Graduated from UNH where I took writing courses with the late Tom Williams. UNC-G MFA; former editor of The Greensboro Review.
"Whatever he said or didn't say, the story would be told, as if it had to be."
Often it comes down to whoever I just read or am currently reading.Or watching i.e. David Simon and Ed Burns of "The Wire." Aside from Chekhov,always, that is. Other perennials are Frank O'Connor and D.H. Lawrence. And, in no particular order of preference,Turgenev's SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES; William Trevor, Beckett, Nikolai Gogol, Camus, Robert Stone, Shakespeare esp. HAMLET, every year. Chaucer. Simenon's Maigrets. Faulkner:"Spotted Horses"; Joseph McElroy, "Night Soul."
Poets: Mandelstam, Blake, Yeats, Creeley, Alan Dugan, Dickinson, Gary Snyder, Robert Grenier, Christopher Logue, Wyslava Symborska, Czeslaw Milosz...