I Wrote a Novel During One of the Worst Moments in Global History, and We’re Still In It

When I began writing the first pages of my novel Panpocalypse, (OUT NOW IN PRINT AND AUDIO! ANYWHERE THAT BOOKS CAN BE SOLD AND/OR BOUGHT!) it was April of 2020 in lower Manhattan, during the first COVID lockdown. I was living in a faculty apartment in an NYU dorm with my daughter. There was one other staff person in our building, which usually housed about 250 students. They had been sent home over spring break, without knowing that they couldn’t return to campus until over a year later. The halls were eerily empty, and every once in a while a student texted me to ask if I could get into their rooms to retrieve a beloved object or save a plant. I could not.

Most of Greenwich Village had cleared out. I remember one particularly bleak weekend, where I watched family after family pack up their cars and drive away to their country houses. I wasn’t bitter. I simply considered them traitors. Like many New York City transplants, I have a fierce loyalty to the city that has no particular love or interest in me. This is part of our pact. I love you New York — I talk and write about your constantly — and you don’t give a shit about me. It’s like most of my relationships. Simple. Straightforward. Nothing complicated.