The Good Men Project

The Team

Keith Ackers /
Amin Ahmad /
Steve Almond /
Mark St. Amant /
Norm Appel /
Curtis B. /
Joe D'Arrigo /
Bruce Ellman /
Ricardo (Ric) Federico /
Paul Furtaw /
Rolf Gates /
Kent George /
Regie O'Hare Gibson /
Perry Glasser /
Stuart Horwitz /
James Houghton /
Michael Kamber /
Stephen Karl Klotz /
Christopher Koehler /
Jesse Kornbluth /
Charlie LeDuff /
Joseph Levens /
Tom Matlack /
Julio Medina /
John Oliver /
Robert Pinsky /
Joel Schwartzberg /
Konstantin Selivanov /
John Sheehy /
Andre Tippett /
Jeffrey K. Wallace /
Cary Wong /
Ben Woodbeck /

Larry Bean /
James Houghton /
Joseph Kolchinsky /
Tom Matlack /
Steve Sheffield /
Cathy Vaughan /

Keith Ackers

Keith Ackers is a recovering television producer, grudgingly still taking a paycheck but watching less and less TV and trying harder than ever to nurture his more thoughtful inner English major. Ackers has held management positions at a national network show and several local news affiliates, and currently he is supervising traffic reporting for television clients across the country. His best creative validation came when his daughter, who is featured in the essay “The Most Important Job,” recently told him he makes up really good bedtime stories. He says that as far as he can tell, the kid has not yet learned how to lie. Ackers lives with his wife and two children outside Philadelphia and says he really is going to get out of the TV business altogether one of these days.

For more information, please visit Keith Ackers' home page

Amin Ahmad

Amin Ahmad who trained as an architect at MIT, grew up in India and has never adjusted to the cold of Boston. His writing bridges the gap between the colonial mansions of his childhood and the creaky wood-framed house in which he now lives. In his essay, "Structural Failure," he describes how he confronted the collapse of his traditional Indian marriage. While evaluating a housing project for repairs, Ahmad befriended a group of African-American janitors. As his marriage unraveled and his friends abandoned him, the janitors counseled Ahmad and helped see him through the most difficult time of his life.

Steve Almond

Steve Almond's contribution to the book, "Here's the Bad News, Son," concerns his fear of having a son. Almond's work can be found in a range of magazines that includes Playboy, Nerve, and 3:AM. He is the author of the short story collections The Evil B.B. Chow and My Life in Heavy Metal and the nonfiction book Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, and he is the coauthor (with Julianna Baggott) of the novel Which Brings Me to You. Almond was a contributing writer to Alarm Clock Theatre Company's Elliot Norton Award-winning play PS: Page Me Later, based on selections from Found Magazine. His essay collection (Not That You Asked) Rants, Exploits and Obsessions was published by Random House in 2007.

For more information, please visit Steve Almond's home page.

Norm Appel

Norm Appel graduated from the Wharton School of Finance in 1958 and then embarked on a Wall Street career that last from 1959 until his retirement in 1976. At that point he became a full-time parent for 50 percent of his time and a model and sometimes actor for the other 50 percent. After his oldest son, David, passed away in 1993, he returned to a more active role in some of his manufacturing investments. He completely retired from business in 2004 and now spends his time modeling and going on auditions. His essay, “Plum Island,” is about the death of David and the near-death of his remaining son, Michael.

For more information, please visit Norm Appel's home page.

Larry Bean

Larry Bean has been editing and writing for magazines, newspapers, and books since the days of big hair and thin neckties. Most recently, he was the editor in chief of Robb Report magazine, until the stock market began to crash and conspicuous consumption fell out of vogue. He currently serves as an editor at large for Robb Report and as a consulting editor for Niche Media publications. Prior to joining the Robb Report staff a decade ago, Larry worked for 10 years as an editor and writer for newspapers in Massachusetts and California. He also has worked as a copyeditor for Hatherleigh Press in New York and as a contributing editor for Yankee Books in New Hampshire. Larry has taught writing classes at Curry College and Framingham State College in Massachusetts. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in mass communication from Emerson College.

For more information about Larry Bean’s recent work go to Boston Common Magazine.

Curtis B.

Curtis B. grew up in an East Coast inner-city and then went to high school in a predominantly white, upper-class suburb. After college, he served in the Peace Corps, teaching life skills and English to children in Mongolia. He writes about that experience in the essay "Khan without the Wrath."

