where he knows no one.

FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE is Grayson's diary from his first semester of law school. Like Scott Turow's memoir ONE L or John J. Osborne Jr.'s novel THE PAPER CHASE, it gives the reader a sense of the process fledgling law students go through as they learn to "think like like a lawyer" -- except that it's from the day-by-day perspective of a 40-year-old who knows that he will never practice law and who is cynical about the process from the start.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-84; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-87; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-89.

FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE is the second volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY.


Some excerpts:

Thursday, October 10, 1991

7 PM. By Thursday night I usually feel giddy with relief and weariness.

I can see the strain the first year of law school is putting on my classmates. Greg said he just couldn’t face looking at textbooks last evening. Karin isn’t eating right and she nearly made herself sick by waiting till 3 PM to eat something yesterday.

Doug G fell asleep at least seven times in Criminal Law today, and since we sit right in front of Prof. Nunn, I was afraid he’d notice, so I kept tapping my foot against Doug’s and he’d open his eyes, but soon his head would be falling forward again.

In Crim, nobody volunteered to give the facts of a case because people were either tired or hadn’t read it. Embarrassed by the silence, I raised my hand even though I talk a lot in class.

In Civ Pro, Mashburn called on a student who said she “passed,” which she should have known would not be “acceptable” in that class.

From Legal Research and Writing at 9:10 AM to the end of Jurisprudence at 4 PM, everyone seemed to be in a mid-semester slump. Our study group didn’t even want to go over our Crim notes, though we did try some hypos.

And I forgot when I returned to school from lunch that I’d parked on the street. After the last class, I scoured the parking lot for fifteen minutes, wondering where my car was.

Graffiti in a men’s room stall:
“FUCK YOU”
“Fuck me? I’m a first-semester law student and don’t have time.”

I left a message with Cheryl saying I was too tired to accept her invitation to see L.A. Law at her house tonight. I didn’t lie when I said it’s past my bedtime. (Besides, I’ve never watched L.A. Law.) Greg, Kenny, Karin and Larry probably aren’t going, either. Well, at least I can sleep later than 6 AM tomorrow, even if I haven’t briefed my cases.

I did a terribly half-assed job on the outline last night and early this morning, but at least I handed in something – this assignment was optional – so I can discuss it with Pat Thomson next week. And I don’t have to think about it now.

Things are getting tough, and I guess this is a real test for all of us.

*

Friday, November 8, 1991

Noon. I think I just made myself unpopular with my fellow law students by my comment at the end of Criminal Law. We were discussing Tennessee v. Garner, the Supreme Court decision that declared unconstitutional a law that allowed a Memphis cop to shoot and kill and unarmed 15-year-old boy feeling a robbery.

Doug G, sitting next to me, expressed his astonishment that police were being limited so much, and others chimed in, agreeing that cops should be able to shoot criminals escaping from robberies.

I was astounded and wondered why these people are in the class: what do we need with a criminal justice system when we can have a police state? That’s not what I said, however.

I started getting hisses when I said, “Let’s look at reality. This law is used against poor minority kids…” and I went on to say it wouldn’t be used against stockbrokers being arrested for the felony of insider trading and trying to leave down their back stairway.

Doug and I argued good-naturedly, but as class broke up, I could feel people were looking at me funny. My desire to be well-liked sometimes conflicts with the rising gorge of injustice I feel.

I wish I didn’t get so excited. Maybe I was wrong to bring race into it – did people think I was trying to score some points with Nunn? – but I remember Clifford Glover, Eleanor Bumpers, Michael Stewart, Arthur McDuffie, Rodney King, and then I know I’m right.

Before class, I was in the library reading the text when the guy across the table from me, reading the Alligator, hissed out, “Fuckin’ bastard.” I pretended not to hear, but then I noticed he was reading an article about David Duke. The head of UF Students for Duke (can you believe it’s someone with a Vietnamese name?) was quoted in the article. So at least somebody at the law school besides me has the propensity to get outraged.

