We talk with Jay Neugeboren, whose new book is "Dickens in Brooklyn: Essays on Family, Writing, & Madness," a collection of essays in which he explores experiences that have been central to his life: caring long-term for a brother with mental illness; finding and connecting with long-lost family members; a posthumous lunch with Oliver Sacks; his years as single parent to his three children; his decision as a General Motors executive trainee to violate company policy and hang out with “hourlies;” and a thwarted kiss at a teenage summer camp where he was a young Jewish man in exile among Jews.
Jay Neugeboren is the author of 25 books, including more than a half-dozen award-winning books of both fiction and nonfiction, and four collections of prize-winning stories. His many awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, and he is the author of two award-winning screenplays. He was professor and writer-in-residence for many years at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and has also taught at Stanford, Columbia, SUNY-Old Westbury, Boston University, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. He is on the faculty of the MFA Writing Program in Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, and he lives in New York City. His archive is housed at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.
