Storied Charlotte

Storied Charlotte

July 24, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Honoring Rolfe Neill and His Contributions to Charlotte’s Community of Readers and Writers – Rolfe Neill, the publisher of The Charlotte Observer from 1975 until his retirement in December 1997, died on Friday, July 14, at the age of 90.  Even though I never met him, I felt like I knew him because I always read his columns that ran in the paper every Sunday.  His columns were thoughtful, gracefully written, and often personal in nature.  His deep love of Charlotte came through in his columns although he was certainly not blind to the city’s flaws. He had a knack for turning phrases and coming up with story angles that resonated with readers.  He clearly cared about the quality of his own writing, and he expected the same commitment to excellent writing from that the journalists who worked for the paper.  During his tenure as publisher, the paper won three Pulitzer Prizes.

In addition to serving as the publisher of The Charlotte Observer, Neill played a significant role in supporting Charlotte’s cultural institutions, including the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  Neill helped establish the library’s Novello Festival of Reading, which ran from 1991 until 2010.  Although Novello came to an end, the community spirit that defined Novello lives on today in the library’s annual Verse and Vino and EpicFest events. 

After his retirement, Neill became very involved in the activities of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.  Jenni Gaisbauer, the Executive Director of the Foundation, sees him a “true library champion.” I contacted Jenni and asked her for more information about Neill’s support of the library.  Here is what she sent to me:

I met Rolfe during my tenure at Levine Museum of the New South but it wasn’t until I got to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation that I was able to get to know him on a more personal basis.  Something interesting I learned about Rolfe was that when we served on the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation board years ago, he encouraged them to think about funding public libraries as part of their work.  While it’s not one of their major pillars today, Knight Foundation is one of our largest donors for the new Main Library and has given us dozens of grants over the years.  None of that would’ve been possible without Rolfe and the leadership of former Charlotte leader for Knight Susan Patterson and/or Charles Thomas today.

He had a long history with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and was a consistent donor since 1999.  He played a pivotal role in the library securing the large Romare Bearden tile mosaic that was once showcased on the first floor of the Main Library and will once again have a prominent home inside the lobby of the new Main Library. Most recently, he served as an advisor to our current campaign, the CommonSpark.  He would sit down with Karen Beach (the Deputy Director of the Foundation) and me and tell us who we should ask to support the project. I can’t tell you how helpful it is when you reach out to someone to set up a meeting and you can say, Rolfe Neill encouraged me to reach out.

I thank Jenni for her recollections.  I also thank her sending me a photograph of Neill sitting in front of a cluster of book-related sculptures created to honor Neill’s contributions to Charlotte. This work is located on 7th Street in front of ImaginOn, which houses both the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Spangler Library for Children and the Charlotte Children’s Theatre.  Given that so many children visit ImaginOn, it seems fitting that children constantly swarm over this set of sculptures.  The work features a thirty-foot tower of books capped off with a gold quill pen swirling around in a giant inkwell.  It also includes an abstract version of a manual typewriter with keys that are plenty large enough for children to stand on them, and stand on them they do.  Installed in 2005, this set of sculptures is titled “The Writer’s Desk:  A Tribute to Rolfe Neill.”

The sculptures include many inscribed quotations from columns that he wrote during his years with the paper.  One of these quotations reads, “If reading one good book is fun, reading four must be quadruple the pleasure. Two hard covers and two paperbacks carelessly snuggle about me in the hammock.”

Rolfe Neill has left us, but his campaign to support our public library and promote the reading of books still reverberates throughout our community. I like to think of him somewhere in a celestial Storied Charlotte, resting comfortably in a hammock with four books by his side.

Tags: Rolfe Neill

Dina Schiff Massachi’s New Book about the Characters of Oz

July 17, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Storied Charlotte

Dina Schiff Massachi’s New Book about the Characters of Oz– A few years ago I wrote a Storied Charlotte blog post about Dina Schiff Massachi’s participation in the PBS’s documentary titled American Oz: The True Wizard Behind the Curtain, which first aired in April 2021 as part of PBS’s American Experience series. To see this earlier blog post, please click on this link:  Dina Massachi, L. Frank Baum, and The American Experience.

