Featured Writing
The Accumulation of Narrative Authority in Ben Lerner’s “The Golden Vanity”
American Shorts
Forthcoming at the conference of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
October 29-31, 2026.
Two Strategies for Working with Reticent Characters
CRAFT
I’m drawn to characters who don’t easily express themselves. If they won’t share how they’re feeling, their emotions often manifest in behavior that can set a story in motion. But how do you reveal an avoidant character? You need to tease out the underlying emotional truth and find ways to say what’s unsaid.
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Cathedral Rock
Valparaiso Fiction Review
While he sits at a picnic table at a riverside campsite, Noll tells his younger brother about the day he swam the town rapids alone.
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A Walking Tour of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street
Los Angeles Review of Books
Today, Luis Street has no outward signs of having inspired Naipaul's novel Miguel Street. This is, I would guess, how Naipaul would want it.
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Substack: Updates from Barcelona
Watching the World Cup with the Catalans
Friends have texted me with questions about my experience watching the World Cup in Spain: “It must be wild? People watching everywhere? Celebrating in the streets?” My answer has been: Not really. I’m in Barcelona.
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Liquid Logic
People move fluidly between languages in Barcelona. It’s natural, but it’s also political.
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Books & Journals
L.A. Exile; A Guide to Los Angeles Writing, 1932-1998
Calbi co-edited an anthology about Los Angeles from the perspective of writers and poets born elsewhere. From the book cover: “There are cities writers have sought as inspiration; Paris in the ‘20s, or New York or San Francisco in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Then there is Los Angeles, a place poets and writers have avoided or at least never expected to end up in. Once arrived, many found themselves remarkably productive, intrigued with the city and a life that often struggles to be heroically elsewhere. L.A. Exile is a guide to the literature, the writers and the physical spaces that have made for what composer Igor Stravinsky called “splendid isolation.”
Eudice Shapiro, A Life in Music
Calbi wrote a commemorative book about the celebrated violinist Eudice Shapiro, the first female concertmaster of a Hollywood orchestra, and a beloved and influential pedagogue in Los Angeles.
Rhizome; A Language You Can Think In
Calbi co-founded a journal of experimental writing and critical essays that featured the work of emerging writers as well as established names like Amiri Baraka, Barbara Guest, Adriano Spatola, and others.