Monthly Archives: November 2022

The Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, more commonly known as Charlotte Lit, is a nonprofit arts organization, but it is also a place.  Since its founding in 2015, Charlotte Lit has aspired to provide area writers with an inviting place to take writing classes and workshops, participate in conversations and readings, and write and reflect in a space that promotes creativity and conviviality.  For more information about Charlotte Lit, please click on the following link: https://www.charlottelit.org/about/

For a number of years, Charlotte Lit found rooms of its own (to paraphrase Virginia Wolfe) in the Midwood International and Cultural Center in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood.  Recently, however, Charlotte Lit learned that it needed to find a new place to call home.  I am pleased to report that it has just relocated to a new space not far from its original location. 

I recently contacted Paul Reali, Charlotte Lit’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, and asked him for more information about Charlotte Lit’s big move. Here is what he sent to me:

Have you heard the news? Charlotte Lit is moving on down the road! Our new digs at hygge coworking’s Belmont location are only a mile from our studios at the Midwood International and Cultural Center (MICC). It’s a bright, lively space with a creative vibe and lots of free parking. And, though we weren’t exactly eager to leave MICC, team hygge’s enthusiastic welcome has made the transition easy—dare I say, even a little fun.

Strangely, moving to hygge is a little like returning to our coworking roots. Shortly after finishing a PhD in mythology, Charlotte Lit cofounder Kathie Collins found herself longing for the kind of “synergetic” community she’d experienced in graduate school, so she set out to build one. After searching long and hard for affordable space, she lucked into a beautiful, light-filled re-purposed classroom at MICC and set out her shingle as August Moon Creative Co-op. The original plan was to recruit 6-8 people to share space, rent, and creative energy. Coworking was a relatively new concept in Charlotte at the time, however. Kathie had just one taker. Me.

Fortunately, we discovered a shared passion for writing and a desire to create a literary center focused on offering the kind of creative writing classes and literature-based programming largely missing from Charlotte’s arts landscape. In early 2016, August Moon went dark and Charlotte Lit was born. Since then, we’ve built a nonprofit organization that now offers more than 100 writing classes and two dozen special events each year. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve such a feat without the foundation MICC provided us in our first six years, and we’ll remain forever grateful for the center and all the friends we made there.

Alas, times change. Development comes for all, especially in Plaza Midwood. MICC was sold in 2021, with all tenant leases ending in June 2023. We searched far and wide for affordable studio/office space with adequate parking but quickly realized Charlotte’s commercial real estate market doesn’t exactly cater to nonprofit arts organizations with limited budgets. We also realized we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. We thrived in MICC’s collaborative environment during our first six years; perhaps coworking was the solution we had been gravitating toward all along.

At hygge coworking Belmont, we’ve found a new creative community in a central location that will allow us to continue serving a diverse cross-section of Charlotte—and all the features essential to Lit’s success: affordability, accessibility, parking, the right vibe. Best of all, we’ve found a management team dedicated to making us feel at home. When Kathie and I first met hygge owner Garrett Titchy, he said: we want you here and we’ll make it work. He and his staff have done just that!

Our staff began working at hygge in November. We’ll hold in-person classes in the new space beginning in January. Check the new space out beforehand at our annual holiday party on December 14. We’ll have music and mingling, drinks and snacks. We hope we’ll have you, too. Please let us know you’re coming, here: https://charlottelit.configio.com/pd/132/holiday-party. See you soon!

I know that I speak for everyone in Storied Charlotte in wishing Paul Reali, Kathie Collins, and everyone else associated with Charlotte Lit all the best as they settle into their new home. 

Thanksgiving and family reunions go hand in hand.  This pairing is reflected in Lydia Maria Child’s famous Thanksgiving poem “Over the River and Through the Wood,” which first appeared in Child’s 1844 book, Flowers for Children.  This poem is all about children traveling through the woods in order to visit their grandparents on Thanksgiving Day.  As is stated in one of the stanzas, “When Grandmother sees us come, / she will say, ‘O, dear, the children are here, / Bring a pie for everyone.’” 

