Postscript: Sound Barrier

Welcome to the pilot episode of Expat Confessions: The Spoken Word Edition.

I’m an essayist at heart, but I’ve always loved the spoken word—how hearing a story aloud changes how it lands. I’m a huge fan of The Moth.

My Bostonian grandmother, Nelly Gray, born in 1906, was an actress. She graduated from the Leland Powers School of Elocution. She had me practicing posture, projection, and crisp enunciation from the time I could talk. I don’t sound anything like her (I’m unmistakably Californian), but her love of performance stuck with me.

Years later—before I moved to Northern Israel—I ran the Tel Aviv Writer’s Salon for six years, where I read aloud each featured writer’s flash fiction so they could simply listen and experience their work as a spoken performance.

That’s the spirit of this mini-podcast: I read one of my essays, then share a short postscript about why I wrote it—what was happening, what I was reacting to, or what I saw more clearly after the fact.

Episodes will run anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the content, and will post every other Friday for paid subscribers. The first couple of episodes are free to give you a feel for what’s coming.

Thanks for listening.