Storied Charlotte

Samis Rose Remembers

June 28, 2025 by Mark West

Last week I received an email message from my friend Mark Williams with the following re message: “An excellent memoir for Pride Month!” He went on to tell me about Samis Rose’s new memoir, Two of a Kind: A Love Story. As Mark put it, he helped his “friend Samis Rose edit and format an eBook of her ‘Thoughts’ (actually brief bits of memoir) about her life and particularly her love with Billie Rose.”

Intrigued, I set out to learn more about Samis and her new memoir, but I knew that I needed to move quickly in order to get my post up by June 30, since that is the last day of Pride Month. I immediately contacted Samis and asked her for more information about Two of a Kind. Here is what she sent to me:

I grew up in a small community in North Carolina. In Two of a Kind, I tell the story of growing up gay in the South, finding the love of my life, and then losing her all too soon to cancer. Told in a series of “Thoughts” rather than in one continuous narration, my observations and opinions are woven into my memories. Readers should expect empathy, humanity, and kindness among these pages, amid the challenges of living life as a Lesbian woman in a conservative society.

These writings all began because I needed something to occupy my time now that I am retired and wheelchair bound. I began to write about my memories and opinions. Having nowhere else to disseminate these little gems, I began sharing them with friends on Facebook as a sort of serial. They were well received, so I set out to turn them into a book. I had help with this project. The one person I need to thank is Mark Williams. He formatted and edited the book and encouraged me far beyond what I thought possible.

This is not your conventional book. It doesn’t have regular chapters. It doesn’t have murders or car chases…well, not many. The occurrences shared here are all from my life. Along the way, I became a skilled singer, juried craft show artist, Wimmin’s Festival vendor, raised and rescued various animals and made an appearance on a major game show in New York. Most importantly I shared 22 years with Billie, my real-life love story. These writings are small, self-contained nuggets that can be read at anytime, anywhere. Like real life, there are good moments and bad.

Charlotte has been my home for many years, and my writings draw deeply from that well….of wisdom, common courtesy and human empathy.

For readers who want to know more about Samis’s memoir, please click of this link: https://a.co/d/hIQm0eO

For readers who want see a slide show of the photos from Two of a Kind accompanied by Samis’s recording of a song from her album Dancin’ Slow, please click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTzysMEMqUY

For readers who are interested in the Billie and Samis Rose Papers at UNC Charlotte’s J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, please click on the following link: https://findingaids.charlotte.edu/repositories/4/resources/1385

While reading several of Samis’s “Thoughts” from Two of a Kind, I had my own thoughts about these passages. They remind me of beads. Since Samis and Billie made jewelry together, I asked Samis the following question: “When you create jewelry, do you use beads very much? It occurred to me that your ‘thoughts’ are kind of like beads on a necklace.” She responded by saying, “Yes, we did beaded things. What a lovely thought!” All of us in Storied Charlotte and beyond are fortunate that Samis has strung together these memory beads to create this new beaded thing that she calls Two of a Kind.

Tags: memoir Samis Rose

Ken Harmon on the Founding of Iron Oak Editions and Editing Ecobloomspaces

June 21, 2025 by Mark West

I recently reached out to Ken Harmon, the founder and editor of the Charlotte-based literary journal West Trade Review. I had heard something about Ken launching a new press called Iron Oak Editions, and I asked him for more information about this press. Ken told me that what I had heard was true. Iron Oak Editions, he informed me, officially launched in 2024. A few months ago it released its first book, Ecobloomspaces: Poetry at the Intersection of Social Identity and Nature, Environment, and Place, which Ken edited. Ken offered to send me a copy of the collection, and of course I took him up on his offer.

Books Launching in April 2025 - Community of Literary Magazines and Presses

When my copy of Ecobloomspaces arrived, I read Ken’s thoughtful introduction and many of the poems. I also read the acknowledgments page, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ken mentioned the late Jim McGavran, a dearly missed friend of mine and a longtime professor who taught in the English Department at UNC Charlotte until his death in December 2014. Ken wrote, “This anthology would not have been possible without the guidance of the late Dr. Jim McGavran. Our conversations about queer literature during my early days of grad school led me to notice patterns within many texts that situated queer love in natural settings as a statement about the beautiful and powerful possibilities of queer love.”