The topic of family reunions is of special interest to Charlotte poet Grace Ocasio. In fact, her 2020 poetry collection is titled Family Reunion.  For more information about this collection, please click on the following link:  https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/family-reunion-poetry-by-grace-c-ocasio

I recently contacted Grace and asked her if any of the poems in Family Reunion have connections to Thanksgiving.  She said yes, and she shared the following story with me:

Thanksgiving wasn’t Thanksgiving unless we (my family and I) attended one of Great-Aunt Esther’s family gatherings.  Of course, she wasn’t the one cooking on these occasions—it was my Great-Uncle Calvin who prepared all the foods.  As soon as we walked through Great-Aunt Esther’s door, we could smell the goodness of all the great food. There was sliced ham, turkey roasted golden-brown crisp, string beans, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, and a panoply of cakes and pies.

After we had all eaten, some of us got up to dance.  The Bump was the latest dance craze then.  My female cousins giggled attempting to execute other dances besides The Bump while my male cousins stood on the sidelines watching.  Uncle Arnold, fresh from South Carolina, one of the few relations coming up to New York from the South, performed a simple dance of placing his hands on his belt and slightly pulling up his pants while stepping from side to side.  Again, there were giggles from my female cousins.  Uncle Arnold’s dance might have passed for just enough movement on Soul Train.

Bored after a while from dancing, I’d wander around Aunt Esther’s three-storied house, gazing at family photos.  Chastity, one of my cousins, loomed larger than life in one of the photos, posing like a model with hands on her hips, her right leg extended slightly with her right foot tilted in front of her left foot.  In a different photo, Tanya, her older sister, sat on her father’s shoulder. She looked to be about four years old.  These are the memories that linger, tease me, and turn on like an old television show when I least expect them.

I then asked Grace for permission to reprint the poem in which she wrote about spending Thanksgiving with her Aunt Esther, and she kindly agreed: 

I thank Grace for sharing her poem and her memories of celebrating Thanksgiving at her Aunt Esther’s home in Mount Vernon, New York, and I wish everyone in Storied Charlotte a happy Thanksgiving. 

Charlotte children’s author Alicia D. Williams has a new picture book that came out this fall.  Titled The Talk, this powerful and timely book is illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu and published by Simon & Schuster. The Talk tells the story of Jay, a young Black boy who is growing up in an American city with his tight-knit family and his regular group of neighborhood friends. He likes pretending to be a superhero, skateboarding with his friends, and listening to his grandfather’s stories.  In the beginning of the story, he is brimming with energy and joy. 

At first, Jay is more or less oblivious to the realities of racial prejudice, but as he matures, his parents and grandparents take him aside and talk to him about how to respond to racial profiling and other forms of prejudice that Black children, especially Black boys, often encounter when they make the transition from childhood to pre-adolescence. The Talk is a book about racism, but at its core, it is a celebration of a loving Black family. All of the family members in The Talk do everything they can to protect their boy as he grows up.

After reading The Talk, I wanted to know more about what motivated Alicia to write this book.  I contacted her and asked her for more information about how she came to write The Talk.  Here is what she sent to me:

The subject of the talk has been in my mind for several years. Yet, I didn’t think I should write the story because of potential blind spots as a woman. I held no experience living as a Black male nor had I raised one. But I raised a girl and knew my worries were almost the same. I gave my own daughter the talk when shopping, when she got her driver’s license, and when she stayed at Airbnb’s. Still, I tried to give the story away to male peers. Even tried to enlist a male poet to co-write it. Eventually, I let it go figuring the story will ride the wind and land at the hands of the right writer.

In 2020, I, along with so many others, was deeply impacted by George Floyd’s and Ahmaud Aubrey’s murder, as well as the last words of Elijah McCain. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus. But one night when I did manage to rest, a little chatty voice woke me and wouldn’t let me rest until I grabbed a pen and paper. The boy, the character Jay, introduced me to his friends, family, and everything he was proud of. Then, those same moments of pride came with a warning or a talk. The story literally unfolded that night.

The interesting backstory of writing this story is the chatty boy that woke me. I recognized him. He was, in fact, a little boy who attended the independent school that I taught at. He was one of the small percentages of Black boys attending lower school. And from the start of kindergarten, he was always being pulled out into the hallway and given a talk for being too wiggly, too chatty, too much. I had noticed that the other kindergarteners were just as wiggly, chatty, and too much. This talk for him had carried on to first, second, and third grade. I realized that the talk given at the school was indeed given so that he could manage himself at a predominantly white institution.

