The Motion of Light in Water — Samuel R. Delany

In the bohemian sixties, a young writer tries to make sense of his life

With the poet Marilyn Hacker, Delany moves into a tenement on a dead-end street that the landlord reserves for interracial couples. Between playing folk music in the evenings at the same Greenwich Village coffee shop as Bob Dylan and preparing shrimp curry for W. H. Auden and Chester Khalman, who have accepted an invitation that night for dinner, Delany takes a stab at writing science fiction. This young prodigy would complete and sell five novels before he turned twenty-two! (And then have a nervous breakdown...) This beautifully written memoir is a testament to a neighborhood where experimentation was a way of life.