Pic of the Day

Eleven Years Later

Eleven years ago this past Wednesday, I packed up my life in Alabama and moved to Vermont. I had no way of knowing just how much my life would change over the next eleven years. I knew I was beginning a new chapter, but I certainly couldn’t have imagined everything that chapter would contain.

I still remember how Vermont felt when I first arrived. The crisp autumn air, the mountains, the beautiful scenery, and the sense of possibility were almost intoxicating. After spending most of my life in Alabama, where I often felt constrained by other people’s expectations of who I should be, Vermont offered something I hadn’t fully realized I was missing: the freedom to simply be myself.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could breathe.

I haven’t stopped loving Alabama. It will always be part of who I am. My Southern accent certainly hasn’t gone anywhere, and neither have my memories of growing up there. I still love Southern food, Southern hospitality, and many of the traditions that shaped my childhood. In fact, that Southern hospitality I was raised with has become an essential part of how I approach my professional life. I’ve developed a reputation for being welcoming, helpful, and willing to go the extra mile for visitors, students, and colleagues. Making people feel welcome and comfortable comes naturally to me because it’s simply how I was raised. It’s something I’m proud to have carried from Alabama to Vermont.

The two states may seem worlds apart politically and culturally, but they share more than people might think. Both have strong rural traditions, a connection to the land, and communities where people look out for one another. The difference, at least in my experience, has been the freedom I’ve found here to live my life without constantly worrying about whether I’m meeting someone else’s expectations.

Of course, moving to Vermont didn’t magically make everything better. In fact, some of the most difficult years of my life came after I moved here.

Not long after arriving, I lost one of my closest friends. His death devastated me, and the grief sent me into a depression that lasted for years. I had moved to Vermont hoping for a fresh start, only to find myself struggling just to get through each day. There were times when I wondered whether I would ever feel like myself again.

Therapy, unfortunately, didn’t help me the way I had hoped. If anything, it sometimes seemed to make matters worse. What did help was my friendship with Susan. She listened when I needed to talk, offered encouragement when I couldn’t find any for myself, and showed me a kindness and patience that I will never forget. I don’t know what I would have done without her during those years.

Depression also took a tremendous toll on my physical health. I gained a considerable amount of weight. Then came the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.

I still remember crying when my doctor called to tell me. I was devastated. Diabetes was something I had feared, and hearing that I had developed it felt like one more thing going wrong in a life that already seemed to have more than its share of difficulties.

Looking back, though, that diagnosis became a turning point.

I was fortunate to find a wonderful primary care doctor shortly after moving to Vermont, and he has been with me ever since. He has encouraged me, worked with me through different treatments, and never made me feel as though my health problems defined who I was. With his help, my diabetes gradually came under control. Eventually, I was able to manage it through diet, and my weight began to come down.

The changes didn’t happen overnight. There were setbacks, frustrations, and times when progress seemed painfully slow. Along the way, I was also diagnosed with sleep apnea and began sleeping with a CPAP machine. My migraines, which had sometimes left me in nearly constant and debilitating pain, required their own long journey of finding treatments that worked.

Today, my life looks remarkably different.

I’ve lost a significant amount of weight and gone through more clothing sizes than I care to count. Sometimes I look in the mirror and still have trouble recognizing the person looking back at me. I can wear clothes now that I never would have imagined fitting into a few years ago.

But the most important changes aren’t the ones I can see in the mirror.

My diabetes is well controlled. I no longer need my CPAP. My migraines haven’t disappeared, and I still have some truly miserable ones, but they are no longer the nearly constant presence they once were. I have more energy, I feel better physically, and I can do things that would have been much more difficult just a few years ago.

Not every health problem has improved. The years of excess weight took a serious toll on my liver, and I was eventually diagnosed with cirrhosis. That’s something I’ll have to live with and carefully monitor for the rest of my life. My hope is that, with continued care, the disease will progress slowly enough that a liver transplant will remain a distant possibility rather than an immediate concern.

I’ve learned that improving your health doesn’t necessarily mean undoing every bit of damage that’s already been done. Sometimes it means doing everything you can to make the years ahead better than the ones behind you.

And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

Yet, when I think about how much my life has changed since moving to Vermont, my health is only part of the story.