Well, relax, Richie – after Civ Pro and Jurisprudence this afternoon, the long weekend is starting.

Yesterday’s Civ Pro and Jurisprudence classes were fine, though now that I think about it, I probably again blabbed too much when I criticized Judge Bork’s decision in the Cyanamid case and said that allowing the policy of hiring only women who’d been sterilized (to avoid high lead levels from damaging a fetus) was sexual discrimination. People laughed when I said that lead probably affects men’s sperm production, too. Oh well.

*

Friday, November 22, 1991

3 PM. The last full week of law school just ended. I was amused yesterday when after the Civ Pro practice exam, I went into a stall in the men’s room and heard two voices talking:

“Did you grant summary judgment on that question?”

“Obviously. Sure. That was the only way to go.”

“Uh, I didn’t grant it.”

It made me feel better even though I knew I screwed up the answer – because these guys thought there was a “right” answer. Actually, I think my answer would get a C+, and I’m pleased with that.

Once classes end, I’ll study and prepare, but I’ll also be away from my fellow students, some of whom appear wild-eyed at this point. To me, Nunn’s and Mashburn’s common-sense advice about taking exams makes perfect sense, and a lot of people seem to be looking for the one “answer” on how to take exams, too.

The point is, you’ve got your own way of looking at the law and your own style, and first-semester exams are a way of testing you and letting you learn how to make the most of what you’ve got.

Maybe Steve H has “gotta get an A in Civ Pro,” but I’ve got a life. I’ll just be happy if my sore gums/tooth doesn’t turn out to be anything major.

I guess when you’re 22, you don’t have much else going for you but grades as the passport to that future you want, and the same competitive jerks will be the ones who see their salaries as their report cards and their BMWs and Rolexes as their GPA’s.

Last night I did study a little, but I also watched Beverly Hills 90210 and spoke to Mom, who actually thinks I sit her and worry all day because my apartment is messy. She’s fucked-up enough so that it bothers her to think that this place is dirty – which it is – and I refuse to placate her by lying.

I slept okay, except for my teeth (was I grinding them or this a more serious problem like an abscess?), and this morning I read the Wall Street Journal and then did aerobics before going to school.

Today started off at 67° but got cooler, so I changed into long pants and added a jacket when I returned home for lunch.

Gena said she’s going to talk to Dean Savage about getting her course load reduced for next semester. Her three-year-old son has had a miserable time with Mommy working all the time, and she’s got to spend more time with him.

One of the most anxious students, in spite of Marty Peters’ workshop, is Lorraine. She asked Nunn a question about grades and he started to say how he’d rather not give grades, just pass-fail with a written evaluation when she curtly interrupted him and said, “That’s all well and good for you, but I need to know…”

What a jerk. I think she told me that she HAD to make law review. Karin says that all the C-10 workshops don’t seem to be helping Lorraine, but I’m sure she knows the material a lot better than I do. She’s just so tense about it.

I’m sure that even my second-rate efforts will improve if I can see the exams’ fact patterns as intriguing intellectual puzzles – which they are.

Tomorrow morning I have jury duty, which I’m not looking forward to. But I’ll have the rest of the weekend to work, and I’m not going to torture myself.

The book will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Late Spring in Sunrise. It is available in a 167-page trade paperback edition for $12.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Broward County, Florida, 1982.

A 30-year-old writer and a 17-year-old boy about to graduate from high school.

An unexpected love affair.

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn.

In LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, an older Grayson is still exploring. His second book of short stories just published, a contract signed for his third, Grayson is finishing his first year as a full-time community college instructor in Florida when he finds himself involved in a relationship with the teenage Sean.

Earlier, Grayson published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE takes place in seven weeks of 1982 and is one of six volumes of THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, whose other books include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

The book will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Eighties' End: Autumn. It is available in a 298-page trade paperback edition for $15.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn.

