'You have lonely men and women
pouring out their hearts to you,
about lovers and drugs
 and the death of their dreams ....'

Although a published poet            
and journalist, Golan says
he learned the most about
 writing fiction from driving
a taxicab in New York City

MARTIN GOLAN HAS BEEN a reporter, editor, and feature writer at newspapers and magazines. He is now a senior editor at Reuters in New York City and works as a private writing coach for poetry, fiction, and memoir.

His first novel, My Wife's Last Lover, was published to much acclaim in 2000, and spent over a year as No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list for the area of New Jersey in which he lives. He's published poetry, fiction, and essays in many magazines, among them Pedestal, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, Fiction Warehouse, and Bitterroot, where he served as associate editor for several years, working closely with legendary poet and mystic Menke Katz.

Several of the stories in Where Things Are When You Lose Them are among the work that appeared in these publications, and a poem offered here, "A Poem About Sex," can be found in the current issue of the well-known poetry magazine Lips.

He holds a master's degree in creative writing from the City College of New York (when the faculty included Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut) and studied fiction writing with the novelist Leslie Epstein, and took poetry workshops with poet William Packard, who was then starting up New York Quarterly.

Golan lives with his wife, a psychologist, in the New Jersey town where his novel and many of his stories take place, and he volunteers with a group of local media people to raise funds for the public library. He is also an absolutely dreadful blues harmonica player, who enjoys playing along with his musical hero, Bob Dylan (please don't tell him that the applause isn't for him).

Although he's studied with well-known writers and tutored others in poetry, fiction, and memoir, worked as a journalist for a large international news organization, and held odd jobs -- from gas station attendant to ice-cream truck driver -- Golan says he learned the most about writing from driving a taxicab in New York City, which he did in college and between newspaper jobs. ("Intimacy," in Where Things Are When You Lose Them, appears to have been inspired by this one-time job.)

As he puts it: "You hear real dialogue acted out as if on a stage (albeit behind you, not in front); you see people interact, on dates and social and business occasions; you witness chance encounters between strangers 'sharing' a cab; you have lonely men and women pour their hearts out to you, about lovers and drugs and the death of their dreams; and you enjoy a never-ending stream of out-of-towners experiencing a fascinating city that you see with new eyes -- it, like the passengers themselves, ultimately unknowable."
 

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