Lev Raphael | The Smart Set https://www.thesmartset.com A magazine of arts & culture from Drexel University Sun, 21 May 2023 17:42:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 My Brother is Toast https://www.thesmartset.com/my-brother-is-toast/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-brother-is-toast https://www.thesmartset.com/my-brother-is-toast/#respond Mon, 22 May 2023 11:30:00 +0000 https://www.thesmartset.com/?p=60455 I killed my brother.  That was in my first novel, Winter Eyes, a story of Holocaust survivors hiding their horrific past from their son. I made that queer main character an only child. Boom — he was gone.  If I could have erased my brother in real life, magically, or with a Marvel superhero power, I […]

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]]> https://www.thesmartset.com/my-brother-is-toast/feed/ 0 Portrait of a Lady https://www.thesmartset.com/portrait-of-a-lady/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=portrait-of-a-lady https://www.thesmartset.com/portrait-of-a-lady/#respond Mon, 28 Mar 2022 12:23:39 +0000 https://www.thesmartset.com/?p=57446 I was only about ten when my mother returned from visiting her aunt in a lavish New Jersey rest home and said, “That’s my worst nightmare — not knowing who I am.”  I’d been on one of these visits myself to what looked like a Colonial mansion out of a movie, and was dazzled by […]

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