Monthly Archives: June 2021

Going to the Beach with Cheris Hodges, Erika Montgomery, and Kim Wright

June 27, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I recently overheard two women talking about their summer vacation plans while I was browsing at Park Road Books.  One of the women was about to head off for the Outer Banks the next week.  She said to her friend, “I’m looking for a good beach book,” and her friend started recommending different titles.  They eventually wandered out of earshot, but I had a pretty good sense of the sort of book the woman was hoping to find.  She wanted an accessible, entertaining book that would be fun to read while she was on vacation.  She wanted a book that would help her escape her everyday life for a few hours.  In her case, she wanted a book about the pleasures we often associate with the summer months.  I have no idea what beach book the woman ended up buying, but I do have recommendations for anybody else who is looking for new beach books. 

I am pleased to recommend three new beach books by Charlotte writers. Cheris Hodges’s Open Your Heart isa romantic-suspense novel that relates to both Charlotte and Charleston, South Carolina.  Erika Montgomery’s A Summer to Remember isa mystery in which both Hollywood and Cape Cod come into play.  Kim Wright’s The Longest Day of the Year is a novel about four women whose lives intersect while staying at a small beach in South Carolina.  I contacted all three of these authors and asked them about their new novels and their experiences as Charlotte writers.

Here is what Cheris Hodges sent to me:

Open Your Heart is the third book in the Richardson Sisters series, and much of the story takes place in Charlotte. I think Charlotte is such a rich place to write about because the city is evolving and changing so much. In this book we meet Yolanda Richardson who is running from a horrific event that she’d witnessed in Richmond, VA. When her father and youngest sister, Nina, find out that killers are after her, they hire a bodyguard to protect her.  Charles “Chuck” Morris knows better than to fall for the fiery Yolanda, but with danger pushing them together, can they resist the temptation?

Another great thing about Charlotte is all of my writer friends who are here. There is an active community of romance writers in the city and we get together often for writing sprints and brainstorming. Pre-pandemic Sunday afternoons were spent at Amelie’s pounding out words, cleaning up plots and creating meet cutes. Writing is such a solitary gig that it’s always amazing to have people in your corner who understand what you’re going through and are willing to help you make your story pop. Charlotte is a quiet, but powerful literary city. And it’s full of so many stories.

Here is what Erika Montgomery sent to me:

I always refer to A Summer to Remember as my love letter to Hollywood and movies—though it didn’t start out that way. It was the “idea seed” of a sealed letter, never delivered, and how someone might find themselves feeling cosmically obliged to see that letter finally arrive at its destination that first drew me into the story. Of course, like all novels, the plot shifted in many unseen ways after that and became a story about a woman looking to find the identity of her father and uncovering instead a secret season of her late mother’s life with a famous Hollywood couple on Cape Cod. My main character, Frankie, owns a Hollywood memorabilia store, and the theme of memories and how we hold them as a way to hold on to people we’ve lost is a central one in the book. I lost my mother while I was writing the novel and I believe that my need to honor the joy of her memory informed the story as much as my grief did. 

When I first moved to Charlotte in the summer of 2009, I had no idea I would find such a remarkable community of writers, all of whom graciously folded me, a new writer, into their universe. In fact, a group of us, who are all still close and have toured with our books together over the years, used to refer to ourselves as The Panera Bread Society, for our regular meet-ups to brainstorm over WIPs and the writing life (and life in general, too!). Halfway through the writing of A Summer to Remember, I moved with my family to Maryland and even though I am no longer living in Charlotte, my ties to the writing community there remain as strong as ever. I continue to be in constant touch with my very dear writer friends, and we have plans to tour again as the world starts to emerge from the pandemic. If that isn’t a testament to the strength and lasting power of Charlotte’s writing community, I don’t know what is!

Here is what Kim Wright sent to me:

The Longest Day of the Year is in some ways my love letter to Cherry Grove, SC, where I’ve gone since my parents bought a condo there way back in 1979 when I was in grad school.  My kids grew up spending summers there and now so do my grandkids. I love the gestalt of the place in general and it’s taken on even more meaning for me since my mom died this past spring. I wrote The Longest Day of the Year for her, and I’m really grateful she got to read it before she passed. It was her favorite of my books but that probably has as much to do with the (relative) lack of sex as it does with the setting!