Well, as so often happens when I start doing the research for my blog posts, I became even more curious. I sent Ken another email message, requesting that he share the story of how he came to found Iron Oak Editions and edit Ecobloomspaces. Here is what he sent to me:

There were so many things that led to the development of the Ecobloomspaces term: growing up in the South and the history of the land and people, my experiences with my maternal grandfather and the deep connection with nature he instilled within me, conversations with Dr. Jim McGavran in the independent study at UNC Charlotte about the texts we read together, my identity as a gay man (I came out in the late ‘80s), and my coursework and research related to a dissertation in a Ph.D. program that I was unable to complete because my partner, Tony, passed away. I completed all requirements for the degree with the exception of writing the dissertation. All the coursework, research for the dissertation, proposal, etc., were completed, but when Tony passed away it just broke me in ways that I didn’t think were possible, and although I tried, I just couldn’t focus and the time to degree expired. Honestly, the degree or the dissertation just didn’t seem all that important anymore, and I had to walk away from both to just survive and keep my life together.

After a few years of reflection after Tony’s death, I revamped West Trade Review, found a new group of people to work with, and that work gave me something to care about again. The journal revamp began during the pandemic.

When we decided to make the move to become a press, that’s when I mentioned the theoretical term that I coined, Ecobloomspace, during my dissertation work. So, in a way, the anthology was a way for me to continue to explore that idea.

What I really need to do is to fully develop an academic book explaining what an Ecobloomspace is, but I have two other creative books that I want to do (one poetry, one memoir). That writing is very difficult, though. Grief and loss and what I’ve learned about that are at the center of each. Focusing so much on everyone else’s writing also makes it more difficult for me to find the time to work on my own. I’m very passionate about the press’ work, though, and it brings me a great deal of joy and personal satisfaction.

For more information about Iron Oak Editions, please click on the following link: https://www.ironoakeditions.com/about-us

For more information about Ecobloomspaces: Poetry at the Intersection of Social Identity and Nature, Environment, and Place, please click on the following link: https://www.ironoakeditions.com/ecobloomspaces-preview-2025

I know that Jim would be proud of Ken for editing this collection. Jim had a deep interest in nature writing and poetry about the natural world. This interest was also reflected in his love of growing plants. In fact, on the day that he suffered the stroke that brought his life to an end, he had just purchased pansies to plant by the front door of his home.

I was the chair of the English Department at the time, and I helped organize a celebration of Jim’s life. At this event, two departmental colleagues performed “Turn, Turn, Turn,” which is also known as “To Everything There Is a Season.” As one of the lines in this song goes, there is “a time to plant.” In a sense, founding Iron Oak Editions and editing Ecobloomspaces is like planting seeds. Storied Charlotte is a better place because Ken took the time to plant these seeds.

Tags: Ecobloomspaces Iron Oak Editions Ken Harmon

Of Toys and Stories

June 14, 2025 by Mark West

Ever since I worked as a preschool teacher in the 1970s, I have been fascinated by the relationship between toys and stories. I remember observing children at this preschool using toys to create their own stories. Sometimes toys functioned as characters in their stories, or they used toys as props in complex narratives that they made up on the spot while engaging in pretend play. Sometimes the children brought in toys based on characters from movies or television shows. I remember a girl who liked to bring to school several finger puppets representing characters from Sesame Street. She carried these finger puppets in a Sesame Street lunch box. Around Christmastime, another child brought in his mother’s tattered copy of a Little Golden Book called Santa’s Toy Shop, and he asked me to read it to him over and over again. His mother told me to be careful with the book because it was one of her favorite books from her own childhood.