Since then, Dina has continued to teach courses on Oz at UNC Charlotte and work as an Oz scholar.  Her most recent accomplishment in this field of Oz scholarship is the publication of her edited collection titled The Characters of Oz: Essays on Their Adaptation and Transformation, which was just published by McFarland & Company.  Here is the link to the publisher’s listing of the book:  https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/

I recently contacted Dina and asked her for more information about how she came to edit The Characters of Oz.  Here is what she sent to me:

For a number of years now, I’ve given talks at the International Wizard of Oz Club’s conventions, theming each talk around a different Oz character, how they’ve adapted, and what their changes say about our American culture. My initial vision for The Characters of Oz was to expand on these talks by inviting members of the Oz Club and other Oz scholars to write essays about Baum’s memorable characters. I wrote up a book proposal and had a contract much faster than I expected—it seemed the powers that be wanted this just as much as I did.

The funny thing about children’s fairylands is everyone thinks the magic is in the fantasy world. While Oz may be spectacular, the real magic in Oz is how the characters all work together to help one another. To quote Jack Zipes, “As an icon of utopian home, Oz reveals how differences might shine and be truly appreciated and how a communal spirit might flourish.” One of the magical things about working with Oz is that same communal spirit prevails— my colleague Mark West contributed an essay, fellow Oz scholars came aboard and referred me to their friends, a former student of the English Department’s M.A program jumped in, Baum descendants contributed, and by the end I had a collection that allowed different voices to shine while collectively telling the tale of how America’s fairy tale has adapted and changed to reflect the changes within America.

I’m a project junkie. The hardest part of completing a project is I need to figure out what comes next. Right around the time Characters was a completed manuscript, I had an idea for my next project—I would continue the collaboration between the Oz Club, the Oz academics, and my other friends in the Oz world and host an Oz festival to make this world come alive for my students and the broader Charlotte community. With thanks to the North Carolina Humanities, and the endless support of my colleagues at UNC Charlotte, that dream is coming true. CharlOz, as we are calling this festival, will take place from September 27-29, 2024, and we are just starting to announce some of our stellar lineup (including Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked). The Charlotte Teacher’s Institute is involved, and we hope to create something magical for everyone—from small children to the young at heart. For more details, please check out: https://charloz.charlotte.edu/

As one of the contributors to Dina’s The Characters of Oz, I am pleased to be included in Dina’s circle of Oz scholars and aficionados.  I am also pleased to be one of her helpers as she plans for the upcoming CharlOz festival. Through her research and publications and her tireless work in organizing CharlOz, Dina is making a real difference not just in the world of Oz scholarship but also in the land of Storied Charlotte. 

Tags: Oz

On the Road with Poet Angelina Oberdan Brooks

July 10, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

On the Road with Poet Angelina Oberdan Brooks – The poems in Angelina Oberdan Brooks’ new chapbook titled Heavy Bloom have their origins in two cross-country road trips that Angelina took with her three dogs a few years ago.  When I first learned about the story behind her chapbook, I immediately flashed back to reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley when I was a teenager. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Steinbeck’s account of traveling across America with his French poodle, and ever since then I have had a fondness for road-trip books, especially ones that involve dogs.  In the case of Angelina’s Heavy Bloom, she focuses on images and telling moments that she recalls from her travels. Intrigued by the Angelina’s approach to writing these poems, I contacted her and asked her for more information about how she came to write Heavy Bloom. Here is what she sent to me:

Since I moved to Charlotte in 2014, I’ve been working to support the literary community, so you may recognize my name or my face. I’ve worked with Charlotte Lit, the Betchler and Gantt Museums, and many amazing individuals. I was co-chair (with Amy Bagwell and then Colin Hickey) of CPCC’s Sensoria Literary Committee for five years—bringing the likes of Tracy K. Smith, Hanif Abdurraqib, Carolyn Forche, Eugene Scott, and Juan Felipe Herrera to Charlotte. Through this, I also helped honor the winners of the Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy and Lifetime Achievement Awards. I’m a proud East Charlotte homeowner. If you haven’t run into me at Book Buyers or Bart’s Mart, you probably will one day.

Heavy Bloom, my first chapbook and first collection of poetry, was written while living here. I amassed the originating images in these poems during what was a tumultuous time in my personal life. A formerly accurate and speedy typist, my hands largely stopped working in 2017, which led to a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Around the same time, my dad’s cancer became terminal, and he slowly died at home in Clemson, SC—over months and then days. Through all of this, the relationship I was in didn’t hold up. In the summer of 2018, unable to continue the life I’d planned, I moved my three dogs into my SUV and solo-camped from the Blue Ridge in NC to the Uintas in UT and back. Then, we did it again the following summer. The first road trip brought clarity, and the second brought healing.