Earlier, Grayson published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

In EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN, Grayson alternates his fall diary entries from 1987, 1988 and 1989, when he is variously spending time with other writers, artists and musicians at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire; living on the Upper West Side and serving as a writer-in-residence at the suburban Rockland Center of the Arts under one of the state arts grants he has at the time; with his emotionally troubled grandmother at the beach in Rockaway; and in Florida, training Miami schoolteachers on the use of computers and teaching writing classes at Broward Community College.

Grayson is juggling a massive credit card chassis, putting out two new books of short stories, and embarking on a strict diet to lose forty pounds. He's also getting himself into the newspapers as a social activist, demonstrating on Wall Street against leveraged buyouts and at Florida shopping centers against a Halloween mask denigrating to Arabs.

EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN is the final volume of THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, whose other books include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, WEST SIDE SUMMERS, INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, and SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL.

(The author, 1988)

The book will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Art Pants Company publishes Richard Grayson's BOY MEETS BROOKLYN

Art Pants Company has published Richard Grayson's Boy Meets Brooklyn as an e-book available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents. It is also available in a 288-page trade paperback edition for $14.99 at Lulu.

The promo stuff says in part:

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.

But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.

ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”

Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.”   THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”

Boy Meets Brooklyn begins in August 1969 and ends on New Year's Day 1971.

Grayson has already published the next six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second set of six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

Five volumes of THE NINETIES DIARIES published include SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994, and AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996.

Richard Grayson's "BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970" Is #1 Best Seller for Children's 20th-Century American History eBooks at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970: Diary of an 18-Year-Old College Freshman is currently the #1 bestseller at the Amazon Kindle Store in the category of Children's Nonfiction Twentieth Century American History eBooks.

BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970 is also currently #3 Kindle ebook bestseller in the category of Childen's eBooks in U.S. History and Historical Fiction and #11 in the category of Biographies and Memoirs of Educators.

Here is the promo material for the ebook, published by Art Pants Company:

In the spring of 1970, college students across the country protested the widening of the Vietnam War after President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. On May 4, National Guardsmen, sent to Ohio's Kent State University to quell a student demonstration, opened fire and killed four students and wounded others. In the nationwide firestorm of campus protest that followed, colleges and universities were shut down as angry students brought a halt to the spring semester with strikes and takeovers of buildings.

Brooklyn College in New York City was no exception, and his account of the day-by-day events at the school, acclaimed author and diarist Richard Grayson (The Brooklyn Diaries, With Hitler in New York, Lincoln's Doctor's Dog), then an 18-year-old freshman, gives a young student's perspective to this scary, exhilarating time in American history.

Richard Grayson's "SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Springtime in Lauderhill. It is available in a 196-page trade paperback edition for $11.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, WINTER IN BROOKLYN, SPRING IN BROOKLYN, MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, Grayson describes his itinerant life in his thirties during the Reagan era. Following the three previous volumes, SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, WEST SIDE SUMMERS and INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE is this book, SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, recounting two months Grayson spent living in a mostly African-American apartment complex in a fading Fort Lauderdale suburb.

It’s 1986, and Grayson is struggling with his lack of success as a fiction writer after publishing three books, disenchanted with his past jobs teaching college composition and remedial writing, and starting a new career as a teacher trainer in the nascent field of computer education with the first Apple machines ever used in schools.

Meanwhile, he’s taking an assortment of courses at a couple of universities, causing controversy with a legal challenge for age discrimination to a savings and loan company’s discounts for senior citizens, amassing a huge number of credit cards and credit lines, obsessing about the AIDS epidemic and wondering if he is infected, publishing his humorous nonfiction in places like People Magazine, and being interviewed on The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and other media outlets.

Grayson’s diaries are a window into an individual sensibility and a particular moment in time: the spring of 1986.
An excerpt:

Monday, March 31, 1986
9 PM. Today was one of the more satisfying days of my life, probably because I could see myself doing well in a variety of roles. If I’m not quite a Renaissance man, I’m something more than a dilettante.