One of the greatest surprises has been my career. When I moved here, I never dreamed that I would eventually have what I consider my dream job. I had always loved history, teaching, and museums, but I never expected to find a position that would allow me to combine all three.

My work has given me opportunities I couldn’t have imagined eleven years ago. I’ve worked with fascinating historical objects, helped preserve people’s stories, developed exhibitions and educational programs, and introduced countless students and visitors to history in ways that go far beyond what they might find in a textbook.

I’ve also had the opportunity to teach, something that has always been close to my heart. There is a special satisfaction in watching students make connections between the past and the present, especially when an object helps them understand something that previously seemed distant or abstract.

Looking back, I realize that my Southern upbringing and my love of history have come together in ways I never anticipated. The hospitality I learned growing up in Alabama has become just as valuable to my work as the historical knowledge I acquired through years of education and teaching. Helping people feel welcome to explore, ask questions, and discover something new is one of the most important things I contribute professionally.

Over the years, my responsibilities have grown, and I’ve found myself taking on new challenges that have pushed me professionally and personally. My current role is one I could never have imagined holding when I first arrived in Vermont. There are days when work is exhausting, frustrating, and overwhelming, but I still consider myself incredibly fortunate to do what I do.

How many people get to say they found a job they never knew they wanted, only to discover it was exactly where they belonged?

I’ve changed in other ways, too. I’ve become more confident, more willing to speak up for myself, and more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve learned that I can be a Southern gentleman, a gay man, a Christian, a historian, and a Vermonter without any of those identities having to cancel out the others. They are all parts of who I am.

My faith has changed over these eleven years as well. Grief challenged it in ways I never expected, and there were times when I questioned things I had believed for most of my life. Yet those struggles also helped me develop a deeper understanding of faith, one rooted less in rules and expectations and more in love, compassion, and acceptance.

I’ve also continued writing this blog, sharing my thoughts, memories, frustrations, hopes, and occasional embarrassments with all of you. In many ways, writing has helped me understand my own journey. Sometimes I don’t realize how much I’ve changed until I look back at something I wrote years ago.

And, of course, I can’t talk about my life in Vermont without mentioning Isabella. That little black cat came into my life in 2016 and has been my constant companion ever since. She has brought me an enormous amount of comfort, affection, and amusement, even if she does occasionally seem to believe that my sole purpose in life is to serve her every whim. She’s been with me through some of my darkest days, and I can’t imagine my life without her.

Not everything about these eleven years has been serious, though.

I still laugh when I remember those first days in Vermont, when I was unpacking boxes and sleeping on an air mattress because my bed hadn’t arrived yet. Apparently, my curiosity about the local gay population was stronger than my desire to finish unpacking, because I opened Grindr to see who was around.

My bed hadn’t arrived, but a man did.

We hooked up, and the amusing thing is that I still see him occasionally, sometimes by chance and sometimes by design. I suppose that’s one way to make yourself feel welcome in a new state. 😂

My romantic life hasn’t exactly turned out the way I hoped it might. I still haven’t found that special someone with whom to share my life. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sometimes make me sad. But I haven’t given up hope. Eleven years ago, I couldn’t have imagined much of the life I have today, so who’s to say what might happen tomorrow?

I’ve made wonderful friends here, lost some friendships to time and distance, and learned that relationships don’t always remain what we expect them to be. I’ve experienced kindness, disappointment, laughter, loneliness, and moments of unexpected happiness. In other words, I’ve lived.

When I think about the man who arrived in Vermont eleven years ago, I wish I could tell him a few things. I’d tell him that the years ahead wouldn’t always be easy. That he would experience heartbreak and grief, struggle with his health, and sometimes wonder whether he’d made the right decisions.

But I’d also tell him that he would find a career he loved, build a life of his own, discover strengths he didn’t know he possessed, and gradually become more comfortable with the person he had always been.

Most importantly, I’d tell him that he would find a place where he belonged.

Vermont isn’t perfect. No place is. There are things I miss about Alabama, and there are certainly things about Vermont that can drive me crazy. Eleven winters have done little to convince me that bitter cold is one of life’s great pleasures. But somewhere along the way, Vermont stopped being the place I had moved to and became home.

Perhaps that’s the biggest change of all.