Once Upon a Toy: Essays on the Interplay Between Stories and Playthings [Book]

A few years ago, I was talking to Kathy Merlock Jackson, my friend and frequent collaborator, about the narrative elements associated with toys, and I found out that she shares my interest in this topic. We decided to edit a book about toys and stories, and we set to work contacting potential contributors and editing their submissions. I am pleased to announce that this book, which is titled Once Upon a Toy: Essays on the Interplay Between Stories and Playthings, will be published later this month. Kathy and I are excited that the book is already listed as an “Amazon Hot New Release” in the category of children’s literature criticism. The contributors to Once Upon a Toy come from around the world, but Charlotte writers are well represented. In addition to my essay on “The Winnie-the-Pooh Toys and Their Immigration to America,” the collection includes two other essays by Charlotte writers.

Paula T. Connolly, a professor of English at UNC Charlotte, contributes an essay titled “From Luxo to Lou: Toys in Pixar Shorts and the Search for Meaning.” In this essay, she analyzes the roles that toys play in several of Pixar’s short films, including Luxo Jr. (1986), Red’s Dream (1987), The Tin Toy (1988), Knick Knack (1989), Geri’s Game (1997), Sanjay’s Super Team (2015), and Lou (2017). As Paula points out, these short films served as a springboard for Pixar’s famous Toy Story films. In her essay, she argues that these short films “provided creative opportunities for Pixar to explore the often complex and varied roles that toys play in our lives.”

Maya Socolovsky, who is also a professor of English at UNC Charlotte, contributes an essay titled “The Edge of Play: Belonging and Borderlands in Juan Felipe Herrera’s Picture Book Super Cilantro Girl/La Superniña del Cilantro.” In her essay, Maya focuses on a 2003 bilingual picture book by Juan Felipe Herrera. She examines how Esmeralda, the young girl who is the central character in this picture book, incorporates a found plaything, in this case a bouquet of cilantro, in her fantasies. Esmeralda imagines that the bouquet of cilantro gives her superpowers, which she uses to help rescue her mother who has been detained at the border between Mexico and the United States. In her essay, Maya writes, “The bouquet of cilantro… becomes, through her imagination, all at once a thing of play, quest, and adventure, as well as a vehicle for rehearsing activism, social justice, and change.”

For readers who want to know more about Once Upon a Time, please click on the following link: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/once-upon-a-toy/

Paula’s and Maya’s contributions to Once Upon a Toy underscore for me the important scholarship that is coming out of Storied Charlotte in the field of children’s culture studies.

Tags: children's culture Toys

The Carolina Theatre and The Sound of Music: The Intertwining of Two Escape Stories

June 09, 2025 by Mark West

A few years ago, I wrote several blog posts about distinctive places in Charlotte that are associated with the sharing of stories. At the time, I did not write a post about the legendary Carolina Theatre because it was still in the process of being restored. However, this spring the beautifully restored theatre reopened, and it is now providing Charlotte audiences with opportunities to see films and live performances in the same auditorium that originally opened to the public in 1927.

A $90 million restoration has renewed the Carolina Theatre in uptown Charlotte to its 1920s splendor.

For many years, the Carolina Theatre served as Charlotte’s premier performance venue. The Carolina Theatre hosted performances by such famous stars as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, and Katharine Hepburn, but it was primarily known as a movie theatre. The blockbuster films of the day often made their Charlotte debut at the Carolina Theatre. One such film was The Sound of Music, which opened in March 1965 and continued to play in the theatre until October 1966.

In celebration of the 60^th anniversary of The Sound of Music, the Carolina Theatre is bringing back the movie for one day. On June 28, 2025, there will be two screenings of the film, one at 2:00 p.m. and a sing-along screening at 7:00 p.m. Tickets start at only $10 and can be purchased online at TheCarolina.com.

I think it is fitting the Carolina Theatre is reviving The Sound of Music, not only because the film had a remarkable 79-week run at the theatre, but also because the theatre and the film are both examples of escape stories.

When the Carolina Theatre closed in November 1978, it seemed destined to be razed to make room for a new skyscraper, but local preservationists launched a campaign to save the theatre. Their efforts almost came to naught after a fire broke out in 1980, which came close to destroying the structure. Somehow the theatre survived years of neglect and its narrow escape from fire. In 2012, the Foundation for the Carolinas acquired the structure and begin the twelve-year process of bringing it back to life.