Up early, I read the paper, walked to the credit union to deposit $700 I’d gotten in cash advances from ATMs, and paid the rent.

Stopping off at the Publix Teller on Broward Boulevard, I went into the supermarket and discovered the news dealer had arrived with a fresh shipment of magazines, including People, which I took from the his piled-high shopping cart before he put it on the racks.

I couldn’t find my story in the table of contents, but I thumbed through and discovered it: “Unless We Bag a Few New Stars, the U.S. Will Face a Tragic Celebrity Shortage” by Richard Grayson and Fred Bernstein.

Illustrate with a full-page photo of paparazzi shooting a bejeweled, glamorously dressed woman with a paper bag over her head, with the Hollywood sign in the distance, the whole article took up four pages, with another photo page devoted to a model pretending to be Barbara Walters interviewing a tree (“If you were a star, what kind of star would you be?”)

I’m very pleased with the piece. In Davie, first Jonathan and then Mom and then Dad read the article, and they all thought it was good; of course, they’re my family.

While in Davie, I got a call from Joyce Brown of the Human Relations Division, reminding me about tomorrow’s hearing.

Also, the People publicity department called to find out if they could give my number to radio stations wanting interviews. Of course I said yes, though Fred is probably taking the good ones for himself, but I hope he’s not going on Live at Five and getting TV exposure I could use. I’m kidding!

Tons of mail, including the AWP Job List, with some creative writing vacancies I’ll apply for; loads of banking stuff, including my CBI credit file, a Virginia Beach Federal money market account checkbook, the PIN number for my Chase money market account, and applications for credit line increases on my Bank One and Chemical cards; and the leader of Americans for Generational Equality told me to “give ‘em hell” on senior discounts.

After xeroxing the article at Jaffe’s and having lunch at the Broadway Diner, I came home to read newspapers and prepare for class.

“It’s the computer man!” said the Sunshine Elementary school secretary as she opened the door for me at 3:30 PM. I showed the teachers the SRI math software today.

It was kind of disorganized because I’d never seen the material before, but I enjoyed myself and I think they learned a lot just by using it and experimenting with it.

One thing I stress is that the computer is dumb compared to a teacher because it makes the teachers feel better knowing how limited the machines are. After a quick bite, I went to my FIU Community College class, where Kitty Hunter, BCC’s Academic Vice President, was our guest.

Like most of the BCC administrators, she surprised me by her intellectual depth. She’s very future-oriented and interested in issues ranging from the role of the community college in relation to business and government to the need to educate people for a world economy and a world culture. Her remarks and the discussion which followed were stimulating.

Can you tell me why today was so satisfying? I felt competent in all my roles as writer, “computer man,” banking maven, social activist, and educator. I feel integrated and whole. Let’s hope tomorrow isn’t a big disaster.

Tuesday, April 1, 1986
11 PM. Not exactly a disaster, but I need time to digest today. Before I left this morning, I got a call from a producer at WXYT radio in Detroit; I’ll do an interview tomorrow at 5:30 PM, which means I’ll have to get out of class and go over to my parents’.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I walked into the Governmental Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale this morning. A black woman ran the hearing, with me in my corduroys, sport shirt and sneakers on one side of the long table and on the other side, five business-suited attorneys and AmeriFirst Vice Presidents. One man was apparently an outside counsel, but a woman V.P., presumably also an attorney, did most of the talking.

I suppose it was rather intimidating, and I’m sure the absurdity of the scene – like something in a movie – will stay with me for a long time.

Of course the situation triggered all these weird childhood feelings, especially when I saw how much trouble the S&L had gone to in its marketing studies and accounts of other banks’ practices.

I couldn’t help feeling I’d caused these important people a lot of trouble and would be punished for it. But since I was in touch with those feelings, I could act and react more calmly.

