Homage to Professor Lewis Warsh Credit: John Casquarelli
by Jhon Sanchez
Unlike John Casquarelli, my dear friend and classmate of the MFA program, I don’t like taking pictures very much. I don’t even use my phone camera and rarely take selfies. But I remember when the photos were taken. It was after a reading at the Bowery Poetry Club that our MFA classmates took a picture. I was in the back next to Professor Warsh, who hugged me. I felt his arm across my chest as he tapped three times on my heart.
After failing the bar exam and struggling to find an apartment in New York, I felt Professor Warsh’s confidence that I could write my MFA thesis, that I could pass the bar, that I could write my dreams. Indeed, this was his personal advice to me as well as a practical writing exercise. He said, “Dreams need attention.”
Interview with Luca DiMatteo: Author of Green Haven
INTERVIEW
by Jhon Sanchez
Even though I met Luca two or three years ago, it seems that it has been for a longer time. My friend Justin Sight, the magician, kept talking about Luca’s spiritual search and good sense of humor. Luca, a doctor himself, decided to dedicate his life to writing, and in that sense, his life path is similar to mine.
I want to have a conversation about Luca’s life, motivations, views, and spiritual life, and of course, about his first novel Green Haven, a mystery set in a nursing home.
Thanks to Martha Hughes, Sam Ferri, Nan Fryland, and Emma Komlos-Hrobsky for their editorial comments
Without paying attention, Gonzalo heard what the woman in the passenger seat said, “At least you must have
music in this cab, or don’t you have that either?”
The backseat complaints were something he heard all the time. On a summer night like this one, “A cab without air conditioner?” During winter nights, “No heat here at all?” And the most patient passengers would ask, “Is this a church bench?” as they had keenly observed the backseat’s cushioned red kneeler, wooden cross rails and gothic-carved arms.