The Sound of Music is also the story of a narrow escape. The film is about the Von Trapp family and their daring plan to leave Austria and flee to Switzerland before the Nazis annexation of Austria. The family’s willingness to risk everything to escape the Nazis underscores for contemporary audiences the real dangers posed by the rise of Fascistic governments. The Sound of Music has its light-hearted moments, but there is much more to the movie than singing about “Do-Re-Mi.”

I commend the Caroline Theatre for bringing back The Sound of Music. I have fond memories of seeing this film when I was a boy, and I am looking forward to seeing it again in this Storied Charlotte venue.

Tags: Carolina Theatre The Sound of Music

Brooke Lehmann’s Debut Poetry Collection

May 31, 2025 by Mark West

One thing I’ve learned from talking with poets about their writing process is that poems usually do not spring onto the page fully formed like Venus does when she emerges from the sea standing atop her scallop shell as is depicted in Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting The Birth of Venus. Rather, most poems go through a long gestation period, and such is certainly the case with the poems in Brooke Lehmann’s debut collection titled Of Salt and Song.

I first found out about Brooke’s collection from Kathie Collins from Charlotte Lit. In an email that Kathie sent to me last week, she wrote, “Brooke Lehmann has just published her first collection of poems, Of Salt and Song, with Kelsay Books. Brooke was Charlotte Lit’s programming director for almost two years and is a graduate of our first Poetry Chapbook Lab, where she worked on many of the poems in the collection. We’re so proud of Brooke.” Following up on Kathie’s tip, I contacted Brooke and asked her about how she came to write Of Salt and Song. Her is what she sent to me:

Of Salt and Song, my debut poetry collection, offers a powerful and intimate journey of survival through the landscape of my harmful religious upbringing. This collection began its journey within the Charlotte Lit Poetry Chapbook Lab, an initiative founded by Kathie Collins, where the initial poems were shaped through the guidance of poets Dannye Romine Powell and Jessica Jacobs. I continued to develop the poems into a full-length collection.

Framed through the lens of the biblical story of Lot’s wife, my collection employs persona poems to reimagine this familiar narrative, subverting traditional patriarchal themes of disobedience and divine punishment. The speaker’s experience of a punitive father-God finds a stark parallel in her relationship with an abusive earthly father, creating a resonant exploration of authority, control, and the lasting impact of fear. I also connected with poet Chen Chen through Charlotte Lit’s Poetry Nightclub, whose generous review of my collection further affirmed the connections in the power of writing in community.

Readers in the Charlotte area are invited to celebrate the release of Of Salt and Song at Goodyear Arts on Wednesday, June 11th at 7 p.m. I will be hosted by local poet Dr. de’Angelo Dia, and the evening will include a reading followed by a Q&A session. For those interested in themes of trauma, resilience, and the reclaiming of one’s narrative in the face of adversity, these poems offer a message of hope and redemption.

For more information about Brooke, please click on the following link: https://www.brookelehmann.com

I congratulate Brooke on the publication of her debut poetry collection, and I thank Kathie Collins for bringing Brooke’s Of Salt and Song to my attention. As Brooke makes clear in the writeup that she sent to me, Storied Charlotte is very much a community of writers who support each other and celebrate each other’s successes.

Tags: Brooke Lehmann Charlotte Lit poetry collection

Back at You, Charlotte Writers Club

May 24, 2025 by Mark West

A few weeks ago I received an unexpected email message from Barbara (Bay) Yager, the President of the Charlotte Writers Club, informing me that I had been “selected to receive an award from the Charlotte Writers Club” in recognition of my “contributions to both our organization and the greater literary community.” She asked me if I could attend one of their upcoming events in order to accept the award in person, and of course I agreed to do so. Last week, Bay presented me with the club’s inaugural Advocate Award during their May meeting, and she gave me an opportunity to share a few remarks. In my comments, I talked about how my work in Charlotte’s literary community has much in common with the work of the Charlotte Writers Club.