First, they went over my complaint and each side agreed or disagreed with each charge. Early on after that, after a huddle between the attorneys, they offered me the AmeriFirst 55 plan.

But a condition of my accepting it would be confidentiality; I could not tell anyone about the settlement or I could be sued for breach of contract.

I asked to leave the room to “consult my attorney by phone”; actually, I called Mom. She said that if I accepted the offer, I would be doing something other than what I set to do: namely, to expose and to try to stop age discrimination.

Of course Mom was right, and her remarks confirmed my own judgment. I let them wait for a good while as I went outside and took a walk around the block a couple of times.

Then I came in and rejected their offer, saying I wouldn’t be happy until their discriminatory practice – the AmeriPlus 55 plan – was ended or made available to everyone, regardless of age.

Naturally they didn’t want to do that. The hearing officer took me aside and said that the S&L had offered me total redress of my complaint, and that if I didn’t accept it, she’d probably have to end the case on the argument that since I wouldn’t accept their offer, no hurt was done originally.

Had this been a class action suit, I could have gone further, but she said the Human Relations Division had a narrow scope. After some testimony and questioning about the plan versus other AmeriFirst accounts, the hearing was adjourned.

I expect to hear that my complaint has been dismissed. But in a way I will have gotten what I wanted: the public awareness created by the publicity I got over the senior discount issue.

Having rejected their offer, I was free to go to the press, so I called the Miami Herald and gave them a rundown of what happened. Since I intend to go to New York soon, I don’t really want to come back before another hearing before the Human Rights Board this time.

I guess there’s still a slight chance the case could go on, but it’s over for me, whatever happens. Right now I’m too close to the situation to tell how I really feel.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Indian Summer: Park Slope. It is available in a 207-page trade paperback edition for $11.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, WINTER IN BROOKLYN, SPRING IN BROOKLYN, MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, Grayson describes his itinerant life in his thirties during the Reagan era. Following the two previous volumes, SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS and WEST SIDE SUMMERS is this book, INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, covering two months Grayson spent back in his native Brooklyn after an absence of six years.

In 1985 the historic brownstone neighborhood of Park Slope is still not totally gentrified and Brooklyn is neither fashionable, cutting-edge nor entirely safe.

Grayson recounts the rhythms of his life: his lunches and dinners with fellow writers and others in the arts and media; his frequent trips to Rockaway Beach for visits his beloved grandmother; his often dispiriting remedial writing classes at the City University of New York; his own graduate courses in programming on mainframe computers and graphics on the earliest Apple desktops at Columbia University’s Teachers College; his bizarre juggling of a credit chassis that includes several dozen credit cards and numerous bank accounts; his experiences witnessing brazen subway muggings and spectacular sunrises as seen from the Manhattan Bridge; being in both an earthquake and a hurricane within two weeks; and, as always, his struggles as a writer: here, with three hardcover fiction books published, he wonders if his modest early success has been a mere fluke and considers alternate career paths an uncertain future.

An excerpt:

I slept fabulously, glad to be near Ronna. . .

At 8 AM, the alarm went off, and I started kissing and hugging her; then I cleaned up and got dressed and went off. . .

It was a foggy, dreary morning; after returning to Happy Burger for breakfast, I took the subway up to Columbia and arrived just in time for Computer Graphics.

Howard did more BASIC programming today, and I learned more about POKE-ing things into memory than I had known before. We discussed the principles of graphics and went over other stuff. . .

During our hour break, instead of having lunch, I went downstairs to the computer room to meet Chris – he’s not only such a hunk but very sweet too – and other members of the Programming class. . .

After class, I stayed on, programming till 1:30 PM, and then I went back downstairs to the DEC-20 and worked on the Pascal program for our first project. It needs a lot of refining, but I know I’ll do it before it’s due in two weeks.

Both courses seem under control. I had some lunch and then got on the IRT. At 72nd Street, an amputee on crutches came into the car to collect money. I gave him some coins, and then, as he came to the door to the next car, he burst into laughter.

