New OpEd: Direct Cash Aid to Palestinians Would Be a Win-Win

I have a new op-ed up at Areo Magazine advocating for the creation of a nonprofit providing direct cash aid payments for poor individuals living in Palestine. Such payments have been shown to be helpful in many settings, including the United States in response to Covid. I lay out reasons Israel would have incentives to support such a nonprofit.

https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/20/direct-cash-aid-to-palestinians-would-be-a-win-win/?fbclid=IwAR2yionlsJdS6XzrnnkZq-rZPyevg0Ggyv3IKlbOVOvJ-Yew0c_FR4W2zDg

New story in Prairie Fire

My story "Lab Boys" has been published in the newest issue of Prairie Fire.

This one is about rats (once again), bioethics, autoimmune disorders, and having your body fail in various ways.

https://www.prairiefire.ca/shop/spring-2022-volume-43-no-1/

"We'll Make Great Pets"

The issue of Southwest Review including my story "We'll Make Great Pets" is now available for order! (As a creative bonus, it features a flexi disc single from the Delines).

For those unfamiliar, the Southwest Review has been around for over a century, and over the years has featured fine folks like D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Carson, etc. Excited to become a contributor!

http://southwestreview.com/volume-107-number-1/

Secondhand audio version

Dark Lane just posted an audio version of my fabulist story "Secondhand."

I wrote this one in my late twenties, drawing from the period in my early 20s when I was working part-time at the Strand bookstore and doing document scanning/data entry for a series of litigation support companies. I tried to capture the ennui of being a low-skilled, fungible worker providing repetitive labor.

It was published a few years back, but only available in print so most of you probably haven't heard it before. Listen only requires a mere four minutes of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiOyEYXowhw

Things Tim Liked and Didn’t Like in 2021

My favorite album this year was LUMP’s “Animal.”  I’d never really listened much to their first album or Laura Marling’s solo stuff, so this came out of absolutely nowhere for me. I’ve written before about my affection for sad lady bands, and I’d say LUMP splits the difference between Metric’s electronic rockers and Emily Haines’ softer solo critiques of consumerism and modern alienation.  

I also listened a lot to Justin Townes Earle’s 2019 alt-country album “The Saint of Lost Causes.” In the title song, the lyrics Throughout time, between a wolf and a shepherd/ Who do you think has killed more sheep? stuck with me during a year I wrote a lot about animal welfare. I suppose he meant it as a metaphor, but taken literally it feels like a fair indictment of animal husbandry.

So was Gunda, a black & white documentary that wordlessly tracked the life of a single pig and her piglets from the gritty moments after birth as the piglets search for their first taste of milk to their journey in the field to learn to forage.  The humans in their life are never directly shown, but their impact implied. This film helped me reimagine what cinema could be in a way I hadn’t felt since Boyhood, another film that in its patience created something magical. Where Boyhood ended on a note of the youthful sense of limitless possibility, Gunda revealed the opposite inevitability.  

I took Pig, the year’s other swine-inspired film, as an extended deconstruction of macho films of the sort Nicolas Cage often appears in—replacing external rage with melancholic vulnerability. I do wish, however, that the film featured more pig.     

I also found My Octopus Teacher remarkable, but couldn’t shake annoyance the repeatedly stated theme that the octopus in the movie “taught” the narrator to a better father—dubious, given that the narrator seemed to spend the entire film neglecting his son to follow an octopus around and didn’t learn any obvious parenting lessons.  

The best podcast episode I listened to this year was actually released late last year. Briahna Joy Gray speaking with Boots Riley (the complete interview now released for non-subscribers) about his film Sorry to Bother You, and the mistaken pivot in the liberal base from focusing on developing union power and class solidarity to the concerns of the highly educated professionals. I’m most excited by podcasts willing to bring on folks they genuinely disagree with to have respectful conversations, which made Joy Gray’s podcast chats with Andrew Sullivan refreshing. 

A podcast that worked much less for me was Jon Stewart’s—imagine a podcast with the Daily Show’s worst impulses without the humor that could make that show fun. I only listened to the podcast episode with the CEO of JP Morgan Jamie Dimon, and Stewart basically let Dimon provide a well-informed, detailed quintessential Captain-of-Industry view with only vague liberal slogans as pushback. The whole time I long to hear Boots Riley sparring with Dimon instead. Perhaps Stewart hubristically thought he could represent the liberal view, suggesting he didn’t learn the lessons from that time John Yoo came on the Daily Show and made waterboarding sound reasonable. Stewart’s five-minute appearance on Colbert earlier this year tearing holes in lab-leak-theory skepticism was far more edgy, funny and impactful.

