I went to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 because I’d won a writing prize, and with that prize came an invitation to a luncheon and awards ceremony. Each honoree was allowed to bring a guest, and I invited my friend Patrick Ryan. We boarded the subway downtown and took it all the way to 155th Street, he in his summer suit and me in my best dress. I’m not a New Yorker by any stretch, and Washington Heights was unfamiliar to me. The Academy’s Beaux-Arts building, the long, sloping hill of Trinity Cemetery, and the…