ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAGE 2

Road Trip Journal

typical entry: August 16, 2000

Tupelo, Mississippi

". . . sitting on the front porch swing of the shotgun house Vernon Presley built . . . a warm August night in Mississippi, no one here but me . . . just left a 'reading' at Square Books in Oxford where no one showed up . . . quiet here, just me and the Magnolias and the crickets . . .

December 4, 2000. Alvarez works on "Run, Run Ruthie" in Room 829 of the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, final residence of Thomas Wolfe. The continuation of the Ruthie saga begun in "The Annunciation" (Fountain of Highlandtown, Woodholme Publishers, 1997), the new tale will appear in Issue No. 6 of the Baltimore-based arts journal LINK and the upcoming STORYTELLER anthology of Alvarez's work to be published by the Baltimore Sun.

In 2001, Alvarez left the Baltimore Sun after some 20 years on the City Desk and joined the Seafarers Internatinal Union to work on ships. He is currently working on a collection of fictions called "Sea Stories."

Rafael Alvarez in back yard of old Pratt Library
on Central Avenue near Lombard Street.
Library is now a private home.

Newspaperman with the great Johnny Winter

Credit:
lilragman@aol.com

Rafael Alvarez in the shadow of the Golden Arm
Christmas Day 2004

2004 day-to-day journal
". . . there has to be something brutal and careless about a true city . . ."
Wm. Boyd, "Any Human Heart"

2006 / 2007 / 2008

Los Angeles journal
"The diamond light of another time
had turned muddy
and the places that had once been
mine and sustained
my memories
were strange to me now . . ."
Garcia Marquez