What I am no longer teaching, my experiences and all that I’m exposed to direct the stories I tell. For instance, just a few weeks ago, I was shopping at the Arboretum and my car was stopped by security. The security guard prompted me to roll down my window and then began asking if I was lost or knew where I was going. This, no doubt, was racial profiling. I realize that had this been an older “Jay,” the outcome might have been different.

The Talk is Alicia’s fourth children’s book. Alicia burst on the children’s literature scene in 2019 with the publication of her novel Genesis Begins Again.  She received both a Newbery Honor Award and the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for this novel. She has quickly followed up her novel with two picture book biographies of prominent African American women: Jump at the Sun:  The True-Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston and Shirley Chisholm Dares: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress. For more information about Alicia and her books, please click on the following link:  https://www.aliciadwilliams.com/  In just four years, Alicia has established herself as one of Storied Charlotte’s leading children’s authors.

Joseph Bathanti, a former North Carolina Poet Laureate and a one-time resident of Charlotte, recently contacted me about a new film project that deals with veterans from North Carolina.  Titled Brothers Like These, this film tells the story of a creative writing class that Joseph taught to a group of veterans.  Given that Veterans Day is just around the corner, now is a perfect time to spotlight this film and the veterans whose voices are featured in the film.  I contacted Joseph and asked him for more information about the film and his work with North Carolina veterans.  I also asked him to comment on the experiences of veterans from the Charlotte area. Here is what Joseph sent to me:

During my stint as North Carolina Poet Laureate, from 2012-2014, my signature project was working with returning combat veterans, all veterans, really, and their families to harvest their stories through poems, short stories, memoirs, plays, you-name-it. In 2014, I teamed with the extraordinary Dr. Bruce Kelly, now my great friend, a primary-care physician at Charles George VA Medical Center; and, in 2016, he and I co-founded the creative writing program there at the VA for Vietnam veterans with PTSD.

A very short film about that program was released in July of this year. It’s titled Brothers Like These, produced by Red Light Films & The Documentary Group and directed by Academy Award-winning director, Ross Kaufman. You can also read “The Church of Classroom B” on Thrive Global. What happened at Charles George is not about Bruce and me, but about those men, all from North Carolina mountain counties, who had literally stayed silent and tortured for half a century about their service in Vietnam, and the cruel reception they received upon return to the U.S, until they opened up on paper. I’m greatly oversimplifying the story, but as I say in “The Church of Classroom B,” I have never seen such a miraculous transformation in nearly 46 years of teaching creative writing, and the film says it all.

Thousands of men and women from Charlotte and Mecklenburg County served in the military, in a variety of capacities, during the Vietnam War, and 105 gave their lives. In the very heart of Charlotte, at Thompson Park on East 3rd Street, is the Mecklenburg County Vietnam Veterans Memorial. What’s more, I hope it goes without saying that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are home to thousands of additional veterans from WWII, the Korean War, and, of course, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – many of whom struggle with PTSD and would profit from a writing program – not to mention the thousands that lost their lives in those wars. Charlotte hosts two VA clinics, and local colleges and universities all support veterans upon their reentry from the military. Johnson C. Smith University has the Veteran’s Hub; the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has a Veterans Services Office; Queens University, has a Student Veterans Association; and Central Piedmont Community College, its Military Families, and Veterans Services.

When I was just beginning my work with veterans, I wrote, out of the blue, for advice to Ron Capps, the founder and director of the Veterans Writing Project in Washington, D.C. Ron, a combat veteran who has been to five wars and a fine writer himself, served 25 years in the Army and Army Reserve. He instantly replied to this perfect stranger: “Your target audience will be found in every imaginable venue in the state. You’ll find them and reach them in schools, hospitals, and Veterans Services Organizations … old folks homes, on and around military bases of course. Everywhere.” Including Charlotte. But they can often be invisible.

I commend Joseph and Bruce Kelly for providing the veterans in their class with opportunities to give voice to their experiences.  As we observe Veterans Day here in Storied Charlotte, it is important to recognize that our community’s veterans and their families have powerful stories to tell and important insights to share.