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It would be too obvious to say it was kismet that we had both chosen Grand Street—Ben Sonnenberg for his legendary literary journal, we for the first issue of our future legendary literary journal. Yet Amy and I couldn’t ignore the connection or the chance to meet the man behind New York’s premier literary magazine. In 1981, disco beats were dying, punk rock shouts were getting louder, and Ben Sonnenberg put out the first Grand Street issue featuring works by Ted Hughes, Alice Munro and P.J. Kavanaugh to name a few.

I had spoken to Mr. Sonnenberg (he hates being called Ben by strangers) on the phone after exchanging an email or two. We wanted to talk to an expert, and he agreed meet us to discuss starting our journal. Sonnenberg greeted us in the foyer of his exquisite Riverside Drive apartment and introduced us to his dog—a cute, high-pitched, black fur ball of energy named Lucy. We followed his eletrolux wheelchair into a sun-filled sitting room decorated with books, beautiful tchotchkes and paintings. (Were those original Ben Shahn or Edward Hopper paintings? we wondered in the elevator down.) Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in the ‘70s, Sonnenberg’s condition worsened over the years, first making him a paraplegic and then, in the ‘90s, a quadriplegic.

We sat down, ready to fire away questions. But, the first question came from his lips. Why had we chosen Grand Street as the first street to launch our journal? After fumbling about sense of place and people and the reciprocal relationship that shapes them both, our final answer came down to diversity. This, he told us, was the same reason he christened his journal Grand Street.

That wasn’t the answer I expected. It's been said, by Sonnenberg himself, in his memoir “Lost Property” that he chose the name Grand Street because that is where his parents met. It turns out, that’s true too. His parents grew up on the eastern part of Grand, then an enclave of Jewish immigrants. Sonnenberg’s father, known as the man who made the field of public relations what it is today, moved with his wife and their daughter to “a very grand private house” at 19 Gramercy Park before Ben was born. Though Sonnenberg grew up privileged, he took regular walks with his father down Grand Street, listening to stories of who came from where, learning that his maternal grandfather Simon Caplan had been known as the unofficial mayor of Grand Street, and hearing the story of how his parents met at a dance at the Henry Street settlement.

As his memoir suggests, Sonnenberg’s real connection to Grand Street other than his father/son walks and talks, didn’t come until the ‘70s. As a young man, he spent money frivolously, got kicked out of prep schools, slept with women he shouldn’t have, moved to Spain and worked briefly with the CIA. After all that, Sonnenberg eventually made it back to Grand Street—not in search of lost roots, but because it was where artists lived.