The foundation of this book of essays is constructed of work that has appeared in some of the country's top literary journals, including these.

Moving through 19th-century New England to Paris and back again, THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST imagines the sacrifices and struggles of the man widely credited with discovering anesthesia. It is a love story but also a story of what love can't redeem: of narcotic dreams and waking insanity; of pain's destruction and what pains can never be eased. A novel that resonates with our contemporary struggles involving pain and the substances that numb it.

Finalist, historical ficiton, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award; Finalist for the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for the Novel.

"Downs tells a fascinating story in skilled, often elegant prose, and he treats all his characters with great sympathy." – Los Angeles Review of Books

A foundation invited me to Connecticut where Horace Wells lived to read from the book and answer questions from these lovely people.

Research is central to my work – even my fiction writing. That research includes books and the internet but goes far beyond those. For example, to better understand my subject in the Horace Wells novel, I spent time in Hartford, CT, visiting places where he lived and worked, examining his daybook and holding his death mask, and spending time at the Cedar Hill cemetery where he and his family are buried. I even asked my dentist, who needed to fill a cavity for me, if he would give me nitrous oxide, the gas that Horace Wells used to first experiment with anesthesia, so I could better understand its effects.

Inspired by the true-life Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, this collection of ten linked stories explores the way disaster reshapes a community over decades. Stories from THE GREATEST SHOW appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, the Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, and other journals. Three of the stories were recognized as distinguished in the Best American Short Stories series.

A finalist for the Paterson Prize in Fiction.

Foreword magazine: ''an auspicious fiction debut from a marvelously talented writer"
The Rumpus: "intricately woven"
Shenandoah Review: "beautifully written. Not a word out of place."
West Branch Wired: "These are quiet stories, in the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio, ... [with] the dramatic weight and complexity of a novel."
Colorado Review: "gorgeously captures the sweep of ordinary lives made remarkable by a tragic twist of fate."

HOUSE OF GOOD HOPE: A PROMISE FOR A BROKEN CITY combines reportage and memoir to tells the true story of five remarkable and talented young men from Hartford, Connecticut, who pledge their lives to their hometown and who find that promise not always easy to keep.

Winner: River Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction
Finalist: Connecticut Book Award in Biography and Memoir.

The cover for HOUSE OF GOOD HOPE: A PROMISE FOR A BROKEN CITY, is detail from a quilt called "All that Amazing Jazz," by Hartford, Connecticut, quilt artist Ed Johnetta Miller. Photo by John Ryan.

Selected by the Athletic sports journalism site as the one book to read about the Los Angeles Rams, HOLLYWOOD's TEAM is part history of Los Angeles, the NFL, and also part biography. It was a pleasure to assist author Jim Hock in his work to tell the story of his father, an offensive lineman who played for the Rams in the early 1950s.

"A winning new book..." – David Davis, LAObserved

In 2021, when I gave the Mencken Memorial Lecture at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, it was to a nearly empty room: just a few friends in masks. But the lecture also went out to several hundred others who watched the video live-streamed on Facebook. In the talk, titled "The Babelobabuli: Notes on Mencken and Today's Muddled Topography of Literary Journals," I considered what Mencken suggests to us as readers and writers about navigating the thousands of literary journals published today online and in print. I quoted Mencken, saying that "good work is always done in the middle ground, between the theories," a line that explains our time when writers are more than ever working in a wide-open literary landscape, one that allows for the creation of new and exciting work.

The talk was later published as an essay in "Menckeniana: A magazine about all things Mencken."
 

The talk itself begins at the 2:30 mark in the video.

The Fall 2022 issue of Menckeniana, No. 227, was the last to be published by the Enoch Pratt Free Library. It also included my essay, "The Babelobabuli," based on my talk given for the 2021 Mencken Memorial Day Lecture.

Baltimore Magazine published "The City that Writes," short features on 13 dead Baltimore writers, written by 13 living ones. The magazine asked me to write about H.L. Mencken, the curmudgeonly Sage of Baltimore.

"What are we to do with Mencken?" became the question that fueled my writing about him for Baltimore Magazine, and which continues to fuel my interest in H.L. Mencken, an important and controversial figure in his time and now.

The Los Angeles Review of Books is scheduled to publish my 3,700-word essay on Mencken on his birthday this year, January 29. "The Last of the Menckenians" considers the dwindling numbers of the Mencken Society and explores Mencken's value in today's literary culture.

From the essay:

"Aficionados don't read Mencken because they expect to agree with him. They read him for the adrenaline jolt. That jolt hits because Mencken delivers scorn with wit and reason. He vivifies his 21st-century fans as he has ever done for readers. 'He calls you a swine, and an imbecile,' wrote critic Walter Lippmann in 1926, 'and he increases your will to live.' "

This song biography of "Sitting on Top of the World" requires research of all sorts, including journalistic. My journalism background–including as a newspaper reporter for more than a decade–has served me as I've worked on the book proposal. I've interviewed performers who have recorded versions of "Sitting on Top of the World." In this image from Zoom, I talk with singer-songwriter Chris Smither, who released a seminal version of the song in 1984 and then, in his 70s, recorded a more mature and complex version for his 2018 album, CALL ME LUCKY.

This song biography requires me to do deep dives into documents. To complete the book proposal, I've read theses and dissertations about the blues and performers who have recorded "Sitting on Top of the World," listened to hours of audio from the 1972 Smithsonian Festival of American Folk Life, and–with assistance from a folklorist who worked with Walter Vinson, who wrote the song–dug into personal and professional documents pertaining to Vinson and the Mississippi Sheiks. This image shows a copyright sheet naming Walter Vinson and his partner Lonnie Chatmon as authors of the song. This documentation served in Walter Vinson's late-in-life battle to win back rights and royalties stolen from him when others claimed authorship of "Sitting on Top of the World."

Performers have recorded hundreds of versions of "Sitting on Top of the World" in a variety of genres. I've collected more than 50 versions by performers who are famous or obscure, from the earliest days of recorded blues to soundtrack versions to go with contemporary TV shows. I invite you to listen to the variety and nuance of the recordings. Click this link to go to Spotify where I've curated a small collection of versions.