I’ve valued the rapid emergence of substacks in response to groupthink on both the left and the right.  I hope they figure out a way to do more longform journalism. I’ve been encouraged by Matt Taibbi’s recent four-part series into events at Loudoun County’s schools, but I’m skeptical that the model will ever be able to replace the deep-dive journalism that can be done by deep-pocketed establishment media places like the Atlantic or the New Yorker (which I still also enjoy). 

I’ve been inhaling the Expanse series—an escapist space opera consisting of something like 9 books and 6 seasons total book and TV series. I’ve just finished the third book and the third season. So far, the authors treat the menace of alien life like a traditional zombie flick: yes, the outside threat is terrifying but humanity’s failure act in its collective interest is what always ultimately dooms us. 

What We Do in the Shadows, another Amazon show, manages to add something original to the vampire canon: the energy vampire—a new strain that drains your energy by droning on office cubical by office cubical. I loved a season one moment where he takes the crew to a Staten Island local community board meeting and sits in ecstasy as he sucks in the room’s negative energy. The scenes recall Office Space and the Office, and actor Mark Proksch is perfectly cast as he once seemed to be an informal energy vampire when sneaking onto local TV stations pretending to be a yo-yo master hawking environmental messages.    

In terms of other fiction, Piranesi created a picturesque lived-in world with breath-taking visual descriptions and wry humor in the space of a novella—a conciseness in sharp contrast to Susanna Clarke’s prior (and also enjoyable) epic tome Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Klara and the Sun was also a fast read that returned to themes that have obsessed Kazuo Ishiguro his whole life—including his focus on the powerless common folk who struggle to exercise agency in the face of greater forces. The story struck me as what Toy Story would have looked like if Kafka and Stanley Kubrick had collaborated.

I’ve also been stuck in the 1970s. In Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, over 1,200 pages, Rick Perlstein dives deep into the era, revealing the many eerie parallels between then and now: high inflation, ideological controversies over school curriculums, backlash against rapid cultural changes, and a high crime that led to a wave of right-wing electoral victories from NYC mayorships to California ballot initiatives to Congressional seats around the country and, finally, Reagan. Taking note of liberal missteps then might provide lessons for those who wish to avoid further parallels.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

Barry-Lopez-Prize-Winner Now Online

I'm honored to share that my essay "Legally Speaking, Rats Aren't Even Animals," winner of the 2020 Barry Lopez Nonfiction Prize, has now been published in Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts and is now available to read online.

The issue also features a fantastic lineup of other writers, including new poetry by the current United States poet laureate Joy Harjo.

My essay recounts my experiences as a first-time rat owner, including my adoption of Vinnie, Gordo and Harry from Small Angels animal rescue and how I quickly observed their high emotional intelligence and personhood.

Next I outline the history of human/rat relations focusing on famous rat experiments that took place outside Baltimore, near where my rats were born. I use these experiments to explore the impacts of overlooking rats in animal welfare laws.

The title of the essay is a reference to America's Animal Welfare Act of 1966 which defines rats and mice as non-animals.

http://www.cutthroatmag.com/Cutthroat_26_copy_FINAL_FOR...

New Animal Welfare Op-Ed in EIJ

I have a new essay up over at Earth Island Journal called "How Animals Die in America."

The piece proposes that we require companies to include animal impact labels on their products and animal impact statements on their websites--disclosing how the animals lived and died. This would allow consumers to make more informed decisions when they purchase meat-derived products.