The poems in Heavy Bloom move from watching an 18-wheeler strike a blue heron to being stalked by a mountain lion in West Texas to considering the carelessness with which we humans harm each other and the world around us. Upon the advice of Morri Creech (my mentor and friend from the McNeese MFA Program, a Charlottean now, too), I fully embraced Robert Bly’s Leaping Poetry. In his book, Bly writes, “In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of the work. That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known.” So, my poems start as images or bits of language or memory fragments, and then I meditatively follow my brain wherever it goes. You’ll find that in many of the poems in this collection, I’ve abandoned linear trains of thought, allowing my mind to jump to whatever is stirring in my subconscious. I trust that these associative leaps will eventually make sense, and in this way, my writing is surprising to myself—as Robert Frost recommends it should be in “The Figure a Poem Makes.” These wild jumps are where I learn the most from my own writing—about myself, being human, and living in this universe. (Don’t worry; a workshop on this is in the works!)

Publishing this collection is a feat of which I am very proud. I went through my academic career quickly; I started teaching college at twenty-one and finished both my MA and an MFA in three years. While I published a lot of what I wrote in my twenties, I struggled to figure out what I had to add to the vast canon of poetry. I also had to make a lot of mistakes, repeatedly prioritizing the wrong things. While I think I got it right in this collection, many of the poems didn’t find their way until I participated in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project in November 2020. The same year, this collection found its cohesiveness during a Tupelo Press Manuscript Conference wherein I learned so much from Jeffrey Levine and Kristina Marie Darling. Notes from some beloved-Charlotte poets certainly helped, too—especially from Amy Bagwell and Lisa Zerkle.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the impact my UNC Charlotte creative writing students had on this chapbook. I began teaching part-time at UNCC in Fall 2021—as an attempt to combat post-pandemic burnout. Always happy to share my journey in ways that will help students navigate their own, I was impressed by the attentiveness my students gave to me and my lectures. Empowered by them and coming off the thrill of hosting Juan Felipe Herrera at CPCC’s Sensoria, I quietly left my associate professorship there to give more of my energy to my poems. At UNC Charlotte, I’ve had the opportunity to teach introductory-level technical and creative writing classes as well as liberal studies courses on travel and environmental writing. Teaching classes that allowed me to discuss the words and writing I find most important made a difference in the publication of my poems—which took off in the last year.

Through writing these poems, I learned what I already knew: America—its landscape and its people—is beautiful and horrifying. Indeed, death is more certain than life, and loss is more common than love. We want to turn towards our screens and away from any discomfort, but we can’t. Richard Wilbur wrote that “[o]ne of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable, not by falsehood but clear, precise confrontation”; the poems in Heavy Bloom sit with the uncomfortable, look at loss directly, and make way for future joy.

If you’re in Charlotte this summer, please join me for Heavy Bloom’s Launch Party! I’ll be selling and signing books on July 20th from 6-8 pm at Bart’s Mart (next door to Book Buyers), and I’ll read a few poems at 7 pm. Copies are also available here: https://bottlecap.press/products/bloom.

In the meantime, here is “Echo,” a finalist for the LitSouth Award and one of the poems from Heavy Bloom:

For more poetry, road trips, ruminations, and dogs, follow me on Instagram: @ab3dogride.

I thank Angelina for telling the story behind Heavy Bloom and for sharing “Echo.” I also thank her for all that she has done over the years to promote the reading and writing of poetry in Storied Charlotte.

Tags: poetry

Something New Out of Charlotte Lit

July 03, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Something New Out of Charlotte Lit – The Roman writer and naturalist Pliny the Elder once wrote, “There is always something new out of Africa.” Well, he actually wrote this sentence in Latin, but I have taken a liking to the English translation of it.  I know that I am taking liberties with Pliny’s famous proclamation, but it seems to me that there is always something new coming out of Charlotte Lit, too.  I just learned that Charlotte Lit recently published three poetry chapbooks. I contacted Paul Reali and Kathie Collins, the co-founders of Charlotte Lit, and asked them for more information about these poetry chapbooks. Here is what they sent to me:

Mark, thanks for asking us about the three new poetry chapbooks released by Charlotte Lit Press. This is a good example of how different Charlotte Lit programs come together to make something new.

We launched the imprint Charlotte Lit Press last year when we began publishing our literary journal, Litmosphere, knowing there would be more we’d want to publish in the future. After releasing our second issue in May, we were ready to entertain some new publications.

