Norman Birnbach |
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Photo: Paul D. Michaels
I'm an award-winning writer who has published more than a hundred op-eds, essays, short stories and articles. My work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, New York Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Militant Grammarian (they're actually quite reasonable), Splitsider, New York Magazine, CrimeReads, and other print and online publications. My debut novel, "Stealing Time," a time-travel jewelry heist co-authored with Tilia Klebenov Jacobs, is a Kindle Bestseller and was named a Claymore Top Pick at Killer Nashville 2024, a 2025 Falchion Finalist for Best Juvenile / Y.A., a 2025 Silver Falchion Award Judges’ Top Pick, and a 2005 Next Generation Indie Book Award YA Finalist. It is available here. Tilia and I have just published our second book, "Why Should I Trust You?" (Linden Tree Press, Sept. 30, 2025), a spooky middle-grade mystery about enemies-turned-allies, a century-old crime, and a demon cockroach with secrets of its own. We are working on our next project.
"Stealing Time" combines sci-fi with crime fiction, two favorite genres. My short story, "It's All Relative at the Space-Time Cafe," published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and in Israel's Tenth Dimension magazine), combines sci-fi, crime, humor and literary fiction but wasn't a time-travel story. "Space-Time Cafe" got good reviews except from one reader who expressed disappointed that the story didn't involve time travel. So I wrote novel in which time travel is an essential element, sending a teenager from 2020 back to 1980, where she teams up with her now-teenaged father.
Awards
In addition to the Claymore Top Pick, the Silver Falchion Finalist, and Silver Falchion Top Pick, and the Next Generation Finalist awards, several stories have received recognition. “Empty Nights” won Best of Show for Fiction in the 2019 Marblehead Literary Festival. "Waiting Room," "Shrine to the Cult of Joy” and "Wooden Kayak" received Honorable Mentions in Fiction in 2024, 2023 and 2016, respectively, from the Marblehead Literary Festival. ("Wooden Kayak," a ghost story that I originally told to my kids as a bedtime story, also appeared in Spaceports & Spidersilk Magazine).
"Shrine to the Cult of Joy," "Waiting Room," and "Homework Assignment #3," which appears in the Militant Grammarian, are part of a series of linked stories. (It occurs to me now that publishing a story called "Homework Assignment #3" in a journal called Militant Grammarian may turn off some readers if they think it's an actual grammar assignment -- it's not. "Homework Assignment #3" is a humorous dramatic monolog.)
Humor Pieces
My humor pieces often tackle hard-hitting topics such as geeks and fashion (Higgs Weldon: "Five Tips to Help Techies Embrace Fashion"; Barnes & Noble's "Grin & Tonic: "VintageTech" and Glossy News: "Lessons From This Year in Tech & Fashion"), parking (Boston Globe: "Parking at Logan Airport -- Now There's a Challenge" and Indianapolis Star: “A Toyota with a Mind of its Own”), family life (Wall Street Journal: “Manager’s Journal: Benchmarking the Joneses” and Boston Herald: “Gall in the Family”), sports (New York Times: “Let’s Make Phone Tag a Medal Event” & “Mets Memo: Pay ‘em When They Win” and Chicago Tribune: “Baseball Should Sing a New Tune”), among other topics.
My writing has been described by editors as having "great energy, good jokes, and obvious timeliness," "a great sense of wordplay," "smart and original," "not suitable for our needs at this time," and "try us again next time." One reviewer described a story of mine as being "nothing more than a medium to pack as many science jokes a possible into 2000 words." (Kids, don't try that at home.) Another review said my story, "reminds me of a Big Bang Theory episode on steroids." (That was meant as a compliment, not as an endorsement of juiced-up fiction.) I am also proud that an article I wrote in 1998 for the Philadelphia Inquirer was ranked No. 8th most popular of the day at a time when far fewer people were accessing articles on the Internet (so I don't know how they were able to rank popularity back then.) A piece I edited, “Sleep Tips from a 90-Year-Old Insomniac” by Naomi Birnbach was named one of "Rumpus Staff Favorites 2020" by Elissa Bassist, Funny Women editor at The Rumpus.
A native New Yorker, I now live outside Boston with my wife, three children and our dog, Taxi.
"Stealing Time" combines sci-fi with crime fiction, two favorite genres. My short story, "It's All Relative at the Space-Time Cafe," published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and in Israel's Tenth Dimension magazine), combines sci-fi, crime, humor and literary fiction but wasn't a time-travel story. "Space-Time Cafe" got good reviews except from one reader who expressed disappointed that the story didn't involve time travel. So I wrote novel in which time travel is an essential element, sending a teenager from 2020 back to 1980, where she teams up with her now-teenaged father.
Awards
In addition to the Claymore Top Pick, the Silver Falchion Finalist, and Silver Falchion Top Pick, and the Next Generation Finalist awards, several stories have received recognition. “Empty Nights” won Best of Show for Fiction in the 2019 Marblehead Literary Festival. "Waiting Room," "Shrine to the Cult of Joy” and "Wooden Kayak" received Honorable Mentions in Fiction in 2024, 2023 and 2016, respectively, from the Marblehead Literary Festival. ("Wooden Kayak," a ghost story that I originally told to my kids as a bedtime story, also appeared in Spaceports & Spidersilk Magazine).
"Shrine to the Cult of Joy," "Waiting Room," and "Homework Assignment #3," which appears in the Militant Grammarian, are part of a series of linked stories. (It occurs to me now that publishing a story called "Homework Assignment #3" in a journal called Militant Grammarian may turn off some readers if they think it's an actual grammar assignment -- it's not. "Homework Assignment #3" is a humorous dramatic monolog.)
Humor Pieces
My humor pieces often tackle hard-hitting topics such as geeks and fashion (Higgs Weldon: "Five Tips to Help Techies Embrace Fashion"; Barnes & Noble's "Grin & Tonic: "VintageTech" and Glossy News: "Lessons From This Year in Tech & Fashion"), parking (Boston Globe: "Parking at Logan Airport -- Now There's a Challenge" and Indianapolis Star: “A Toyota with a Mind of its Own”), family life (Wall Street Journal: “Manager’s Journal: Benchmarking the Joneses” and Boston Herald: “Gall in the Family”), sports (New York Times: “Let’s Make Phone Tag a Medal Event” & “Mets Memo: Pay ‘em When They Win” and Chicago Tribune: “Baseball Should Sing a New Tune”), among other topics.
My writing has been described by editors as having "great energy, good jokes, and obvious timeliness," "a great sense of wordplay," "smart and original," "not suitable for our needs at this time," and "try us again next time." One reviewer described a story of mine as being "nothing more than a medium to pack as many science jokes a possible into 2000 words." (Kids, don't try that at home.) Another review said my story, "reminds me of a Big Bang Theory episode on steroids." (That was meant as a compliment, not as an endorsement of juiced-up fiction.) I am also proud that an article I wrote in 1998 for the Philadelphia Inquirer was ranked No. 8th most popular of the day at a time when far fewer people were accessing articles on the Internet (so I don't know how they were able to rank popularity back then.) A piece I edited, “Sleep Tips from a 90-Year-Old Insomniac” by Naomi Birnbach was named one of "Rumpus Staff Favorites 2020" by Elissa Bassist, Funny Women editor at The Rumpus.
A native New Yorker, I now live outside Boston with my wife, three children and our dog, Taxi.
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