Neal Thompson's Blog: Blood & Whiskey, page 6
January 1, 2019
~~AUTHOR EVENTS~~
Upcoming and previous events, interviews, etc:
Orcas Island Lit Fest, April 2020 - CANCELLED
Yaddo Variations, NYC (May 16, 2019) - with Dani Shapiro (Inheritance) and Jonathan Santlover (The Widower's Notebook)
Orcas Island LitFest (April 6, 2019), “The Ties That Bind: Memoirists on Writing About Family,” with Nicole Chung, Cere Demuth, and Terese Marie Mailhot.
AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs), Portland OR (March 29, 2019) - “Immortalizing Our Beloveds,” with Claire Dederer, Cin...
AUTHOR EVENTS
Upcoming and previous events, interviews, etc:
Yaddo Variations, NYC (May 16, 2019) - with Dani Shapiro (Inheritance) and Jonathan Santlover (The Widower's Notebook)
Orcas Island LitFest (April 6, 2019), “The Ties That Bind: Memoirists on Writing About Family,” with Nicole Chung, Cere Demuth, and Terese Marie Mailhot.
AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs), Portland OR (March 29, 2019) - “Immortalizing Our Beloveds,” with Claire Dederer, Cinelle Barnes, Nicole Chung, Adrienne Brodeur...
August 2, 2018
AUTHOR EVENTS
Upcoming and previous events for KICKFLIP BOYS:
Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Portland OR (March 28, 2019) - details to cometbd, Seattle (Sept 28, 2018) - with Jonathan Santlover ( The Widower's Notebook ) Brooklyn Book Festival, NYC (Sept 16, 2018) - I'll be on a panel, discussing fatherhood, with Gregory Pardlo ( Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America ) and actor Omar Epps ( From Fatherless to Fatherhood )Housing Works, NYC (Sept 10, 2018) - with Jonathan Santlover...July 15, 2018
Oprah.com: How to Raise a Carefree Kid, Even If You’re Terrified
I was in our backyard, flipping burgers, Dick Dale twanging through kitchen windows, when every parent’s nightmare arrived, all crunching metal and screeching tires. A red ball had rolled into the street. Sean, age 6, the older of my two boys, who’d been playing out front with his brother and three friends, volunteered to fetch it.
He got midway across the street and picked up the ball as a Toyota Corolla sped toward him, doing 30 (the cops later estimated) in a 15-mile-an-hour “Slow Children Pla...
June 16, 2018
New York Post: All the mistakes I made raising two rebellious boys
(This originally appeared June 16, 2018, in the New York Post)
I hate Father’s Day. I don’t mind calling my father and wishing him a good one. But as a dad to two rebellious boys (just like my old man), the annual faux holiday and funny cards from my wife stir uneasy memories of failure, chaos and remorse, instead of nostalgia and pride.
Not that I don’t love and admire my kids like crazy. I just never learned to control them. Couldn’t force them to wear helmets when they began...
June 15, 2018
New York Times: A ‘Just Say No’ Dad’s Struggle in the Land of ‘Just Say Yes’
By Neal Thompson
(This originally appeared June 15, 2018 in the New York Times)
My older son was in eighth grade when he got home from a day of skateboarding, glassy-eyed and dopey, and fell asleep on the couch. For two hours. My wife and I sniffed around him as he snored, and barked at the same time: “Pot?!”
It was the end of our family’s innocence and the start of a yearslong battle against substances.
Our job as parents got even harder when the law turned against us. In 2012, with our boys o...
June 14, 2018
Washington Post: This Father’s Day, I’m tossing all the advice I’ve gotten from guilt-inducing parenting books
By Neal Thompson
(originally appeared June 14, 2018 in the Washington Post "On Parenting" column)
With another Father’s Day approaching, I’m reminded of all the scolding, guilt-inducing, finger-wagging advice I’ve gotten across two decades of reading parenting books.
As the father of two boys, I’ve collected, read and discarded dozens of books, primarily those focused on three topics: boys, teens and drugs.
My kids were born in the late ’90s, before the Internet had all the answers. My wife and I...
June 7, 2018
Poets & Writers: "Neal Thompson Recommends..."
(Originally appeared at https://www.pw.org/writers_recommend/...)
6.7.18
“When I feel stuck or stupid, afraid or inferior, to shake loose some words I turn to three things: 1. Paul Westerberg—solo, or with The Replacements. 2. Invisibility—more on that later. 3. Bourbon—two fingers, two cubes. I don’t admit to number three without some shame. It’s not a trait or a crutch I’m necessarily proud of, which is something I explore in my new book, Kickflip Boys. Over the ye...
May 29, 2018
Slice Magazine: Q&A with Author Cheston Knapp
May 29, 2018
An excerpt from Neal Thompson’s conversation with Cheston Knapp about borders, skateboarding, fatherhood, and much more (full piece appears in SLICE Issue 22: Borders, June 2018).
Neal’s memoir Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Rebellion, and the Chaos of Fatherhood is now available, hot off the press. Michael Chabon praises, “Thompson captures the ache, fizz, yearning and frustration of being the father of adolescent boys.” Ch...
Slice Magazine: My Q&A with Author Cheston Knapp
May 29, 2018
An excerpt from Neal Thompson’s conversation with Cheston Knapp about borders, skateboarding, fatherhood, and much more (full piece appears in SLICE Issue 22: Borders, June 2018).
Neal’s memoir Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Rebellion, and the Chaos of Fatherhood is now available, hot off the press. Michael Chabon praises, “Thompson captures the ache, fizz, yearning and frustration of being the father of adolescent boys.”...
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