Meanwhile, we had eleven writers in our inaugural Poetry Chapbook Lab. It’s a year-long immersion for poets to take classes and work on their poems with two coaches and with each other. (The second cohort is forming now, in fact

http://www.charlottelit.org/chapbooklab/) The result is a publication-ready poetry chapbook, ready to be submitted to contests and presses.

Putting these two Lit programs together, we decided to expand Charlotte Lit Press into poetry chapbooks, beginning by opening to submissions from Chapbook Lab writers. We’re happy to say we’ve accepted five manuscripts so far, with the first three just released.

Into the Swirl is the debut collection from John Clark, a North Carolina native and former WDAV general manager. John says he “writes poems and composes music as a way to play,” and this collection demonstrates both musicality and playfulness.

I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow is Patricia Ann Joslin’s debut collection. Published on the five-year anniversary of her husband Roy’s death from pancreatic cancer, this deeply-felt chapbook pays homage to him while exploring grief, hope and healing.

Subjects Suitable for Poetry is the second collection from former Carrboro poet laureate Gary Phillips. He explores family, nature, and his rural upbringing, which prove to be interwoven and inseparable.

These three writers, and others whose books are in our pipeline, will read at Charlotte Lit on September 8 (details available in upcoming Charlotte Lit newsletters). To support the work of John, Patricia, Gary, and future Charlotte Lit Press writers, our books can be ordered from one’s favorite bookstore, any online retailer, or directly from us at https://www.charlottelit.org/press/

We’ll have more publications in the near future, both chapbooks and full collections—including the latest from renowned poet Lola Haskins. We’re not yet open to general submissions, but that will happen within the next year.

I thank Paul and Kathie for sharing this information about these poetry chapbooks and their plans for Charlotte Lit Press.  All of us in Storied Charlotte are indebted to Charlotte Lit for always providing us with something new.

Visiting Discovery Place’s Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes Exhibit with Michael Kobre

June 26, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Visiting Discovery Place’s Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes Exhibit with Michael Kobre – Charlotte has long been a hub for all things related to comic books.  It’s the home to Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find, which opened in 1980 and is now widely recognized as one of the nation’s premier comics shops. It’s the location of the annual Heroes Convention, which is organized every June by Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find. And now Charlotte’s Discovery Place Science Museum is hosting the blockbuster touring exhibit titled Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes. Charlotte is the exhibition’s only stop in the entire Southeast.  After the exhibit closes on September 4, 2023, it will go on tour in Europe.  For more detailed information about this exhibit, please click on the following link:  https://my.discoveryplace.org/marvel/

When I first heard about the opening of the Marvel exhibit, I immediately thought of Dr. Michael Kobre. Mike is the Dana Professor of English at Queens University of Charlotte.  In addition to being the author of a scholarly book about Walker Percy’s novels, Mike is an expert on Marvel superheroes.  His publications on this topic include an essay titled “Only Transform: The Monstrous Bodies of Superheroes,” which is about the transformative bodies of Marvel’s superheroes. I contacted Mike and asked him if he would be willing to provide me with his responses to the Marvel : Universe of Super Heroes exhibit, and he kindly agreed to do so.  Here is what he sent to me:

In a panel at this year’s Heroes Convention on the “Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes” exhibition now on display at Discovery Place, one of the exhibition’s curators, the comics scholar Ben Saunders, explained how the exhibition was designed to tell a story about the history of Marvel in comics, film, and television and its enormous influence on our culture. And that’s exactly what you find when you step into the exhibition and you follow the history of a second-tier comics company that became over decades a media giant and a cultural phenomenon. Richly illustrated, the exhibition is filled with costumes and props from Marvel’s cinematic universe and a lavish display of original art from the comics, which are all featured in multi-media spaces that include a room designed to look like the surreal dimensions of Doctor Strange and another that lets you feel like you’re stepping into the suburban community conjured into existence by the Scarlet Witch in the Disney+ series WandaVision.