Anthony Caralucci

Anthony Caralucci recently retired as a senior executive from a major global financial firm. He grew up in a small town in upstate New York in a very conservative, mostly Catholic-Italian descent community in the 1950s and 60s. After his retirement he and his partner of 15 years moved to the South, where he became a partner in a global business, allowing him to travel throughout the world. He now has reestablished healthy relationships with most of his family and friends. He has continued to not disclose the entire person of who Anthony is to his business clients and associates.

Mook-C

Mook-C (for "Chaos") was the lead singer for an all-white rap band called the Fab-7 during the 1990s, when rap was still exclusively an African-American phenomenon. In his essay, titled "Bangin' 9s," Mook recounts living the rapper lifestyle at night—frequenting strip clubs, doing drugs, and playing shows—and then showing up to venture-backed internet start-ups during the day. Now happily married, sober, with a daughter and successful software career, Mook humorously recalls the delusion bubble he and his band inhabited. He recognizes that they were really just a bunch of upper-middle-class white kids with very limited musical talent who spent a decade pretending to be cutting-edge-ghetto.

Joe D'Arrigo

Joe D’Arrigo, author of “Silence,” established an insurance business when he was 29 and later created an employee benefits advisory firm in Boston. He sold that company to a major insurance company and then became a business-plan consultant. D’Arrigo now is a principal and advisor to one of those companies for which he consulted. Although he loves the work he does, if you asked him where he is most at home, D’Arrigo, who has sailed 25,000 miles in the last seven years, would say, “Barefoot on the deck of a sailboat offshore.”

Bruce Ellman

Bruce Ellman is a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant. In is essay, he writes about the sudden death of his father, a man who overcame enormous childhood obstacles to gain great success. Ellman reflects on the meaning of this loss, his struggle to love imperfection, and his relentless unease with his own aloneness. A father of three, Ellman is a graduate of Brown University, and he holds an MBA from Yale University and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University.

Ricardo (Ric) Federico

Ricardo (Ric) Federico, author of the essay “Whatever It Takes,” works, writes, and lives in southern Kentucky with his incredibly supportive wife and three teenage children. When he isn’t experimenting with essays, short stories, or a novel, Federico often can be found at the driveway basketball hoop or on a walking trail. Once a week he usually manages to have lunch with his father, the guy who taught him so much about doing whatever it takes.

Paul Furtaw

Paul Furtaw, author of “The Most Normal Thing,” is a husband, father, brother and son, as well as a licensed psychologist. In his professional practice, he attends to the well-being of college students and healthcare practitioners-in-training while also consulting to higher education, healthcare and human service organizations. He remains a strong proponent of the “talking cure” while at the same time looking forward to the day when advances in pharmaceutical and biomedical research will allow us all to experience the aging process with our faculties, our memories and our ties to our loved ones largely intact.

Rolf Gates

Rolf Gates is the author of Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga (Random House), an acclaimed book on yogic philosophy. He conducts Vinyasa intensives and teacher trainings throughout the United States and abroad. A former U.S. Army Airborne Ranger, emergency medical technician, and addictions counselor, Rolf has an eclectic background that informs his practice and his teachings. Rolf was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Boston area as a marathon runner, long distance cyclist and champion wrestler. As the descendant of six generations of ministers, he gained an understanding of the importance of service and dedication at an early age. Rolf now lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, Mariam, a director and teacher of Empowered Kids Yoga. They have two children.

For more information, please visit Rolf Gates's home page.

Kent George

Kent George is an actor, writer and filmmaker living with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. As an actor he has appeared in numerous theater, television and film projects over the past twenty years. He is a longtime company member of the renowned Circus Theatricals theater company in Los Angeles and has appeared in ten productions, including last year’s world premiere of Chuck Rose’s drama Safe. He also has presented two original theater pieces for the Spark series at the Powerhouse Theater in Santa Monica, which is where his Good Men Project essay, “Fight or Flight,” first took shape. In 2006, George wrote and produced the semi-autobiographical feature film Puff, Puff, Pass for Sony Pictures Entertainment; it starred Mekhi Phifer and Danny Masterson. He currently is editing a feature-length documentary titled Inside the Box, which is about Circus Theatricals and the lives of theater actors in Los Angeles. George is a graduate of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and Princeton University.