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/how-animals-die-in-america

Op-Ed highlighted in Columbia Journalism Review

My op-ed in Undark on conservative vaccine hesitancy was highlighted in the Columbia Journalism Review's "The Media Today" column.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/independence_day_delta_variant_pandemic.php

New vaccine hesitancy Op-Ed

I have a new op-ed up in Undark about what the media gets wrong about red state vaccine hesitancy.

https://undark.org/2021/07/01/what-the-media-gets-wrong-about-red-state-vaccine-hesitancy/?fbclid=IwAR1Oxc3_QQiKTercvqelhxIHZu1urgY1cIaFErB_zmAmbEvrSKHDNmb2A6Q

New interview up at Writers & Words

I talk about Baltimore, rats, community fridges and more!
https://writersandwords.net/2021/01/28/5-burning-questions-with-timothy-delizza-2/?fbclid=IwAR1_rCo1FVy8APKIHg631rcevtw5Ru1BQAemUJrlbZB8x1LjOvKCzI4m88A

Runner Up for Calvino Prize

Joyce Carol Oates has selected my short story "I Cannot Help You With This" as tied for second place in this year's Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction. She called my story "poignant and well written."

The story was published (print only) this summer in issue 13.1 of New South, which is now available--after a Covid-related delay--for purchase through New South's Submittable page.

"I Cannot Help You With This" took me three years to finish, several years longer than any other short story I've written. Prior to publication and this award, the piece was a finalist several times in Glimmer Train's fiction contests and workshopped at Tin House in 2018.

New Play up at ACM

I'm beyond delighted to announce that Colin Beckman and I's 35-minute screwball comedy play "Charm City Counselors at Love" has been published by Another Chicago Magazine, featuring amazing original artwork by Francesca Longo.

This play was the most collaborative creative work I've ever been a part of. In addition to feeding of each other's ideas, Colin and I received invaluable input from our actors (in alphabetical order) Adam Eldean, Jess Goddard (as puppeteer), Pat Hodgens, Nicole Portnov, Daniel Portnov, Vanessa Sisti, and Yaritza Velez.

Writing this play was a wonderful experience that began with an off-color joke at Vanessa's housewarming in September 2019 (back when people could gather in groups) and then debuting the performance as a table-read in January 2020's Drinking Club.

The play had been accepted to Capital Fringe for the summer of 2020, and we'd just hired a professional director when Covid hit. I still hope to bring it to the stage with the original cast once it is safe to gather again.

"Charm City" is a light farcical piece that I believe would make a perfect read during the holidays that also serves an ode to Baltimore. It also marks the first (but not last) positive portrayal of rats in my prose.

https://anotherchicagomagazine.net/2020/12/17/charm-city-counselors-at-love-by-colin-beckman-timothy-delizza/?fbclid=IwAR3mBkjmoBQznJ0mgeoeLSdE_Da-fnbP7Zjjq1Abyv_UHQvSQqvp5Ty5J14

Essay wins the Barry Lopez Nonfiction Award

My nonfiction essay "Legally Speaking, Rats Aren't Even Animals" has won the Barry Lopez Nonfiction Prize, which includes a $1,200 purse and publication next summer in Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts.

The essay recounts my experiences as a first-time rat owner, including my adoption of Vinnie, Gordo and Harry from Small Angels animal rescue and quickly observing their high emotional intelligence and personhood.

Next I outline the history of human/rat relations focusing on famous rat experiments that took place outside Baltimore, near where my rats were born. I use these experiments to explore the impacts of overlooking rats in animal welfare laws.

The title of the essay is a reference to America's Animal Welfare Act of 1966 which defines rats and mice as non-animals.

https://www.facebook.com/timothy.delizza/posts/2862609530640456

Things About to Disappear

I’ve a new short story up at Bridge Eight! https://www.bridgeeight.com/things-about-to-disappear/

New Flash Fiction Up

I've a new 1,000 word thriller up today as part of Akashic Books' Mondays are Murder flash noir series. (Akashic are the folks who put out the "Go the Fuck to Sleep" series).

My story is called "The Last of the Great Harvard Men to Fall." There is a character named Lizard.

http://www.akashicbooks.com/the-last-of-the-great-harvard-men-to-fall-by-timothy-delizza/

The Search for Housing

My fifteen-minute play "The Search for Housing" will be published in the Potomac Review issue #65, out next week.

What's more, they've asked me to put on a table read of the whole darn thing at the issue release reception next Friday the 13th @ 1-3pm at Montgomery College's Rockville campus (Humanities 009). Feel free to join!

lonely beasts is a finalist for Moon City Press Short Fiction Award

My short story collection "lonely beasts" has been included in the list of finalists for this year's Moon City Press's Short Fiction Award.


The winner of the competition will be selected later this year and eventually published by the press.

http://moon-city-press.com/2019/10/31/announcing-the-finalists-for-the-2019-moon-city-short-fiction-award/