Michael David Lukas

Biography

Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, his writing has been published in Slate, National Geographic Traveler, Tikkun, the Boston Globe, and Georgia Review. He just completed a novel about the end of the Ottoman Empire, to be published by HarperCollins.

http://www.michaeldavidlukas.com/

See Work

ESSAYS

The Tyranny of the Fuyu Persimmon

By Michael David Lukas

Every time I crunch into a fuyu persimmon I feel guilty, like when I read the Times online or ignore my local bookstore for a cheaper copy on Amazon or Alibris.

REPORTING

The Meaning of a Daily Show Heckler

By Michael David Lukas

The heckling of a peace activist just shows how little Americans are used to hearing from the Palestinian perspective.

REPORTING

After the Nobel, Then What?

By Michael David Lukas

Sure, you spend a few months resting on your laurels. You go to Stockholm, you collect your prize, you give your speech, but then what?

ESSAYS

Herta Who?

By Michael David Lukas

The best way to bolster literature in translation is to buy some, and maybe you’ll get a jump on next year’s Nobel Prize winner.

CRITICISM

The Collected Stories of Breece D’J Pancake

By Michael David Lukas

His writing is devastating in its beauty, evoking West Virginia’s mountain hollows with a sinewy and precise prose that comes as close to Hemingway as anything I’ve ever read.

ESSAYS

The Cookbook Writer as Food Anthropologist

By Michael David Lukas

The great anthropological cookbooks of the 1960s and 1970s have been all but replaced by the fluffy side-projects of TV personalities, further alienating home cooks from their kitchens.

CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Dispatches from the Mother of the World

By Michael David Lukas
ESSAYS

Unpacking My Girlfriend’s Library

By Michael David Lukas

Some would toss their e-book device in the glove compartment and head out on the super highway. I’ll take the heft of the book in my hand.

CRITICISM

The Lost Symbol Can Wait

By Michael David Lukas

Amidst all the excitement of the Roths and Moores and Chabons we should not forget about Lydia Davis, whose Collected Stories comes out in one month.

ESSAYS

What Good are Writers Conferences?

By Michael David Lukas

Part workshop, part retreat, part lecture, it hibernates for much of the year in university English departments and home offices, emerging for a week or two at the height of the summer before scuttling back to its lair.