During her presentation, Bay mentioned that I have been involved in Charlotte’s writing community for over 40 years, but that’s not nearly as long as the history of the Charlotte Writers Club. Adelia Kimball founded the Charlotte Writers Club in 1922, which was a golden year in literary circles. James Joyce’s Ulysses and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land both came out in 1922. Two classic works of children’s literature—The Velveteen Rabbit by Margert Williams and Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting—also appeared in print in 1922. The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing in 1922, which was when Harcourt, Brace and Company published Claude McKay’s poetry collection titled Harlem Shadows. William Faulkner’s The Great Gatsby didn’t come out until 1925, but the novel is set in the summer of 1922. Given the importance of 1922 in the history of literature, it was an auspicious year for Adelia Kimball to start a club for Charlotte’s burgeoning community of writers.

Throughout its long history, the Charlotte Writers Club has fostered a sense of community among its members. Part of this sense of community is tied to place. The club has always celebrated its connections to Charlotte. It has frequently partnered with other Charlotte organizations, such as the public library. In fact, the club’s first meetings took place in what was then called the Carnegie Library, now known as the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

The club’s commitment to community transcends geography. From its very beginnings, the club has provided its members with a supportive environment to share drafts of stories, poems and essays. Through its sponsorship of contests, the club has created opportunities for members celebrate each other’s creative endeavors. By bringing in accomplished writers as speakers and workshop leaders, the club has facilitated the sharing of writing and publishing tips, which members can use in order to achieve their own successes as writers. For over a century, the Charlotte Writers Club has shown how writers can work together to build a community and in the process, support and promote each other.

When Bay presented me with their Advocate Award, she handed me a plaque that includes the following phrase: “For supporting, uplifting, and advocating for writers and the literary arts.” Well, as I see it, these words also apply to Adelia Kimball and all of the other people who have made the Charlotte Writers Club such a Storied Charlotte institution.

Tags: Charlotte Writers Club

The Story Behind Tom Hanchett’s New Book on Housing in Charlotte

May 17, 2025 by Mark West

Authors Tom Hanchett and John Cleghorn Discuss Their New ...

I first got to know Tom Hanchett during his time as the staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South, where he worked for sixteen years. During one of our early conversations, he mentioned his first book, Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975, which the University of North Carolina Press initially published in 1998 followed by a revised 2^nd edition in 2020. I acquired a copy of the book and read it about ten years ago, and it helped me better understand the complex history of Charlotte’s distinct neighborhoods. Tom devotes several pages in his first book to the topic of public housing, but his focus in this book is on urban planning and development.

In his new book, Affordable Housing in Charlotte: What One City’s History Tells Us about America’s Pressing Problem, Tom turns his attention to the history of public housing and the development of low-income rental dwellings in Charlotte from the 1930s to the present. The book is also published by UNC Press, and its official release date is May 27, 2025.

I contacted Tom and asked him how he came to write Affordable Housing in Charlotte. Here is what he sent to me:

Brookhill Village pushed me into this project. During 2018 -2019, Charlotte’s news media was filled with stories about that old low-income housing project located out South Tryon Street at Remount Road. As gentrification rolled through the area, would its long-time tenants lose their homes? Would city leaders mobilize aid so it could be redeveloped for mixed-income residents, including its current residents?

Brookhill redevelopment was running into two stumbling points, it turned out.

• One: Brookhill Village was privately owned. It looked like public housing, rows of identical bare-bones barracks. But it had been privately developed (with federal assistance) back in 1950 and it remained in the hands of one of North Carolina’s richest families. Huh?! What was the history behind all of that?

• Two: The government aid that was now available for redevelopment rested on something called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. Which was targeted to help tenants with incomes at 60% of Charlotte’s area median income – not the 30% AMI that most Brookhill tenants made. Again, how had that come to be?