Regie O'Hare Gibson

Regie O'Hare Gibsons's essay, "Talking Shop," describes his childhood days spent in his mother's beauty shop and how that experience taught him to both mistrust and respect women. A poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator and educator, Gibson and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film Love Jones, which is based largely on events in his life. His poem "Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)" is on the movie's soundtrack and is performed by the film's star, Larenz Tate. In the film, Gibson performs "Hey Nappyhead" with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, who wrote the score for the musical The Lion King.

Perry Glasser

Perry Glasser writes about being a single parent raising his daughter in the essay “Iowa Black Dirt.” Glasser is the author of the forthcoming Dangerous Places, a collection of short fiction that received the 2008 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize from BkMk Press at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He has published two prior collections of short fiction, Suspicious Origins (St. Paul: New Rivers Press) and Singing on the Titanic (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). A native of Brooklyn, Glasser taught writing and literature at Drake University in Iowa and was a professor of English at Bradford College in Massachusetts. Since 2003, Glasser has been the coordinator of the Professional Writing Program at Salem State College in Massachusetts. In the past few years his memoirs, essays, and fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in such journals as Utne, Northwest Review, the Antioch Review, Confrontation, Salamander, the North American Review, Hanging Loose, Flint Hills Review, Passages North, B-FAR (Boston Fiction Annual Review), ACM, GSU Review, and the Portland Review.

Stuart Horwitz

Stuart Horwitz is the founder of Entity: Book Architecture, a manuscript assistance firm that helps writers prepare their work for presentation to publishing houses. Among the titles he has worked on is The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century, by Howie Carr. Horwitz is an award-winning, published poet and is the front man for the poetry/punk-funk band Art Don’t Pay. He holds two masters degrees, one from New York University, in religious studies and literature, and one from Harvard University, in East Asian studies. He has been married for twelve years and is the father of one amazing kid. His essay, “The Act You’ve Known for All These Years,” is about his career as a street musician with his eldest daughter.

James Houghton

James Houghton, co-editor of The Good Men Project, has had a varied career as an investment banker in New York and London, a business manager for Corning Inc. (a Fortune 500 glass manufacturer founded by his ancestors in 1851) and, after helping to start a successful competitive telephone company in New England, as a partner in the early-stage venture capital firm founded by Good Men co-editor Tom Matlack. In addition, Houghton has taught and traveled extensively in Africa, has served as finance director for a congressional campaign, and is the co-founder of a foundation focused on kids at risk in upstate New York. His essay, "Neon," chronicles the day his father suffered a near-fatal accident and how that forced Houghton to confront the legacy of his family and his own role in it.

Michael Kamber

Michael Kamber is a photojournalist who has covered wars in the Middle East, West Africa, and throughout the world. He has been nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes, twice for photography and once for writing. His current home base is the Baghdad bureau of The New York Times. His essay, "Shooting the Truth," details how his father abandoned him, how he worshipped his father and grandfather's military service as a young boy, how he had a daughter as a teenager, and how his obsession with capturing the most violent images of war to awaken a passive American public help him reconcile all the above.

For more information, please visit Michael Kamber's home page.

Christopher Koehler

Christopher Koehler, author of "Being There," realized while writing his dissertation in an obscure and specious corner of cultural studies that, though he lived to write, academic writing sucked the life out of his prose. So he bailed on academe shortly after entering it. His non-fiction and fiction both focus on the history of science and medicine. When he’s not parenting, writing or rowing, he works as an editorial assistant for a scientific journal and as a freelance editor. He lives in Northern California with his husband and son.

Stephen Karl Klotz

Stephen Karl Klotz is a native of Williamsport, Pa., which, as the home of Little League Baseball, is a great father-child destination. Klotz now lives in York, Pa. He has two grown sons, who are married and living away from home, but he frequently talks and visits with them. His essay “Dad, Retired and Rehired” describes the evolution of his relationships with his sons. Klotz’s retired racing greyhound, Buck, keeps him company at home, and they enjoy walking together, whether around the neighborhood or on a nearby trail. Klotz teaches communication techniques to people who care for older persons with dementia. He has published articles in magazines such as Backpacker and Appalachian Trailway News, as well as in local and regional newspapers. He currently is working on both non-fiction and fiction projects.