Eleven years ago, I came here hoping for a better life. I didn’t find a life without hardship, disappointment, or loss. What I found was the opportunity to build a life that felt more genuinely my own.

And as I look toward the years ahead, I realize that I’m not finished changing, growing, or discovering what life has in store for me.

For the first time in a long time, that thought fills me with more hope than fear.

Pic of the Day

Sweet Dreams…

One of my first conscious thoughts when I woke up this morning was:

🎶 … dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree? 🎶

Yes, this is another recounting of one of my dreams. This is the second morning in a row that I’ve awakened in the middle of a lovely dream. Y’all are probably getting tired of me talking about dreams, but it’s only recently that I’ve started remembering them, and some are just too good not to share.

I won’t really talk about the dream I woke up from yesterday because it was based on a real memory, and honestly, it never got to anything particularly exciting. This morning’s dream, however, was a little more interesting.

It began with someone asking me a question I often get when people find out I’m originally from Alabama: “What do you think of Vermont winters?” It’s always some variation of that question. My answer is usually something along the lines of “I love them” or “I don’t mind them,” followed by “I hate the heat in the South.”

In the dream, someone either asked me about skiing, or I volunteered that I wished I enjoyed skiing but had never learned how. I mentioned that I’d once tried to learn to water ski but had never been successful.

That’s when things got interesting.

The dream began with an actual childhood memory that gradually transformed into something entirely different.

When I was growing up, my family had a camp on the Alabama River. We’d take our camper down there and spend our days fishing, swimming, and generally enjoying ourselves. It was a wonderful place to spend a summer weekend.

When I was a teenager, I tried to learn to water ski. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the upper-body strength to pull myself up out of the water. I remember getting into position behind the boat, holding onto the rope, and waiting for Daddy to take off. When he did, my skis went one way, and I went another. To make matters worse, I had trouble letting go of the rope and ended up being dragged underwater. Daddy stopped the boat, and I finally surfaced.

That’s where the actual memory ends and the dream takes over.

Apparently, in the dream, I was having some difficulty after surfacing, and my older brother’s friend jumped into the water and helped pull me back into the boat. Now, I don’t actually have an older brother, so that’s your first indication that my sleeping mind had decided to rewrite history.

And what a rewrite it was!

My imaginary brother’s friend was gorgeous, especially to a gay teenager who was still trying to come to terms with his feelings for other guys. Needless to say, I developed an immediate case of hero worship. I spent the rest of our time at the river getting to know him and following him around like a lovesick puppy.

When we returned home, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Then, one day, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from him! He wanted to know how I was doing, how the beginning of the school year was going, and all sorts of other ordinary things that suddenly seemed extraordinary because he was the one asking.

He and my brother were in college, which would have made him about nineteen, although in the dream he seemed only a couple of years older than I was.

I wrote back, and before long, we became pen pals. Remember, when I was a teenager, there was no texting, email, or instant messaging. If you wanted to communicate with someone who lived somewhere else, you wrote a letter, put a stamp on it, and waited for the mailman. There was something wonderful about getting a letter from someone special, even if waiting for the next one could seem like an eternity.

The following summer, we all returned to our camp on the river, and my brother brought his friend along. This time, he seemed to spend more time with me than with my brother. At night, he slept on the top bunk while I slept on the bottom, and my brother slept on the couch that pulled out into a bed.

After that summer, the letters continued, but now he occasionally called me on the telephone, too. I can only imagine how excited my teenage self must have been every time the phone rang and it was him.

Another summer passed, and once again, my brother brought his friend to the river.

One afternoon, while Daddy and my brother were fishing, he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Of course I did!

We followed one of the animal trails, probably a cow path, that wound through the woods along the river. We walked deeper into the trees, laughing and joking as we went. At some point, we stopped, and I found myself looking into his eyes. By then, I’d grown enough that we were about the same height.

And before I could think better of it, I kissed him.

It was just a quick kiss on the lips, but the moment I realized what I’d done, I jerked away and immediately began apologizing. I was terrified. I’d ruined everything! This wonderful friendship, which had come to mean so much to me, was surely over. I was probably on the verge of tears.

But instead of pulling away, he reached for me, drew me close, and kissed me back.

What had begun as a brief, impulsive kiss became something altogether more wonderful.