As I followed stories by reporters Pam Kelley, Fred Clasen-Kelly, Ely Portillo, Danielle Chemtob, Lauren Lindstrom and others, I was embarrassed to realize how little I knew about all of this. I’d helped write a book documenting the early decades of U.S. public housing. And I’d written a whole volume exploring how Charlotte’s “built environment” had developed. Maybe I should find time to do some additional research into this affordable housing situation?

I knew three knowledgeable folks to start with. Attorney Ted Fillette, longtime housing advocate with Legal Aid, Laura Belcher, current head of Charlotte’s Habitat for Humanity, and Pat Garrett, retired CEO of the highly effective non-profit Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing Partnership (now DreamKey Partners) each graciously sat down for interviews. Their conversations began my journey but left me with many more questions than answers.

Then came Covid. As society went quiet during 2000 – 2022, I had time on my hands to pursue the research.

Today in 2025 it’s finally out, published by UNC Press — which says it’s the only study in the US that explores how housing policy actually works in a particular city over time, from the public housing of the 1930s-40s up to right now. They hope it will attract readers nationwide.

Tom is participating in several events related to the release of his new book:

June 1 — Book signing at Park Road Books: Tom and Rev. John Cleghorn. Drop in anytime 2:30 – 4:30. Brief readings at 3pm, 4pm. https://www.parkroadbooks.com/event/authors-tom-hanchett-and-john-cleghorn-discuss-their-new-books-and-affordable-housing

June 3 — WFAE’s Charlotte Talks, show about Affordable Housing in Charlotte, 9am-10am

June 12 — Tom talks at Mint Hill public library 11am

June 18 – Book signing at new eastside book shop: Troubadour Books, 1721 Sardis Road at Monroe Road, 7pm-9pm

I congratulate Tom on the publication of his new book, and I thank him for sharing his insights into the history of Charlotte. As I see it. Tom is Storied Charlotte’s storied historian.

Tags: Tom Hanchett

CHILL at IPH: A Lifelong Learning Summer Experience

May 11, 2025 by Mark West

A month or so ago, the organizers of a new lifelong learning initiative approached me about leading a two-week summer workshop that would appeal to a broad community audience. They explained to me that this initiative involved a collaboration between UNC Charlotte’s College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences (CHESS) and the Independent Picture House (IPH). After a few email exchanges, I agreed to lead a workshop in the beginning of June on the Jimmy Carter’s Literary Legacy. This workshop relates directly to my most recent book, The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter: Essays on the President’s Books, which I co-edited with Frye Gaillard. My workshop is just one of six workshops that will be offered this summer as part of this program. The details are covered in the following press release:

Summer is coming in hot, so chill out with the talented faculty at UNC Charlotte’s College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences (CHESS)! Charlotte’s (air conditioned!) Independent Picture House (IPH), set close to all that NoDa has to offer, will host its latest collaboration with the College: CHILL at IPH.

This newest CHESS Initiative of Lifelong Learning at IPH comprises a full schedule of short, multisession workshops for those hungry for community, intellectual stimulation, or just a place to get away from internet streaming during the hottest hours of the day. Some of these workshops are geared to the biggest questions of our time. Others are meant to provide accessible introductions to essential topics. A few will help you tap into your creative side.

The Independent Picture House is a non-profit community cinema operated by the Charlotte Film Society. Since opening in June 2022, the cinema provides a welcoming space for all individuals with programs and screenings focused on educating, engaging, and enabling the entire community.

Register and Learn More

What to Expect

CHILL at IPH will offer six workshops – five taught in English and one taught in Spanish – this summer. Let us know what you’d like to learn about next! That might include topics on AI, literature, film superheroes, immigration in the 21st Century, romantic comedy as a genre, how to write a poem, how to write a short story, the future of secondary education in the US, how to learn Japanese/Spanish/German/French/Italian without really trying and more!

All CHILL at IPH classes:

Are taught by faculty with distinguished records of teaching and research.
Are designed to be accessible to all students, no matter what they may know or not know about the class’s topic.
Have minimal homework and no formal tests.

Include “CHILL time” when classmates can talk informally with each other and their professor about class content.