I got the idea for the book in a single afternoon as I was taking my daily walk to the pier and back. I noticed all the groups of ladies sitting huddled together in their beach chairs and ball hats, gossiping and reading, and I was thinking about how there’s something confessional about the beach. You loosen up and say things there, even to (or especially to) strangers that you’d never normally say out loud.  And it also occurred to me that whenever you cross those dunes, you’re not only there in the moment but you’re almost transported back in time to all the other times you’ve been to the same place.  There’s a timelessness about looking at the water. When I’m there I’m 66, the age I am now but I also have memories of being there at 22 and 37 and 50 and all the other years. So I got the idea of four women at very different points in their lives—but all at a turning point of some sort—sitting on the beach telling each other their stories and added the additional challenge of having all four story lines play out in the course of a single day. June 20. The summer solstice.

As for being an author in Charlotte, I think the city is underrated as a literary hub. I’ve met lots of wonderful writer friends in the city and there are places like Charlotte Lit, where I teach, and the Queens MFA program which do a great job of drawing like-minded people together. I also don’t think Charlotte’s sheer friendliness gets enough credit. Some towns have the reputation of being cities with a thriving art and literary scene but are so exclusive and snobby that it’s hard to break in.  That wasn’t my experience here.

All three of the writers featured in this blog post have their own website.  For readers who want to know more about Cheris Hodges, please click on the following link:  https://thecherishodges.com/  For readers who want to know more about Erika Montgomery, please click of the following link: https://erikamontgomery.com/  For readers who want to know more about Kim Wright, please click on the following link:  http://www.kimwright.org/

In my interactions with these writers, I have a sense that they all see themselves as belonging to a community of readers and writers…it’s a community that I call Storied Charlotte.

Tags: beach bookCharlotte writersnovel

Charlotte’s Brandon Reese and His Cave Dada Picture Books

June 20, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

When I visited Park Road Books the other day, I took a look at their display of recent books by area authors, and that’s where I saw Brandon Reese’s latest picture book, Cave Dada Picky Eater.  I enjoyed Brandon’s Cave Dada, which came out in 2020, so I decided to check out his new book.  As soon as I picked it up, I noticed a cover sticker with the words “Autographed Copy” on it.  The person behind the counter told me that Brandon had recently stopped by the store to sign copies of his book.  She mentioned that he didn’t just sign the books—he also included original drawings along with his signature.  She was right.  I opened the book, and in the front, I saw a wonderful sketch of Cave Dada and his son.  Needless to say, the book is now part of my picture book collection. 

Brandon’s Cave Dada picture books are funny accounts of the misadventures of a Stone Age father and his toddler son Baba.  In the first book, Baba wants his father to read him a bedtime book, which takes more effort than one might expect since Baba’s books are made out of stone.  Cave Dada resists because he is tired from hunting and gathering all day, but of course Baba wins the day, or in this case, the night.  In the process, Cave Dada accidentally discovers how to make a fire.  In the second book, it’s morning and Baba wants an egg for breakfast, but Cave Dada is all out of eggs. What follows is a series of mishaps as Cave Dada tries to entice his son to eat something else for breakfast.   In the end, Cave Dada finds an egg and accidentally invents the omelet in the process of cooking it. 

While creating these books, Brandon draws on his own experiences as a father.  His own son is now a teenager, but Brandon remembers well the parenting experiences he had when his son was little.  These experiences are reflected in the humorous adventures of Cave Dada and Baba.   As is stated on the dust jacket for Cave Dada Picky Eater, Brandon “has ample experience cooking breakfast for picky eaters.”

In creating his picture books, Brandon also draws on the support of other children’s authors and illustrators who live in the Charlotte area.  I asked him for more information about this support network, and here is what he sent to me:

My goal has always been to be an author and illustrator of picture books. I struggled for quite some time trying to gain traction in the industry. Eventually (and thankfully!) I found SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and joined a local critique group here. Charlotte is rife with talented and published kid-lit authors and illustrators. It’s a wonderful, supportive community that’s certainly aided my career. 

