Longform

Award-winning essays on family, war and memory.

Michael Carolan, portrait

Perpetual Hunger

Read the essay — Winner, Crossroads Irish-American Festival Prize, San Francisco.

Further reading: a Findagrave biography from the family research behind the piece.

Breaking Point: The Search for a Postwar Grandfather

Read the essay, first published in The Massachusetts Review. Named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2008.

Capt. Charles Felt, back row, second from left, 1944–1945, 55th General Hospital, Dental Corps unit, Malvern UK and Mourmelon, France — Capt. Charles Felt (back row, 2nd from left), 1944–1945, 55th General Hospital, Dental Corps unit — Malvern, UK, and Mourmelon, France.

The War After: How My Great-Great-Grandfather Deserted the Union Army and Earned an Honorable Discharge WHYY

History Reporting award, New England Newspaper and Press Association, Boston.

How My Great-Great-Grandfather Killed Me at Gettysburg

Illustration for How My Ancestor Killed Me 150 Years Ago

Read at WHYY, or the original at The Daily Hampshire Gazette.

An Irish Passenger, An American Family, and Their Time

The Columbia, a full-rigged ship built 1846 in New York — The Columbia, a full-rigged ship built in 1846 in New York.

Read the site — my old website, preserved in the Wayback Machine, built in the early aughts when I first arrived at the UMass MFA Program.

Post-Paternalism, or Black Blackmail

Post-Paternalism, or Black Blackmail — research cover, The Washington Monthly

Read the piece, The Washington Monthly.