I had an absolute blast last week as a Legacy Fulbright Ambassador giving a Fulbright Talk to faculty and international education administrators at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, telling them about my own experiences and urging them to apply. You too, US faculty and admins! Applications for the ’26-’27 cycle are available.
Finally, a children’s book written by a child. In this adventure fantasy about a multiracial family (like ours!), a teenage girl and her twin brothers are sucked through a whirlpool to a strange island full of mysterious inhabitants and must figure out how to get back home–but not before helping their new friends battle the dreaded Pineapple Pirates.
When I.B. Stanley was 8, he told me he wanted to write a “real book” like my published plays. I told him fine, let’s do it. He wasn’t able to type yet, so our process was to start with my asking him to come up with a protagonist and a basic storyline. I suggested limiting it to 10 short chapters, and explained that each chapter should end in some kind of cliffhanger to encourage the reader to keep turning pages to find out what happens next.
After a few days, he told me who the characters were and what should happen in the first chapter, as specifically as possible, at my urging–what are their names, how old are they, where do they live? We had done a lot of camping, backpacking, and canoeing, so I wasn’t surprised that those elements came into play in his imagination.
I’d then type up a draft, print it out and read it to him. He would approve or reject each element and tell me specific changes to make and I’d make them. When he was satisfied with a chapter, we moved on to the next one. And thus we proceeded over the course of about a month.
He then wanted me to draw a picture for each chapter. I am not a visual artist in any way. I’d draw a pencil sketch for a chapter and get his approval or disapproval, working through the drawings the same way we’d worked on the chapters.
The story is his, the title is his, he approved all of the content. I just acted as his mechanism for making it concrete. We self-published it privately on amazon, ordered a bunch of author copies and gave them out to friends, family and teachers. Seven years have passed since then and we’ve now taken it live.
Our latest review is live! This month, we review the action romantic-comedy Dhoom Dhaam (meaning Fanfare), rated UA 13+, streaming now on Netflix.
With me, the comedy is the test is always, is it funny? Did I laugh? And the answer is yes. My favorite part is when they find out where Charlie is hidden . . . And there’s the scene where the groom has to fill in for a dancer at a bachelorette party. I’d never seen that in a movie before.
I’m extremely honored to be on the Advisory Committee of the Film and Content Creators Festival & Award Ceremony, and to be the keynote speaker at this hybrid event for short fictional and documentary films and creative content, to be held at the Canopy by Hilton in Cannes, France on April 12th, 2025.
The event is being organized by the Institute of Engineering and Management in Kolkata and Smart Society, a US and Canada-based nonprofit with the goal of creating a pool of unique ideas and thoughts in the form of short, power-packed talks for propelling others to excel in their respective fields.