Joseph Kolchinsky

Joseph Kolchinsky manages OneVision Resources, a technology concierge and consulting firm that helps clients adopt personal and media technology. He particularly enjoys discovering emerging products designed to enhance everyday life and customizing them to suit individuals and families. Prior to founding OneVision, Joseph was an associate at a Boston-based mutual fund where he researched technology stocks and assisted with research/portfolio software implementation. Joseph received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he double majored in Economics and Finance.

Jesse Kornbluth

Jesse Kornbluth's essay is unambiguously titled "How Sex and Drugs Made Me a Man." Kornbluth is a New York-based journalist and editor of a cultural concierge service (books, music, movies), HeadButler.com. He has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and New York, and a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times and other publications. In l996, he co-founded Bookreporter.com. From l997 to 2002, he was editorial director of America Online. His books include Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken, Airborne: The Triumph and Struggle of Michael Jordan and Pre-Pop Warhol.

Charlie LeDuff

Charlie LeDuff has contributed an essay describing his experience as a stay-at-home dad. LeDuff is the author of Us Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man (Penguin, 2007). In addition to being a writer, he also is filmmaker and a multimedia reporter for The Detroit News. He is a former national correspondent for The New York Times. He covered the war in Iraq, crossed the desert with a group of migrant Mexicans, and worked inside a North Carolina slaughterhouse as part of The Times series "How Race Is Lived in America," which was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. In 2005 LeDuff was host and writer of Only in America," a 10-part television show of participatory journalism for the Discovery Times Channel. In 2006, LeDuff hosted and co-produced the BBC's United Gates of America.

For more information, please visit Charlie LeDuff's home page.

Joseph Levens

Joseph Levens, author of the essay “Resolution,” is editor of the Summerset Review. His work, primarily fiction, has appeared in the Florida Review (2007 Editors’ Award winner), AGNI, New Orleans Review, Swink, Other Voices, Meridian, Sou’wester, and other places. He has completed a collection of stories and, like everyone else, is at work on a novel.

Tom Matlack

Tom Matlack, co-editor of The Good Men Project, contributes an essay, "Crash and Learn," that describes how, despite a successful business career, he nearly killed himself through excessive drinking, and how his desire to be a good father to his baby children ultimately saved his life. Matlack is an eighth-generation descendent of Timothy Matlack, the man who penned the Declaration of Independence after disowning his Quaker family to fight in the Revolution and engage in cock fighting and bearbaiting. Matlack also is a second-generation descendent of Pearl Buck, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He worked on Wall Street, was CFO of a major media company, and started his own venture capital firm before turning to writing. He has published articles in such magazines as Esquire, The Boston Globe Magazine, Boston Magazine, The Sun, Pop Matters, Rowing News, and Wesleyan.

For more information, please visit Thomas Matlack's home page.

Julio Medina

Julio Medina served 12 years in prison for gang-related crimes. He emerged a changed man, dedicated to helping other inmates make the transition, once they were released from prison, from criminals to good men and good fathers. His organization, Exodus Transitional Community, has served more than 3,000 men and women and has become one of the country's most successful re-entry programs. In his essay, "Blood-Spattered," Medina writes about the epiphany he experienced in prison and how it led to his transformation.

For more information, please visit Julio Medina's home page.

John Oliver

After growing up in a working-class family in Detroit, John Oliver graduated from West Point and served in the 82nd Airborne during the first Gulf War. Immediately after he returned home, his wife became pregnant with their first child, Kate. But at the age of 18 months, Kate died suddenly from a bacterial infection. In "Blindfolded," Oliver writes about how her death and life have made him a better man. Today Oliver lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and three children.

Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky, who received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1974 and in 1997 was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, has contributed a poem to the book. He now lives in Newton Corner, Massachusetts, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. As Poet Laureate, Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state share their favorite poems. Pinsky believes that, contrary to stereotype, poetry has a strong presence in the American culture. The project sought to document that presence, giving voice to the American audience for poetry. Pinsky guest-starred in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons and appeared on The Colbert Report in 2007 as the judge of a Meta-Free-Phor-All between Stephen Colbert and Sean Penn.

Joel Schwartzberg

Joel Schwartzberg, whose essay "Birth of a Father" describes his challenges with adapting to fatherhood, is the author of The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad. Schwartzberg’s essays have been published in Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Daily News, New Jersey Monthly, and other publications throughout the United States and Canada. He also blogs for the Star Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper. A former online executive with Nickelodeon and Time Inc., Schwartzberg is currently the director of new media for a PBS broadcast news magazine. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife and—on Saturdays—his three kids. So don’t expect his place to be clean on Sunday.

