My Dentist’s Murder Trial

James Lasdun tells the story of how his Kingston, NY-based dentist, Gilberto Nunez, D.D.S., wound up in prison. Lasdun writes about attending Nunez’s trial for the murder of his lover’s husband — a man he called his friend — with an eye toward the ways in which law enforcement can botch a case by determining too soon that it knows what happened, and how hard it can be to judge someone’s character.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jul 3, 2017
Length: 24 minutes (6,229 words)

‘I Will Ruin Him’

A writer is stalked by his former M.F.A. student:

“Soon after that first volley, Janice (my agent) called, sounding upset. For several days, she had been receiving strange e-mails about me from Nasreen, and she was concerned for her safety. The e-mails contained the same baseless accusations of plagiarism, accompanied by threats of ‘hell to pay’ if Janice and I connived to ‘steal’ any more of Nasreen’s work. Later that day, Nasreen began threatening Paula, the editor to whom Janice had introduced Nasreen.

“‘You all play a part in unleashing the fury,’ Nasreen wrote. Soon after, with this ‘fury’ now apparently reaching for terms strong enough to account for its own escalating intensity, Nasreen brought on one of those words that scorch everything they come near. The word was ‘rape,’ and even though she used it figuratively rather than literally, I felt immediately the potency of its touch, as if I’d been splashed with acid: ‘I say if I can’t write my book and get emotionally and verbally raped by James Lasdun, a Jew disguising himself as an English-American, well then, the Holocaust Industry Books should all be banned as should the films.'”

Published: Jan 21, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,252 words)