Get Rewards for Signing Up

You will receive a Certificate of Completion after each workshop. And, if you sign up for three workshops this summer, you can get a fourth CHILL at IPH workshop for free in 2025 or 2026.

End of Year Celebration

Join us and your fellow students to celebrate that UNC Charlotte and IPH got to CHILL all summer with the Charlotte community!

Session I: “Jimmy Carter’s Literary Legacy,” taught by Mark West, Ph.D. (Monday/Wednesday June 2 and June 4; June 9 and June 11)

Session II: “Como Agua para Chocolate/ Like Water for Chocolate,” taught in Spanish by Chris Boyer, Ph.D. and Dr. Jürgen Buchenau, Ph.D. (Tuesday/Thursday June 3 and June 5; June 10 and June 12)

Session III: “Stuff to Know About Shakespeare” taught by Kirk Melnikoff, Ph.D. (Tuesday/Thursday June 17 and June 19; June 24 and June 26)

Session IV: “Charlotte — A Center of the Civil Rights Movement,” taught by Willie Griffin, Ph.D. (Tuesday/Thursday, July 8 and July 10; July 15 and July 17)

Session V: “Mystery Memoir from Germany: A Historical Detective Journey,” taught by Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau and Jules Geaney-Moore (Tuesday/Thursday July 22 and July 24; July 29 and July 31)

Session VI: “Capitalism in Action” by Jurgen Buchenau, Ph.D. (Tuesday/Thursday August 5 and August 7; August 12 and August 14)

I am excited about participating in this lifelong learning community program. I know that all of the UNC Charlotte faculty members who will be leading these summer workshops share my commitment to engaging in meaningful ways with the larger Storied Charlotte community.

Tags: The Independent Picture House

Joy Callaway’s New Historical Novel Is Set in Charlotte in 1918

May 03, 2025 by Mark West

Joy Callaway is one of Charlotte’s foremost writers of historical fiction. She published her first historical novel, The Fifth Avenue Artists Society, in 2016. Since then, she has brought out several more historical novels, including Secret Sisters (2017), The Grand Design (2022), All the Pretty Places (2023), and What the Mountains Remember (2024), but none of these earlier novels is set in Charlotte. Her latest release, The Star of Camp Greene: A Novel of WWI, is Joy’s first historical novel that is set in her hometown of Charlotte.

The Star of Camp Greene features an ambitious Broadway performer named Calla Connolly. As part of an effort to entertain the troops, she goes on a tour of military training camps, including Camp Greene in Charlotte. Her plan is to put on a show in Camp Greene and then leave for her next performance. However, her plan gets upended. Calla’s predicament is nicely captured in the following blurb provided by the publisher:

Broadway darling Calla Connolly had it all: a rising career on the stage and a loving fiancé, a fellow stage actor. But after his tragic death early in the war, Calla is touring the American training camps, hoping to convince General Pershing to let her tour the French front to cheer the men and honor her fiancé’s memory. But her hopes are dashed when she contracts Spanish flu while performing at Camp Greene.

While convalescing, Calla inadvertently overhears a sensitive Army secret and is ordered to remain at Camp Greene for the duration of the war while her former mentor and rival steals her tour out from under her. Having no choice but to stay at the camp, she becomes the resident performer and forms attachments to several musician soldiers.

When she falls in love with the man responsible for trapping her at camp, the mission she’s sworn to keep secret threatens the men she’s come to care for. Calla is forced to decide what her dreams are worth–and if the future she never expected might only be possible if she lets those dreams go.

The official launch of Joy’s The Star of Camp Greene will take place at Park Road Books on May 8 at 6:30 pm. For more information about this free event, please click on this link: https://www.parkroadbooks.com/event/joy-callaway-discusses-her-new-book-star-camp-greene-annissa-armstrong

For more information about Joy and her novels, please click on the following link: https://www.joycallaway.com/

While preparing to write The Star of Camp Greene, Joy conducted extensive research into the history of Camp Greene. She searched through newspaper archives to find news accounts related to Camp Greene, and she made frequent visits to the archives of the Charlote Mecklenburg Library to locate photographs and other primary sources. The result is a carefully researched novel that captures what life was like in one corner of Storied Charlotte during the First World War.

