He is currently Clinical Professor of Writing in Global Liberal Studies at NYU, where he has taught since 1987.

He helped create Center for Creative Youth, based at Wesleyan University, and has taught writing at CUNY, Wesleyan, and Yale. He was also a freelance writer for Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, New Age Journal, and many other publications. He was writer-in-residence at Medicine Show Theater Ensemble, with whom he wrote Shipping Out, The Mummer’s Play, Ubu Rides Again, and Bound to Rise, which received an Obie. His second novel, Come Away, won the Dzanc Award, and was published by Dzanc Books in 2014. Stephen Policoff is the author of Beautiful Somewhere Else, which won the James Jones Award, and was published by Carroll & Graf. Meanwhile, Paul’s father-in-law, an expert on occult lore, tries to steer Paul toward resolution with Nadia’s ghost.ĭriven by Paul’s new circle of odd and free spirited iconoclasts, Dangerous Blues asks the question: when do you let go, and what are you willing to let go of? Paul’s cousin Hank, a disreputable art dealer, becomes obsessed with this object. Is he imagining it, or is she real? Tara, who grew up in the inscrutable New England cult known as the Dream People, is haunted, too, hounded by her very real brothers to return to the family, and to give back the magical object-a shamanic Tibetan vessel-which they claim she stole from them. Through that connection, Paul meets Irina’s mother, Tara White, a blues singer, and perhaps just the spark Paul has been missing.īut Paul begins to fear that he is being haunted by Nadia, who appears to him in fleeting images. Spring quickly takes to her new Manhattan middle school life, including making a new friend, Irina. They came to escape the sorrow of their empty house in upstate New York after Nadia, Paul’s wife and Spring’s mother, dies. Paul Brickner and his 12-year-old daughter Spring are subletting an apartment in New York City.

ĭangerous Blues explores a dark yet comic storm of family relationships laced with a buzz of the supernatural, where the fleeting light of the present must constantly contend with the shadows of the past. You may then see a window reading 'waiting for host to start webinar,' but sit tight-you will be admitted as soon as we begin broadcasting live! You will be able to submit questions using the Q&A feature.Įnjoying At Home with Literati? Donate $5 to sustain our programming here. You will be prompted to enter a first name and email upon joining. Note: we are now hosting on Zoom webinars. He will be joined in conversation by Susan Choi.Ĭlick here to join the webinar event on 11/3. We're pleased to welcome Stephen Policoff to our At Home with Literati Series in support of Dangerous Blues.

American Woman by Susan Choi