Framed throughout the exhibition in large display cases, the costumes show the extraordinary detail and craftsmanship of the filmmakers, including the Academy Award-winning designs of the Black Panther costumes created by Ruth E. Carter, the first Black artist to receive an Oscar for Best Costume Design. But for this longtime comics fan, whose imagination was forever transformed when I discovered Marvel Comics as a small child in the early 1960s, the real magic of the exhibition comes from all that original comics art. Seeing the pages that created this universe in this form is a revelation, since so much of the art’s detail and its bold, energetic lines were lost in the muddy reproduction of old comic books printed on cheap pulp paper. Among the work here is the only surviving page of original art from the very first Marvel comic book, Marvel Comics #1 from 1939: the last page of the Sub-Mariner story by Bill Everett, one of the greatest artists of the first wave of comic book creators, whose signature character, Prince Namor, would come to life on the screen in 2022 in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But all of the greats are here too, including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, Marie Severin, Gene Colon, and so many others, along with contemporary creators like Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. In fact, a short visual essay on one of the exhibition’s media tables on Miller’s storytelling techniques in his groundbreaking run on Daredevil in the 1980s offers a superb overview of how comics work as a form. For those who want to learn about comics and comics history, this exhibition is a great place to start.

But the presentation of all this art highlights a problem too in the story that the exhibition tells. Because for decades artists like Kirby and Ditko toiled in what was seen as a junk industry, creating seemingly disposable pages at work-for-hire rates. Kirby, for instance, would work 14 hours a day, seven days a week, in a basement studio he called “the dungeon” to pay his bills and support his family, with no ownership of characters he at least co-created which would come to be worth billions of dollars. By contrast though, Stan Lee, who as editor was a salaried employee of his uncle Martin Goodman’s publishing company, enjoyed much greater financial security and, as the company’s public face, could claim greater credit for the characters’ creation. This inequity, which is baked into the history of the American comic book industry, is manifest in the exhibit too in the way it echoes the conventional—and inaccurate—story that Lee was the guiding hand in creating the Marvel universe and that artists like Kirby and Ditko worked to realize and develop Lee’s vision, rather than serving as principal architects of that universe themselves.

Not long after you walk into the exhibition, there’s a giant display filled with images of Lee and clips of his cameos from the movies, with a much smaller reproduction of Kirby’s drawing table right around the corner, in the shadow of Lee’s monument. But in what Lee would called “the Marvel method” of producing comic books, artists like Kirby, working from plot descriptions generated in loose conversations which may or may not have been written down, would create finished pages that Lee would add dialogue and captions to later. And given this method, which the exhibition does in fact detail, it’s hard to know who was responsible for the creative choices in almost any given issue. With all this in mind, as much as I enjoyed everything around me, I was bothered by what seemed like the insufficient credit in the exhibition given to Kirby, who co-created the Fantastic Four, Thor, The Hulk, the Black Panther, and so many others, and to Ditko, who co-created Spider-Man and almost surely solely created Doctor Strange.

Still, Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes lives up to its name. Walk past the costumes and the props and the art, through the swirling shapes of Doctor Strange’s Dark Dimension, past the life-size statues of Spider-Man, the Black Panther, and others, and you’ll feel like you’re in another universe. As Stan Lee, who was always a master promoter, might say on the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page in a 1960s comic, “Face Front, True Believer! This one’s for you!”

I thank Mike for sharing his responses to the Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes exhibit. I urge everyone who is interested in comics and superhero narratives to visit this Marvel exhibit while it is still in Storied Charlotte. 

Tags: Superheroes

Juneteenth Books Recommended by Janaka Bowman Lewis

June 19, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Juneteenth is an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.  It is also, however, a teachable moment—an opportunity to learn more about Juneteenth and the history of the struggle to abolish slavery.  I always turn to books when I want to learn about a topic, but there are lots of books about Juneteenth that have been published in recent years.  In order to figure out where to start when selecting books on this topic, I contacted my friend and colleague Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis and asked her if she would help me.  Janaka teaches courses on African American literature in the English Department at UNC Charlotte and is the author of the recently published Light and Legacies: Stories of Black Girlhood and Liberation.  Given her background, she is the perfect person to recommend some excellent books about Juneteenth.  Here is what she sent to me:

For kids I recommend Juneteenth for Mazie, written and illustrated by Floyd Cooper (2016).  In this picture book, young Mazie is tired of hearing “no”—to staying up late, to having another cookie, and to doing things she wants to do.  Her father reminds her that her great-great-great grandpa Mose had to wait, too, but he was waiting for his freedom from the institution of slavery.  He tells her about Grandpa Mose working in the fields, hard labor with no pay, until he hears the proclamation of his and other African Americans’ freedom from a balcony in Galveston, Texas (on June 19, 1865, when soldiers arrived more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation announced abolition of enslavement in states that had seceded from the United States). 