If I remember correctly, CAVE DADA was the first manuscript I brought to my critique group. I figured I was on the right track when it was read aloud and everyone laughed at the right spots. Eventually, it was sold in a 2-book deal with Chronicle Books. The second book, CAVE DADA PICKY EATER, just came out this April… just in time for Father’s Day!

For readers who want to know more about Brandon and his picture books, please click on the following link:  https://www.brandonreese.com/about/  For readers who want to know more about the local chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, please click on the following link: https://carolinas.scbwi.org/  For readers who are interested in Father’s Day stories that have connections to Storied Charlotte, I highly recommend Brandon’s Cave Dada picture books.

Tags: picture books

Celebrating the South’s LGBTQ Literary Tradition with Paula Martinac

June 14, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Given that June is Pride Month, I thought that now would be an especially good time to celebrate the South’s LGBTQ literary tradition and that Paula Martinac would be an especially good person to write on this topic. 

Paula is one of Charlotte’s leading LGBTQ fiction writers.  In recent years, Paula has published three novels about lesbian characters who have Southern connections.  The first of these novels, The Ada Decades, came out in 2017.  Set in Charlotte, this novel covers the evolving relationship Ada Shook, a school librarian, and Cam Lively, a teacher in the Charlotte public schools.  In 2019, Paula published Clio Rising, a novel about a young woman who leaves her home in North Carolina and relocates to New York in 1983 so that she can pursue a career in publishing and because she feels that she can live openly as a lesbian in New York.  Paula’s most recent novel, Testimony, came out this January.  It tells the story of Gen Rider, a professor who teaches at a private college for women in rural Virginia in the early 1960s and who becomes the target of an anti-LGBTQ campaign.   For more information about Paula’s writings, please click on this link:  http://paulamartinac.com/

I recently contacted Paula and asked her about how her novels relate to other books by Southern LGBTQ writers.  Here is what she sent to me:

The South has a rich LGBTQ literary tradition, including luminaries such as Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, Truman Capote, and Dorothy Allison. Novelist Michael Nava says of writers from this region, “Southern writers have a different and compelling story to tell us about the experience of being queer.” 

Although I’m originally from the North, I came of age as a writer reading authors like McCullers and Eudora Welty, so living in the South didn’t feel “foreign” to me. My novel-in-stories, The Ada Decades, set in Charlotte, came about by roaming through my neighborhood of NoDa and soaking up the atmosphere of the old cotton mill village. In the book, a white school librarian named Ada Shook grapples with the intersections of race, queer sexuality, and class over the course of seven decades from 1947 to 2015. She and her partner, Cam, must be closeted because of their jobs at a local public school, but they also enjoy a fulfilling private life with a circle of close friends. 

Writing Ada required a lot of research, and I leaned on works by queer Southern writers. Novelist Jim Grimsley’s How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Lessons of a Racist Childhood is a powerful memoir about growing up white, poor, and gay in eastern North Carolina during Jim Crow and the early days of school integration. Grimley’s gradual realization about how sheltered he’d been from Black children struck a chord with me—I grew up in Pittsburgh in a white suburb and first met a Black girl in high school.

Another Southern queer writer whose work informed mine was Lillian D. Smith (1897-1966). A white lesbian, Smith is best remembered for writing Strange Fruit, a novel about miscegenation. But she also authored a nonfiction book called Killers of the Dream, a keen critique of racism and segregation that is as relevant today as it was in 1949 when it was published.

I also turned again to Carson McCullers, who lived in Charlotte in the late 1930s while she was writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. As a white woman, I learned as much as I could from McCullers about writing characters of color in an authentic way. There’s an excellent new book by Jenn Shapland that explores McCullers’s queerness, titled My Autobiography of Carson McCullers; it was shortlisted for a National Book Award and won top LGBTQ literary prizes.