And then Isabella woke me up because it was time for her breakfast.

I got out of bed, fed her, and crawled back under the covers. As I lay there thinking about the dream, I drifted back to sleep.

And would you believe it? The dream picked up right where it had left off!

We were still standing in the woods, kissing. His strong, muscular body was pressed against my scrawny, awkward teenage frame, and for the first time, I knew that the feelings I’d been carrying around for so long were returned. We could feel each other’s erections through our shorts. It was the sort of moment a young gay boy could only dream about, especially growing up in Alabama when I did.

Then the dream jumped ahead another year.

It was summer again, and I was eighteen, preparing to begin college in the fall. By this point, our relationship had blossomed into a full-fledged romance. Whenever we managed to get a moment alone, we couldn’t seem to keep our hands off each other.

One afternoon, we took another walk through the woods, following the river farther than we’d ever gone before. Eventually, we reached the end of a narrow strip of land, something like a little peninsula, separating the main river from a quiet lagoon. The water there was deep enough for swimming but sheltered from the stronger current of the river.

He began taking off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re going skinny-dipping,” he replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Well, who was I to disagree?

We undressed and slipped into the water. Unlike the main river, where the water could be surprisingly cool, the water in this little lagoon was wonderfully warm. We swam together for a while, enjoying the privacy of our secluded little paradise.

Then he pulled me close and kissed me.

There we were, naked in the warm waters of the Alabama River, our bodies pressed together, with nothing between us and no one around to interrupt us. The kiss deepened, there was nothing between our erection this time, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that neither of us was particularly interested in swimming anymore.

And just as the dream was getting even better…

My alarm went off.

I opened my eyes, realized it was time to get up and write my blog post, and immediately thought:

🎶 … dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree? 🎶

Nearly Halfway There

Nearly halfway there. I’ll be glad when I can finally call this workweek finished. There’s nothing particularly bad about this week; it’s just been busy and tiring, and I’m already looking forward to the weekend.

I really did not want to get out of bed this morning, and thankfully, Isabella let me sleep in a little later than usual. Eventually, though, I had to drag myself out of bed and get the day started.

It’s mornings like this when standing in front of the coffee maker feels like an exercise in patience. You’re barely awake, staring at it and wondering how something that normally takes less than a minute can possibly take this long. Surely, coffee should understand that some mornings are emergencies and brew accordingly.

Eventually, though, it finishes, and I have that glorious first cup of coffee in my hand. Suddenly, getting through the rest of the morning seems at least a little more possible.

Now I just need the rest of the workweek to hurry along as quickly as I wish the coffee maker would.

Pic of the Day

Nine Bluegills

Nine Bluegills 

By Stuart Dybek 

Gutted, scaled, rinsed with the water they swam in,
lie on my uncle’s dock from which they were caught.
Loon Lake is opaque with sunset, but in the dock’s shadow
crawdads on a blue sand bottom gather for a feast.

Tonight, fish in frothing butter will brown in cast iron pans,
but now is the hour of panfish striking a mayfly hatch
as plash by echoing plash, the lake hidden by willows
and pines becomes a reflection from which the moon

rises, “born like us to kiss the water,” my cousin Vera says.
Home from frosh year at Oberlin, summoned by loons
for a night swim, she stands robed in a white towel, her wand,

a Hamm’s, foams in the glow of the kerosene lantern brought
to see my catch and to guide her back to the dock in the dark.
I’m fourteen, on my knees cleaning bluegills.

About the Poem

Every once in a while, I come across a poem that transports me almost instantly to another place and another time. Stuart Dybek’s “Nine Bluegills” did that for me.

It was the bluegills that first caught my attention, but then I reached the line about “panfish striking a mayfly hatch,” and suddenly I was no longer simply reading a poem. I was remembering the Alabama River.

Growing up, I always loved fishing for bream. Bluegill are one kind of what we Southerners generally call bream, and some of my fondest fishing memories are of catching them at our place on the Alabama River. When the mayflies were out, we would catch them and use them for bait, and the bream would bite one after another. There was something exciting about dropping your line into the water and knowing there was a pretty good chance that another fish would soon be tugging at it.