The book describes Great-great-great grandpa Mose and his community dancing into the night after the proclamation, and then continuing to work, save the money they earned, and never forgetting the moment they heard of their freedom.  They still struggled and weren’t treated as equals to white people but never gave up, and every year, on Juneteenth, they “celebrated and remembered,” as Mazie did when she woke up the next day.  Juneteenth for Mazie is a reminder of the history of enslavement that led to Juneteenth and the celebration of endurance that continues even despite unequal treatment.  It is also a reminder for families and communities to tell the story of freedom through generations.

For more experienced readers, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth (2021), uses memoir and history to provide a context for what led to the national holiday.  American historian and professor Gordon-Reed, who is also a native Texan, begins with a preface that describes the surprise of hearing people outside of Texas celebrate the holiday out of a sense of possessiveness even with the positive nature of celebrating the turn in. history.   She argues that Texans have been “at the forefront” of trying to make Juneteenth a national holiday (President Joe Biden signed a congressional bill to make it a federal holiday in 2021).  In clarifying that it was not actually until December 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified that slavery legally ended (although General Granger’s order was issued in June), Gordon-Reed offers a view of the landscape of the United States and the difficulties in overcoming institutional, statewide, and national inequity and discrimination to get to recognition of humanity.

The essays in On Juneteenth examine Gordon-Reed’s own history, from both of her parents’ Texas roots in the 1820s and 1860s, the story of Texas and the road to freedom for those who lived there, and how the context shaped her and her family’s life in the state and beyond as she argues that “behind all the broad stereotypes about Texas (including stories of indigenous peoples, settler colonialists, Hispanic culture, slavery, race, and immigration), . . . It is the American story, told from this most American place.”  Rather than a chronological narrative of Juneteenth, she offers a story of place and people therein, including the public imagination of Texas, and the stories that have been told to preserve what people want to believe about the narrative of the state and the nation.  Having integrated her town’s schools in East Texas, Gordon-Reed is also well positioned to account for what she calls the “counter narratives” that circulate about statewide progress and what happens when we try to escape local and national truths.

I thank Janaka for recommending these Juneteenth books.  I also thank her for always being willing to share her expertise on the history of Black literature and culture with everyone in Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Juneteenth

Taking Readers to Another Place and Time

June 13, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Writers of historical fiction are first and foremost storytellers, but they are also tour guides who take readers to other places and times.  In most historical novels, the settings, both in terms of place and time, play integral roles in the unfolding of the plots.  Such is the case with two recently published historical novels written by Joy Callaway and Nancy Northcott, both of whom are Charlotte writers.

Joy’s new novel is titled All the Pretty Places: A Novel of the Gilded Age.  The story begins in Rye, New York, in April 1893. Like Joy’s previously published historical novels, All the Pretty Places features a determined heroine who strives to establish a career during a time when society often placed limitations on women’s career opportunities. In the case of All the Pretty Places, the central character is Sadie Fremd, the daughter of an entrepreneur who founded Rye Nurseries. Sadie shares her father’s passion for horticulture and longs to take over the family business when her father retires.  He has other plans for her.  Sadie’s predicament is nicely captured in the following blurb provided by the publisher:

Sadie Fremd’s dreams hinge on her family’s nursery, which has been the supplier of choice for respected landscape architects on the East Coast for decades. Now her small town is in a panic as the economy plummets into a depression, and Sadie’s father is pressuring her to secure her future by marrying a wealthy man among her peerage—but Sadie has never been one to play it safe. Besides, her heart is already spoken for.

Rather than seek potential suitors, Sadie pursues new business from her father’s most reliable and wealthy clients of the Gilded Age in an attempt to bolster the floundering nursery. But the more time Sadie spends in the secluded gardens of the elite, the more she notices the hopelessness in the eyes of those outside the mansions. The poor, the grieving, the weary. The people with no access to the restorative beauty of nature.

Sadie has always wanted her father to pass his business to her instead of to one of her brothers, but he seems oblivious to her desire and talent—and now to her passion for providing natural beauty to those who can’t afford it. When former employee, Sam, shows up unexpectedly, Sadie wonders if their love can be rekindled or if his presence will simply be another reminder of a life she longs for and cannot have.

Joy Callaway illuminates the life of her great-great-grandmother in this captivating story about a daring woman following her passion and finding her voice, while exploring natural beauty and its effect in the lives of those who need it most.