For those interested in Southern LGBTQ experience, I’d also recommend these compelling works of fiction:

  • Dorothy Allison, Trash—stories that explore being “a cross-eyed working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language, and hope” in South Carolina
  • Leona Beasley, Something Better Than Home—novel about growing up queer in a religious Black family in Georgia
  • Meredith Russo, If I Was Your Girl—YA about a white transgender girl who transfers to a new school in Tennessee
  • Bryan Washington, Lot—interconnected stories about the coming of age of a young Black/Latino gay man in Houston

My thanks go to Paula for her reflections on the Southern LGBTQ literary tradition.  The LGBTQ movement has a political dimension, but it also has a literary side.  Paula reminds us that there are many great literary works that deal with the Southern LGBTQ experience, and one way to celebrate Pride Month is to read these works.  As Paula acknowledges, her novels are part of this larger LGBTQ literary movement/tradition.  Storied Charlotte is a richer place because of the contributions of Paula and other LGBTQ writers.

Tags: lesbian charactersLGBTQ fiction writersnovelsSouthern LGBTQ experience

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and Charlotte’s Champagne Selman—A Perfect Match

June 07, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I am a big supporter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a program that provides children birth-4yr with free books.  When Dolly founded this program in 1995, she set out to deliver free books to young children living in Sevier County, Tennessee, which is the county where she grew up.  The program was such a hit that Dolly decided to expand its reach.  She therefore joined forces with literacy organizations around the country in her efforts to provide more children with free books. 

In 2015 Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library formed a partnership with North Carolina’s Smart Start of Mecklenburg Program, and two years later, the partnership was expanded to serve families throughout the state. When the news of this partnership was announced, Dolly said, “I’m thrilled that my Imagination Library is going to be offered to so many children in North Carolina.  Working together we can help children dream more, learn more, care more, and be more.”  For more information about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, please click on the following link:  https://imaginationlibrary.com/  

Champagne Selman took on the role of coordinating Charlotte’s participation in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 2015, and she has had remarkable success in this effort.  I first met Champagne a few years ago through my work as the organizer of my annual Seuss-a-Thon.  Champagne participated in this event, and we had a chance to talk about our mutual interest in promoting early childhood literacy efforts.  She told me about her role as Literacy Coordinator of Smart Start’s Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, and I was intrigued.  Since that conversation, I have taken an ongoing interest Champagne’s literacy work in the Charlotte community.

I recently interviewed Champagne about her involvement in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.  She shared with me her admiration of Dolly Parton.  As she put it, “Dolly didn’t let her fame take her from her roots.  She remembered how hard life was for her father because he couldn’t read or write, and she was determined to do everything she could to bring books and reading to as many children as she possibly could.” 

Champagne said that she relates on a personal level to Dolly’s mission to get books into the hands of young children. “I am the oldest of seven children,” she said, “and having access to books is one of the ways that our mother was able to manage raising all of us.  She taught all seven of us the alphabet by reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to us.  My interest in literacy education is tied to my own childhood experiences of reading books with my mother.”

In addition to coordinating the day-to-day operation of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Mecklenburg County, Champagne engages in various outreach efforts to inform parents about this program. She said, “I am so pleased that we now provide free books to over 29,000 children in our area.  That’s 41% of the children birth-4yr in our county.  But my goal is to reach all of the children.”  This summer, Champagne and Smart Start has extended its outreach to include little libraries scattered around the Charlotte area.  According to Champagne, “These libraries will allow us to distribute new books directly to children, and help us educate parents about this opportunity for their family.”  For more information about this initiative, please click on the following link:  https://smartstartofmeck.org/dolly-partons-imagination-library-opens-little-libraries-in-eleven-charlotte-locations/

Champagne’s official title at Smart Start is “Literacy Coordinator,” and she sees her work with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library through the lens of early literacy.  She told me, “Shared reading is a strong indicator of early literacy, and the Imagination Library makes it easier for families to come together around a book.”  I commend Champagne and everyone else involved with Mecklenburg County’s Smart Start Program for bringing  Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to Storied Charlotte. 

Tags: literacy education