I also loved throwing a cast net for shad. There was a particular satisfaction in getting the net to open just right before it hit the water and then pulling it back in to see what you had caught. We never ate the shad. They were far too small and were generally used for bait.

There was something else about throwing that net that made it special to me. I was not the manliest of sons. I was Daddy’s little sissy son who would often rather have been reading a book than doing many of the things boys were expected to enjoy, and I know there were times when that embarrassed him. But there was one thing I could do that made Daddy proud: I could cast that net.

Throwing a cast net properly takes just the right technique. You have to know how to hold it, how to turn your body, and exactly when to release it so that the net opens into a near-perfect circle before it lands on the water. You also have to learn to watch the river. There was a particular ripple on the surface that told you a school of shad was moving underneath, and you had to recognize it and get the net where it needed to be at just the right moment.

I could do it perfectly.

Daddy couldn’t.

And he loved to show me off doing it.

Looking back, I think that is part of why the memory means so much to me. There were plenty of ways in which I wasn’t the kind of son Daddy might have imagined having, but standing there beside the Alabama River with that cast net in my hands, none of that mattered. This was something I was good at—better at than he was, in fact, and better than anyone else we knew—and he was proud of me. For a boy who knew that some parts of who he was could embarrass his father, those moments of seeing Daddy proud of me mattered more than I probably understood at the time.

Not all of my fishing memories are from the river, though. Sometimes Daddy and Granddaddy would go to a neighbor’s catfish pond. They were there for the catfish. I was usually much happier fishing for bream.

As it turned out, the owner of the pond was perfectly happy for me to do just that. Bream can become a nuisance in a catfish pond because they compete with the catfish for food and reproduce so readily. So while Daddy and Granddaddy concentrated on catching the fish they wanted, I could happily spend my time catching the fish the pond owner wanted taken out. Everybody won—except, I suppose, the bream.

Dybek even managed to bring back another fishing memory with his crawdads gathering beneath the dock. We usually called them crawfish rather than crawdads, and I remember them for a slightly different reason.

Occasionally, we would fish in a creek near our house. One of the most annoying things that could happen was to pull in your line thinking you had caught something only to discover a crawfish on the hook. Getting one of those suckers off could be an adventure because those claws were ready to pinch whatever fingers came close enough.

Worse than a crawfish was a turtle.

A turtle on your hook meant figuring out how to get the hook out without getting bitten, and if it happened to be a snapping turtle, you had to be especially careful. Snapping turtles have extraordinarily powerful jaws, and I grew up hearing the old folklore that if one ever bit you, it wouldn’t let go until it thundered. I’m fairly certain none of us wanted to test the accuracy of that particular bit of country wisdom.

We rarely ate the bream we caught. They have so many little bones that eating them can be more trouble than they are worth. Daddy usually cut them up and used them for bait. Granddaddy was the exception. He loved fried bream. He also liked small catfish fried whole, with their tails and fins still attached. Some of you may find the thought of that a little squeamish, but that was simply part of fishing and fish fries when I was growing up.

In fact, fishing was once important enough to me that when I was in high school and we were assigned an essay on the best lifelong sport, I chose fishing. I argued that unlike many sports, fishing was something a person could enjoy throughout life.

As it turns out, I don’t fish anymore. I haven’t in many years. In one sense, perhaps that makes my high-school argument a little less convincing. In another sense, though, maybe I was more right than I realized. Fishing has remained with me. I may no longer sit on the bank or in a boat waiting for a cork to disappear beneath the water, but those memories have lasted a lifetime.

And when I think about fishing, I inevitably think about fish fries.

Fish fries were family affairs. Daddy or Grandmama usually manned the fryer, and both of them were particular about how things were done. There would be a brown paper bag containing cornmeal. The fish went into the bag, the bag got shaken until the fish were thoroughly coated, and then into the hot oil they went. When they were done, they were put into another paper bag to drain.

Then there were more brown paper bags—one for the French fries and another for the hushpuppies.

Grandmama was especially particular about her hushpuppies. They had to be made just the right way. There was a proper way to mix them, a proper consistency, and a proper way to fry them. I could go into the details, but that is probably a story for another day. Suffice it to say that Grandmama knew exactly how she wanted them, and you didn’t improve upon Grandmama’s cooking by suggesting she do something differently.