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

Nancy’s new novel, The King’s Champion, concludes her Boar King’s Honor historical fantasy trilogy.The central premise of the trilogy, running through all three books, is that Richard III was framed for the murders of his nephews, who’re known as the Princes in the Tower, and the king was killed at Bosworth Field before the wizard who unwittingly assisted in the murders could name the true killer. Speaking up under the Tudors, who followed King Richard on the throne, would have cost the wizard his life. Tormented by guilt, he cursed all his heirs to not rest in life or death until they cleared the king’s name.

While the family’s quest to lift the curse runs through all three books, each centers on a bigger problem with higher, wider-ranging stakes. Everything wraps up in The King’s Champion. Here’s a description provided by the author:

Caught up in the desperate evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in the summer of 1940, photojournalist Kate Shaw witnesses death and destruction that trigger disturbing visions. She doesn’t believe in magic and tries to pass them off as survivor guilt or an overactive imagination, but the increasingly intense visions force her to accept that she is not only magically Gifted but a seer.

In Dover, she meets her distant cousin Sebastian Mainwaring, Earl of Hawkstowe and an officer in the British Army. He’s also a seer and is desperate to recruit her rare Gift for the war effort. The fall of France leaves Britain standing alone as the full weight of Nazi military might threatens. Kate’s untrained Gift flares out of control, forcing her to accept Sebastian’s help in conquering it as her ethics compel her to use her ability for the cause that is right.

As this fledgling wizard comes into her own, her visions warn of an impending German invasion, Operation Sealion, which British intelligence confirms. At the same time, desire to help Sebastian, who’s doomed by a family curse arising from a centuries-old murder, leads Kate to a shadowy afterworld between life and death and the trapped, fading souls who are the roots of her family’s story. From the bloody battlefields of France to the salons of London, Kate and Sebastian race against time to free his family’s cursed souls and to stop an invasion that could doom the Allied cause.

For more information about the Boar King’s Honor trilogy and Nancy’s other work, please visit her website, www.NancyNorthcott.com.

Although Joy’s All the Pretty Places is a work of historical realism and Nancy’s The King’s Champion is a work of historical fantasy, these two novels have several points in common. They both feature strong female characters who take action and exercise agency.  Both novels are grounded in careful historical research, and as a result, they provide readers with a sense of experiencing life in another place and time.  Finally, both are written by authors who belong to Storied Charlotte’s cadre of talented historical novelists. 

Tags: historical fiction

Charlotte Lit and the Magic of Summer

May 31, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Jenny Han, the Korean American author of The Summer I Turned Pretty and many other popular novels, once wrote, “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”  For me, part of the magic of summer involves the act of writing.  Since I don’t usually teach during the summer, I spend the summer months in my quirky office working on a book or an article, all the while endlessly sipping coffee from my Wind in the Willows mug.  I cannot seem to write without drinking coffee at the same time.  My goal every summer is to finish the initial draft of whatever writing project I am working on at the time, and then I do my revisions during the school year.  This approach has worked for me for many, many years.  I attribute whatever success I have had as a writer to the magic of summer (with a little boost from the coffee).

Paul Reali and Kathie Collins, the co-founders of Charlotte Lit, know all about the magical relationship between the months of summer and the act of writing.  Paul, Kathie and the other people involved with the running of Charlotte Lit have scheduled a wide range of summer programming for all kinds of writers.  I contacted Paul and Kathie and asked them for more information about Charlotte Lit’s summer programs.  Here is what they sent to me:

Mark, we’re excited to tell you about Charlotte Lit’s summer offerings!

Our community has been asking, so for the first time in our seven years we’ve decided to add a big selection of summer programming. At the risk of saying we have something for everyone, we do have a really good mix of topics and formats from which to choose.

“Everything, Really Everything…” is our newest concept. On three Wednesday nights, we’ll host a writer who will tell the audience everything they know about a certain topic. The evening starts at 5:30 and also includes social time and adult beverages. Here’s that list:

June 14: Everything, Really Everything, Kim Wright Knows and Writing Beach Reads

July 19: Everything, Really Everything, Dustin M. Hoffman Knows About Writing Short Stories

August 16: Everything, Really Everything, Emily Sage Knows About Songwriting

We’ll host two other writers for special events. Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi joins us for the next Poetry Nightclub, June 22 at Starlight on 22nd. These are fun nights in a very cool atmosphere. Later in the summer, on August 11, novelist Abigail DeWitt will be at Charlotte Lit to read from and discuss her work.

