Michael Jefry Stevens

Tina Barr earned a PhD in poetry and a tenured professorship at a small college, and then she met a jazz pianist.

“My husband was willing to do his work or die, so he spent years living in Brooklyn, sleeping on a futon rolled up under his piano,” Barr said. “He really was an example to me of how to be an artist, and so I feel like now I can call myself a writer.”

Michael Jefry Stevens stuttered badly when he was young, nearly died 20 years ago in a mugging and once declared bankruptcy.

So it’s a little odd to hear Stevens say he believes he’s the beneficiary of good karma.