I made that mistake once when I made cornbread for her without putting eggs in it. Mama didn’t use eggs in her cornbread, so that was the way I had learned to make it. Grandmama, however, did use eggs, and you did not mess with Grandmama’s way of cooking. I learned my lesson. She taught me nearly all of my basic cooking skills, and if Grandmama said there was a right way to make something, then as far as she was concerned, that was the way you made it.

Mama usually made the coleslaw. Everybody loved her coleslaw because she put tomatoes in it. My sister and I, however, hated tomatoes, so Mama always made a separate batch without tomatoes just for us.

And, of course, there was dessert.

There might be pound cake, caramel cake, or coconut cake. Sometimes there was Grandmama’s chocolate pie, another recipe about which she had very definite ideas. And this was the South, so there was almost always some sort of congealed salad somewhere on the table. Every once in a while, though, we got an extra-special treat: Grandmama would get out the ice cream maker and make homemade ice cream.

You simply cannot buy ice cream quite like homemade ice cream. The closest I have ever found is Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Light. Oddly enough, I think the regular Homemade Vanilla is too sweet, but the light version is just about right. The consistency isn’t the same as what came out of Grandmama’s ice cream maker, but the taste comes remarkably close.

All of those memories came flooding back because of fourteen lines about nine bluegills.

That’s one of the things I love most about poetry. A poem doesn’t have to tell our story to remind us of it. Dybek’s Loon Lake is not my Alabama River. His uncle’s dock isn’t the place where I caught bream with mayflies. His cast-iron pans aren’t Daddy’s or Grandmama’s fryer. His crawdads aren’t the crawfish that irritated me when I found one at the end of my line. Yet something in those details reaches across all those differences.

Dybek ends the poem with himself at fourteen, kneeling on the dock and cleaning his bluegills. It’s such an ordinary moment. There is no grand revelation and no dramatic conclusion. A boy caught some fish, and now he is cleaning them.

But ordinary moments don’t always remain ordinary.

We rarely recognize the moments that will become precious memories while we’re living them. Nobody announces that this particular summer evening, this particular fishing trip, this particular fish fry, this particular time standing beside your father or grandfather or grandmother is something you will remember decades later. At the time, it’s simply life.

Then one day you read a poem about bluegills and mayflies and crawdads, and suddenly it’s all there again: the Alabama River, the neighbor’s catfish pond, the creek near home, the fishing, the cast net opening perfectly over the water, Daddy watching with pride, the paper bags, the cornmeal, the hot grease, the hushpuppies, Mama’s coleslaw, Grandmama’s desserts, homemade ice cream, and the people who made those ordinary days special.

I don’t fish anymore.

But I suppose I still carry fishing with me.

“Nine Bluegills” is a poem built from a remembered moment: a fourteen-year-old speaker cleaning the day’s catch on his uncle’s dock while evening settles over Loon Lake. Around that simple activity, Dybek creates an entire summer world—the crawdads beneath the dock, the mayfly hatch, the moon reflected on the lake, loons calling in the darkness, his cousin Vera preparing for a night swim, and the promise that the freshly caught fish will soon become dinner.

What makes the poem particularly effective is its attention to physical detail. Dybek doesn’t tell us that this is a memory worth preserving. Instead, he preserves it by showing us exactly what was there. The result is something larger than a fishing poem. It becomes a poem about youth, family, place, and those seemingly insignificant moments that memory somehow decides to keep.

That quality is characteristic of Dybek’s writing. Memory and place are recurring elements in both his poetry and fiction. Perhaps that is why “Nine Bluegills” affected me as strongly as it did. Dybek gives us one remembered summer evening, and in doing so, he invites us into memories of our own.

About the Poet

Stuart Dybek was born in Chicago in 1942 and grew up on the city’s South Side. He attended Loyola University Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is both a poet and an acclaimed writer of short fiction. His poetry collections include Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink, while his fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed with Magellan, Ecstatic Cahoots, and Paper Lantern.

Memory, place, family, and the details of everyday life recur throughout Dybek’s work. Although much of his writing is rooted in the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago where he grew up, his combination of precise observation and memory often allows very specific places and experiences to take on a more universal quality.

Dybek has received numerous honors for his writing, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lannan Literary Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.