No matter what borough you live in, how much you pay in rent or who your neighbors are, being a writer still sucks. Nouns and verbs are hard to come up with. Even Brooklyn, with all its just-as-good-as-Manhattan verve, can't change that for you. If anything, as Colson Whitehead, author of the revered Apex Hides the Hurt, reports in the Sunday Book Review, it's harder. All the shrinks are still in Manhattan and reading friends' unpublished books is boring. And even a dip in the Gowanus Canal can't cure writers block. Of course, Brooklyn writers hating the Brooklyn writers' scene is a trend as old as metrosexuals.

A New York-based novelist and journalist whose varied interests and talents are evident in his six novels and frequent non-fiction contributions to The New York Times, Salon, and The Village Voice.

Highlights and lowlights from the NY literary scene:
· Caleb Carr fired off a letter to Salon book critic Laura Miller calling her "Reason no. 8 why the soul of New York City is dying," and saying that she was a "bitchy wise ass," who's part of "the club that meets at [NYT book critic] Michiko's [Kakutani] to watch 'Sex in the City' and spout a lot of nonsense about things they don't know." He had gotten bad reviews.
· UES millionaire author Jonathan Franzen received a $20,000 NEA grant, which he claimed in September to have used to buy two expensive paintings. He then retracted the statement, saying he had actually used the money to buy "17 sculptures by struggling artists."
· Colson Whitehead, winner of the NY Public Library's $10,000 Young Lion Fiction Award, mentioned that he had never returned the books he used to research his novel. Library president Le Clerc replied that he had a "bright future," but would now have to pay his $10,000 in library fines.
· Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel says that being near the World Trade Center during the September 11th attacks "really annoyed her."
2002 awards [MobyLives via Hands Free]