Behind the Scenes

I love zines. For those who don't know, zines are self-published little booklets. The term "zine" is short for "fanzine" because many of the early zines were homemade magazines created by science fiction fans. Zines are scrappy little things. They're as varied as their creators, containing anything from comics to recipes to manifestos. They're usually low-tech, often hand-written or -drawn on printer paper, then photocopied and folded. And they're often free or low-cost and

What do crosswords, musical theater lyrics and picture books have in common? That’s the question I found myself pondering after a conversation with my brother, Frank David. For context, he’s not just my brother, but he’s also a crossword puzzle guy. After years of enthusiastic crossword puzzle solving, he recently co-authored a puzzle with his son, Henry Lin-David, a seasoned constructor. (You can check out their puzzle here—a Sunday New York Times debut for both of them!—and

I'm lucky to live near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and one of my favorite things is to take walks on weekend mornings at the tail end (pun intended!) of off-leash time. That's where I got the seed of the idea for this poem. What Dogs Know They don’t know who the president is or the latest hateful thing he said They don’t know that when we say the world is on fire it’s only (sometimes) a metaphor They just know the sound of our voice the touch of our hand the smell of treats i