About Chad Stamm
Writing is a passport. It's a license to go, to see, to visit and to explore. Whether it's the far corner of the globe or the other hemisphere of your brain, writing lets you visit with the most venerable of characters or to build villains that were never built before. You can travel time. Drive through dimensions. Wander and wonder. The exploration is endless.
If this all feels phantasmal, let me bring you back to reality. Writing also comes with responsibility. Your job is to go to those places and report back. Your task is to try to understand and then convey that understanding to others. It's to spark curiosity and to call your readers to action. It's to move everyone outside the comfort zone, even if it's for only a minute, even if it's just for a page or two.
What's all this have to do with me?
I don't know. But my hope is my work shows an honest commitment to the exploration mentioned in the first paragraph and a dedication to sharing the perspective that's referenced in the second. Unlike so many institutions in this world that claim to have the answers to life's biggest questions, I'm satisfied to say "I don't know" if I don't know. I'm also willing to go beyond the doctrines of the gatekeepers that would have us believe all the exploration is over, that we should just take their word as truth, someone else's word, rather than finding it on our own. Good writing prompts us to ask questions more than provide us with the answers, and I believe we're all obligated to find those answers.
"Who you are is a product of what you’ve done plus where you’ve been divided by how long you’ve been there. Time is the greatest variable, so do what you want and go wherever you can, while you can."
With two beat-up suitcases and a small backpack loaded into the trunk of a cab, I left LaGuardia, cut through the borough of Queens, and down under the East River. We turned south, and all I could see was city in the drizzly dusk. The taillights in front of us turned the raindrops on the windshield into tiny rubies. The headlights behind were diamonds. My life was going to bedazzle with baseball games and Broadway shows. New Year’s ball drops and summer subway rides to Central Park for wine and cheese on the green. I paid the cabbie and pulled the suitcases out of the back, bouncing the biggest one up to the top step. I pressed the little black button next to her name.
- The Mayor of Bleecker Street