I soon realized why: crossing his path was another amputee, this one in a wheelchair, also begging. I gave him some loose change, too. At 14th Street, a guy got off the car and waited for a moment, then suddenly stepped back in and grabbed at a woman’s neck; then he quickly ran away as the doors closed.

I’d seen it perfectly from my vantage point, but he was so fast, I couldn’t react. What he’d done, of course, was snatch three gold chains.

The woman, a young West Indian, hardly reacted at first. She said she’d just bought the chains and still had the receipt for them.

“I never usually sit next to the door,” she told me. As we made our way into Brooklyn and the reality of the event hit her, she kept saying “I just can’t believe it.”

Back home, the phone was working again; evidently they fixed it from the outside, for Tim said no repairman had come to the house. I went out for dinner, got my laundry, typed up some letters, did some more programming, and watched "Dallas," which I'd taped.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "WEST SIDE SUMMERS" Now Available as Paperback or eBook on Amazon Kindle

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's West Side Summers. It is available in a 314-page trade paperback edition for $15.99, as well as an Amazon Kindle edition published by http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifArt Pants Company for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, WINTER IN BROOKLYN, SPRING IN BROOKLYN, MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in WEST SIDE SUMMERS, the second volume of THE EIGHTIES DIARIES (following SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS), Grayson describes his summer days living on the Upper West Side from 1984 to 1987. Already a published author, Grayson records his days and nights prowling the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, alone or with fellow writers and other friends, with side trips to his grandmother's beachfront co-op in Rockaway and a stay at the artists' colony that was the estate of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Celebrities like Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer and a not-so-famous Harvey Pekar often cross Grayson's path, and he recreates the scene on the Yuppified Upper West Side and the grittier world of the Lower East Side.

Shakespeare in the Park, Sichuan restaurants, a decidedly seedy Times Square, hip coffee shops, Zabar's and H&H Bagels, literary readings, elderly Jews on the boardwalk, the panic and terror of the AIDS epidemic, homeless beggars, nights with ex-lovers, graduate classes in computers, gay pride parades, the Statue of Liberty centennial, cash advances at ATMs, Wall Street insider trading indictments, giving and getting interviews, soaring ambitions and crushing self-doubts: this is Grayson's world in the exciting long, hot summers of a Manhattan in the middle of the flashy 1980s.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS: 1981-1984" Now Available as Paperback or eBook on Amazon Kindle

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's South Florida Winters: 1981-1984. It is available in a 228-page trade paperback edition for $12.99, as well as an Amazon Kindle edition published by Art Pants Company for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson, author of such acclaimed short story collections as WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC, THE SILICON VALLEY DIET, HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES and AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET, has kept a daily diary for 42 years, since the summer of 1969, when he was an agoraphobic Brooklyn teenager.

In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (Summer in Brooklyn: 1969-1975, Autumn in Brooklyn: 1975, Winter in Brooklyn: 1971-72, Spring in Brooklyn: 1975, and More Summer in Brooklyn: 1976-1979, A Year in Rockaway: 1980), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in South Florida Winters, the first volume of THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, Grayson describes his move, at age 29, from his native New York City to South Florida's sunny and warm winters.

In the years 1981-1984, Grayson publishes several books of short stories (LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG, EATING AT ARBY'S, I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ), runs for the Davie Town Council, becomes a community college professor and a celebrity getting his photo in People, USA Today, and national and local newspapers and magazines, and appearing on dozens of radio and TV shows. SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS contains his entries from the days of the Mariel boatlift, the condo commando and the cocaine cowboy in Miami/Fort Lauderdale during the age of Reagan.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Monday Night in Hell's Kitchen: 2011 PEN Prison Writing Drama Awards Reading at New Dramatists

Tonight we had the privilege of going to New Dramatists for a wonderful reading of the award-winning plays in the 2011 PEN Prison Writing Drama Prizes,

curated by our fellow PEN member and a brilliant writer we've idolized for forty years, Harding Lemay, ever since we read his 1971 memoir -- one of the best -- Inside, Looking Out, and then later in the 1970s when he was the head writer for Another World, our favorite soap opera of all time, in some ways because of the innovative storylines and characters he created. Pete Lemay has been active in the Prison Writing Program and at New Dramatists for a long time.

