"Sin Alley" in Midway Journal

I have a short story, "Sin Alley," up in the current issue of Midway Journal. The subject matter is hinted at in the photograph above, which happens to have been taken during my most recent trip to Costa Rica, where "Sin Alley" takes place.

Holding the sign above is the curator Jacob Karpio, who owns the eponymous gallery in San José, Costa Rica. My friend Karina Salguero is a magazine editor in San José. She invited me to come along to Jacob's gallery for a press release breakfast party for the show he curated called LOVE. Back when I lived in Costa Rica as a volunteer teacher 15 years ago, I would have died to have found an arts community like the one Karina is now a part of. During his welcome, Jacob said that he felt Costa Rica's time was here as a nation celebrated not just for its natural beauty, but for its arts and urban culture. Things have changed drastically and quickly in the arts community in San José in recent years. It's flourishing thanks to folks like Jacob.

In my writing about Costa Rica and the works by Costa Rican authors I've chosen for translation (mostly fiction by Carmen Naranjo), I've always tried to take on issues that had nothing to do with the environment, its wildlife, the beaches. "Sin Alley" is gritty and urban. And - you've been warned! - it's rated R.

I miss Costa Rica...

Night Swim

I went on vacation with two other artists from the Colony.

The pool was very nice.

(PS: Click on the image to see how different the color is in the original image. Can someone tell me why the color/contrast sucks so bad on photos uploaded to Blogger? Is there some trick to this that I'm not getting?)

Coke Is It

I've been writing a lot about Coca-cola lately. Specifically my experience drinking too much Coca-cola in Bolivia. When you're writing about Coke, you really start to notice how very omni-present that white wave is. I liked the juxtaposition of the street-level mural of "Costa Rican life" and this huge tower of a Coke...kinda sums up some of the thoughts on cultural imperialism and the seductive powers of the hobble-skirt bottle...

Double Dosing

As proclaimed in my bio over there on the right, My identity is that of a writer. Photography is a secondary fun-generator. (Not that it's always fun. Sometimes, when the person I'm taking a portrait of turns out blurry while the background is annoyingly sharp, I lose my cool a little bit. But even one killer picture in a shoot gives a thrill.)

However, when I really buckle down and get writing, as I have here at the Colony, I don't feel as much of an urge to take pictures. For a year, maybe two years, it was the other way around. But writing has always nagged me in a way that photography doesn't. (Thus the career choice.) So back I go.



The creative process of the two arts is immensely different for me. One involves thinking thinking thinking, and the other involves shutting off the verbal part of the brain and seeing. But once I'm knee-deep in a story, the words in my brain form and bump around no matter what I'm doing or where I am. So for the moment, this photography blog might be more about writing and the photographs might be a little raw. Such things happen when you try to double dose.

I forgot to install Photoshop on my new hard drive (the old one crashed and burned) before I left anyway.

Costa Rica: Birds of Paradise

I'm spending the month at the Julia and David White Artists' Colony in Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica. I have a little writing studio with a 10-foot window that looks out over the rain forest. It's not one of those showoffy Costa Rican rain forests - no monkeys or sloths here - but there are some rather cool things growing outside my door.