I’ve been finding all sorts of documents and random files as I try to rebuild my own files after a series of  technical mishaps that may or may not have had anything to do with having twins a month before taking over directorship of Writers Read, publishing my first novel, and dealing with the ongoing stress of a toxic literary community.

Expressway, contrary to what people say, was conceived of and written in Brooklyn, New York, and the city of Philadelphia. It was written out of a crushing anxiety about climate change and the disconnect of even the most educated and technically “awakened” of us. It is a post 9/11 book. It is also an attempt to link the anxieties that I lived with daily while commuting and teaching at Rutgers & Haverford to the anxieties of our literary foremothers and fathers–hence the Wordsworths, the Blake, the Whitman. It is a book already mourning the death of the world. It is a book still holding out for a happy ending, though that seems criminal to even think at this point. I still believe we can make things work. We can keep climate change from spiralling out of control…

But not if we’re all sleep walking, tripping over our own dripping consciousnesses as we stare into our iPhones. Or, this trailer, in some small way has a direct connection to the larger literary upheavals we are experiencing. We need more of them. Bien sur. Thanks to Evan Munday for his work. It’s important to reclaim one’s narrative. I’m reclaiming mine.