After he spoke, literary agent Claudia Menza, chair of the PEN Prison Creative Writing Committee, talked briefly about the importance of the program in prisoners' lives. Coming on a day when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling declaring that California's inmates lived in conditions that violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, it made us think about the needs of the incarcerated.

The always-impressive Susan Rosenberg, who as an inmate was a participant of the program, also spoke about its importance. Of her just-published book, An American Radical: A Political Prisoner In My Own Country. Kirkus Reviews said: "Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg’s memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her own life."

The five award-winning plays by prisoners all over the United States were read, in a program expertly directed by Michael Keck, were acted out (sometimes in part) in readings by a talented cast of well-regarded actors we've seen onstage and in films and TV doing good work: Sue Berch, James P. Earley, Frank Galgano, Annie Kozuch, Douglas Taurel, Jeffery V. Thompson and Judith Barcroft, who radiates the same clear-eyed intelligence and beauty now as she did when we were a junior high student in 1965, rushing home to watch her as Leonore Moore on Another World.

We got to hear the final act (of three) of the first place play, The Secret of Sky, an extraordinarily innovative interpretation of the Creation with a thought-provoking intellectual confrontation between a prisoner, a female Monk, and a jailer.
Christopher Myers of Nevada won the Dawson Prize for his verse drama in ancient Greek style, Socrates in LA, in which a group of knowledgeable but naive graduate students (the chorus) summons Sophocles to a contemporary academic setting and gets him to lecture and debate Socrates on the relative merits of philosophy and drama. What was most impressive about all the plays was that they could manage a first-rate narrative arc while dealing with serious issues and ideas.

Getting Around to It, a one-act contemporary family drama, won Honorable Mention and was by Keith Sanders of Texas, a previous first-prize winner.

In memorable performances, the cast did a terrific job with the main characters: a stubborn old man struggling with Parkinson's disease; his well-meaning but overwhelmed adult son; and a woman hired to play chess with and surreptitiously care for the father. There were no stereotypes here.

We enjoyed the vivid performances and language in part three of the trilogy, Midnight Phantom, entitled Lilith Anacrusis or the Vampire, by Loren Ivory Morgan, who won third place. Combining mythological and Biblical stories, it was an imaginative, compelling and sometimes funny fantasy of good and evil.

The last play, the second place winner, was a remarkable screenplay, Healing Bin Laden, now rendered (similar to Kushner's Angels in America) a kind of tour-de-force historical fantasia on international themes.

Its quick-cut, multilayered plot spanned four continents, with characters ranging from female intelligence operatives to a Miami Catholic priest with supposed healing powers to the squabbling hierarchy of Al Qaeda.

At the end of the performances, enthusiastically applauded by a good-sized audience in New Dramatists' upstairs performance space (the building is an old magnificent Gothic revival church we mentioned in a blog post last year),

The novelist Jackson Taylor (The Blue Orchard), the director of the PEN Prison Writing Program, thanked Harding Lemay, Michael Keck, stage manager Brian Otano (who read stage directions), the amazing cast, and the writers in prison who created the works we got to sample tonight and the many more who've been involved in this wonderful program.

If you'd like a worthy cause to donate to -- or leave your trust-fund fortune to -- we can't imagine a better one than the PEN Prison Writing Program. We're grateful indeed to everyone involved in tonight's event and the program and are very proud that they've let us be a member of PEN for nearly thirty years.

It was exciting to finally meet Harding Lemay at the end of the evening and even more exciting to learn that Inside, Looking Out and his other great book, Eight Years in Another World are now available on Kindle.