In the Dark all Cats are Gray

Winner of the 2025 Orison Fiction Prize

Forthcoming publication by Orison Books, early 2027.

While many queer adolescents flee religious fundamentalism, the narrator of In the Dark All Cats Are Gray runs toward it, leaving his homophobic New Jersey hometown at fifteen to join Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in the hope that faith might change his sexuality. Swept up in the vast bal teshuva phenomenon of the 1970s, Herschel joins thousands of young Jews who abandon suburban comforts and secular ambitions for an all-consuming, ultra-Orthodox way of life in search of a messianic future. But his inner turmoil results in a double life, shaped by failed arranged marriages, conversion therapy, and rejection by both religious and gay communities for refusing full conformity. Drawing on the author’s own experience, this novel explores what communities demand in exchange for inclusion—and what a closeted teenager is willing to sacrifice. The narrator’s journey toward self-acceptance and hard-won liberation from the demands of religious and secular orthodoxies speaks to the enduring conflict between belonging and authenticity.

An essay summarizing my own journey was published in Tablet Magazine (June 2020), and I was a finalist in the 2024 Writers League of Texas Manuscript Contest.