Tags: historical fiction Joy Callaway

Patrice Gopo’s New Picture Book Is Now Ready to Be Enjoyed

April 26, 2025 by Mark West

Ripening Time, Patrice Gopo’s new picture book, is all about anticipation. The central character in the story is a little girl who loves eating the fried plantains that her mother prepares, but before the plantains can be fried, they need to ripen first. The story traces this entire process, from purchasing the unripe plantains at the grocery story, to putting the plantains in a hanging basket where they can ripen over the course of a week, to watching the plantains gradually turn from green to yellow, to finally slicing, frying and serving the plantains much to the girl’s delight.

For Patrice, the process of seeing this book through to publication also involved experiencing a series of stages, from recalling a childhood memory, to writing an initial draft, to rewriting the text multiple times, to waiting for the illustrator (Carlos Vélez Aguilera) to complete the pictures, to working with the publisher as the book went into production, to the launching of the book. Patrice and her many fans have waited a long time for the release of the book, but the waiting is over. The book is launched and ready to be enjoyed.

I contacted Patrice and asked her for more information about how she came to write Ripening Time. Here is what she sent to me:

In my experience, the stories I write—essays or picture books—often have layers of emergence. The beginnings may come from one time in my life, but the way they take shape and form happens at another time. My second picture book, Ripening Time, is no exception. In Ripening Time, I tell the story of a little girl who is waiting across a week for plantains to ripen. It’s a celebration of food and family and connecting across generations. Every bit of this book is rooted in experiences from my childhood. My parents are Jamaican immigrants, and I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, a place where—at the time—it wasn’t always easy to find plantains. My mother used to go to the grocery store across town in search of plantains, sometimes finding the food we longed to eat. Their presence in our home was always a special treat.

This memory forms the first layer of emergence for Ripening Time. It began during my childhood in Alaska. However, additional layers of emergence needed to happen to make this story a picture book in the world. And those additional layers happened right here in Charlotte. As I mentioned above, I write essays and picture books. In fact, aspects of my essays inspire most of my picture book manuscripts. Probably a decade ago now, I took a writing class with local Charlotte writing teacher Maureen Ryan Griffin. In that class, Maureen gave us a prompt to write a letter to someone. I ended up writing a letter to my sister. That letter blossomed into the essay “Plucked and Planted” in my first essay collection, All the Colors We Will See. At the surface, “Plucked and Planted” is about plantains, but beneath the surface, it is about my sister and me and our varied relationships with our Jamaican heritage. That essay includes a couple of paragraphs where I describe how my mother used to search for plantains, and then we would wait for the plantains to ripen. These paragraphs served as the springboard for the creation of Ripening Time.

For me, taking essays and reimagining them as a picture book takes time. While essays are often “thinking work” happening on the page, picture books are much more grounded in a particular story. With Ripening Time, I was struggling to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion. I ended up applying for and receiving a Charlotte Mecklenburg Arts & Science Council (ASC) Artist Support Grant to work with a picture book writing coach. That move was a game changer for my manuscript, and it moved from a great story with a flat ending to a submission-ready manuscript that soared!

I’m grateful for the rich literary community that exists here in Charlotte—great writing teachers and wonderful organizations that support creatives. I know both of these elements have had an impact on my broader writing life and the emergence of Ripening Time as a picture book in the world!

I would love to see you at my book signing at Park Road Books on May 10 at 10:30am. For more information about this free event, please click on the following link: https://www.parkroadbooks.com/event/book-signing-author-patrice-gopo

For more details and a complete list of book events, please visit my website: https://www.patricegopo.com/

I congratulate Patrice on the publication of Ripening Time. It’s a beautiful story that celebrates family traditions, favorite foods, and the pleasures associated with anticipating something special. Ripening Time is something special, and it’s a welcomed addition to the growing library of picture books by Storied Charlotte authors.

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