After he was released from Sing Sing, Julio Medina was expected to resume his career in the drug trade. James Houghton, after graduating from Harvard, was expected to enter—and maybe one day run—his family’s multinational business. Each had other plans for himself. Medina and Houghton are among the contributors to The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood, an anthology  of 31 first-person stories about what it means to be a man in America today. Other contributors include a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Poet Laureate, a pro football Hall of Famer, and just regular guys. 

They will take turns reading from their essays, which will show how their lives may be completely different outwardly, but overlap in surprising and unexpected ways. The evening reading and discussion is part of the “Good Men: Sparking a National Discussion Series” that pairs Real Stories essayists who share the quest to discover today’s good man.

Medina and Hougton will read from their essays, after which Joel Schwartzberg, author The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad, will moderate a question-and-answer session.