Konstantin Selivanov

Konstantin Selivanov's essay, "300 Bucks," describes how he earned a living by fighting at illegal fight clubs all over Russia and how he was recruited by the KGB—an offer he ultimately refused at great risk. Selivanov, who is now a U.S. citizen, owns and operates the Powerhouse Kicking-Boxing gym in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He appeared in the film Miss Congeniality, playing the role of Ivan.

For more information, please visit Konstatin Selivanov's home page.

John Sheehy

John Sheehy is a professor of writing and literature at Marlboro College. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Sheehy grew up in Montana, the grandson of Irish immigrants who came to Montana to mine copper in Butte. Although he never knew his Irish grandfather, who died, before Sheehy was born, of a lung disease contracted in the mines, he and the rest of the Butte Irish left a large impact on their descendants. Sheehy's essay, "Skeff," traces that particular Western lineage as he attempts to find a way to connect with his father.

Steve Sheffield

Stephen Sheffield, a native of the Boston area, has a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA in photography from California College of Arts & Crafts (now CAA), in Oakland/San Francisco. Stephen’s unique style of artwork combines his own photography with found photography and involves photomontage and other alternative processes. These processes give his work a painterly appearance not usually associated with photography. Stephen has exhibited nationally for many years and has a number of large-scale commissions in Boston, Cambridge and New York City, and his work has been featured in many national publications. Stephen is a professor of advanced photography at the New England School of Photography in Boston and has a studio in Boston’s Fort Point Channel district. His work can be seen on his website and blog

Mark St. Amant

Mark St. Amant's essay, "La Not-So-Dolce Vita," recalls his fateful move abroad as a newlywed and poses the question of whether there's such a thing as a perfect couple. St. Amant writes the fantasy football content for "Fifth Down," the New York Times.com NFL blog. He is the author of the best-selling fantasy sports book of all time, Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie (Scribner, 2004). His second book, Just Kick It: Tales of an Underdog, Over-Age, Out-of-Place Semi Pro Football Player (Scribner, 2006), was a critical success detailing St.Amant's season as the kicker for an inner-city Boston semi pro team. St.Amant has appeared on ESPN, has written for Salon.com, the Boston Globe Magazine and The New York Times. He also writes a popular weekly column, "The Man-Crush Index," for NBC Sports' Rotoworld.com, cyberspace's largest fantasy sports site.

For more information, please visit Mark St. Almant's home page.

Andre Tippett

Andre Tippett is an NFL Hall of Fame linebacker. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, into a fatherless home, where he had to help raise his younger brother and sisters. He was an All-American at the University of Iowa before being drafted by the New England Patriots in 1982. Tippett is a Godan/5th degree black belt with a Shihan (Master Instructor) license. His essay, "Beginner's Heart," focuses on how martial arts have influenced him as an athlete and as a man.

Cathy Vaughan

Cathy Vaughan.

Jeffrey K. Wallace

Jeffrey K. Wallace, author of the essay “No One Saw a Thing,” lives in Orange County, Calif. When he’s not reading, writing, parenting, or teaching (at Chapman University), he’s busy enjoying his family. Wallace’s essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Family Circle magazine, the Orange County Register, Toastmaster International, and the anthology I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers (Seal Press).

Cary Wong

Cary Wong received his MFA in playwriting from Columbia University. He was a Van Lier Playwriting Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club. His MTC-commissioned play, Mirrors Remembered, was produced at New York Stage and Film. His plays have had readings at The Public Theater, MTC, Queens Theatre in the Park, Mark Taper Forum and East West Players. Wong also is a columnist and reviewer for Film Score Monthly magazine.

Ben Woodbeck

Ben Woodbeck has been a wilderness instructor for fifteen years, logging more than 1,500 days leading expeditions with wayward youths to remote locations in North America. In his essay “The BFI,” he writes about one of those expeditions from early in his career. Woodbeck has climbed peaks in North America, South America, and Asia, paddled great distances on long rivers, run a few 100-mile races, found ways to extend adolescence, and tried to write about it. He reads, writes, runs, and lives in rural Colorado and is proud of his Midwestern roots.