Of course, Charlotte Lit will offer some writing classes, too—by Zoom to make it easy for anyone to attend from anywhere. Journalist and essayist Amy Paturel will join us from Los Angeles for Writing and Pitching the Reported Essay, two Sunday afternoons, July 30 and August 6. Writer Elizabeth Hanly comes to us from Mexico for four sessions beginning July 18, for what we think will be one of our most important offerings ever: Togetherness: Writing for Those Touched by Cancer and Other Serious Illness.

Every Tuesday morning at 9:30, a dozen or more writers gather on Zoom for our prompt-based writing hour, Pen to Paper. This continues all summer and is a great way to spark new ideas.

We’ll end the summer and kick off our full programming year at Rosie’s Wine Garden for our second annual Open Mic, with our friends at the North Carolina Writers’ Network, August 25.

Finally, there’s one more item of interest for poets: we’ll start taking applications for our Poetry Chapbook Lab on June 15. This is a year-long intensive with coaching and master classes that results in a publication-ready chapbook.

It’s a whole lot of things, so we’ve made a special web page with all this info and registration links, here: https://www.charlottelit.org/summer2023/

We hope to see many of your readers this summer!

I thank Paul and Kathie for sharing this information about Charlotte Lit’s summer offerings.  I also thank Charlotte Lit for providing area writers with a spoonful of inspiration so that they, too, can have their own magical summer in the city of Storied Charlotte.

Going to ConCarolinas

May 22, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Many Charlotte-area fans of fantasy and science fiction stories are eagerly anticipating the upcoming ConCarolinas convention.  Scheduled to take place from June 2-4 near UNC Charlotte, ConCarolinas is expected to attract thousands of fans, authors, performers, gamers, game designers, and cosplayers.  For more information about this year’s convention, please click on the following link:  https://concarolinas.org

The Programming Director for this year’s convention is Charlotte writer and publisher John G. Hartness.  John is the author several fantasy series, including The Black Knight Chronicles.  He is also the driving force behind Falstaff Books, a Charlotte-based publisher of genre fiction.  Given John’s role in coordinating the all of the programming for ConCarolinas, he is the perfect person to provide an overview of this year’s convention.  I contacted John and asked him for more information about ConCarolinas 2023.  Here is what he sent to me:

ConCarolinas is the largest and longest-running science fiction and fantasy convention in the Carolinas, held every year the weekend after Memorial Day. Taking place at the Hilton University Place and the Holiday Inn Charlotte University, ConCarolinas brings in writers, actors, filmmakers, costumers, paranormal investigators, scientists, and fans of all types for a fun-filled weekend. ConCarolinas celebrates fandom in all its flavors, to whether you’re a Trekkie or a Padawan, Team Edward or a Decepticon, you can find plenty to enjoy.

ConCarolinas showcases the talents of geeks from all over the Charlotte region and the Carolinas as a whole. With local publishers like Falstaff Books and Mocha Memoirs Press, fan groups like the 501st Legion and Southern Belle Ghostbusters, and award-winning filmmakers like Dave Harlequin and  Jaysen Buterin, there’s something for everyone, no matter what you’re into. The convention also brings in top-rated guests from all around the country, including this year’s Guests of Honor and Special Guests. The 2023 Media Guest of Honor is Ari Lehman, the first actor to portray Jason Voorhees in a Friday the 13th film, and this year’s Writer Guest of Honor is Gabino Iglesias, a two-time Bram Stoker Award Nominated novelist and professor. Artist Guest of Honor Lynne Hansen’s work has appeared in Weird Tales magazine and on the covers of hundreds of books and magazines, and her husband, Writer Special Guest Jeff Strand is the Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of over fifty books, including Bring Her Back and Autumn Bleeds into Winter.

Expanding to two hotels in 2023, adding the Holiday Inn Charlotte University allows the convention to increase its dealer space while also growing its educational and workshop space. This year the convention will host hands-on workshops where participants can learn how to make puppets, work with leather, and craft basic armor. They can also watch short films submitted by filmmakers from around the world, and view the regional premiere of Shingles: The Movie, a comedy horror anthology film based on a series of books authored in part by local writer John G. Hartness. If fans don’t want to sit in a room and watch movies all night, there are roleplaying and tabletop games going all weekend, plus sing-alongs, karaoke, and dance parties!

Tickets are available now at www.concarolinas.org/attend/, but get ‘em quick, before they’re all gone!

Although reading is usually a solitary activity, participating in fandom is not.  There seems to be some sort of paranormal, gravitational pull that brings fans of fantasy and science fiction together to celebrate their love of shared stories.  In a sense, ConCarolinas is a big communal celebration.  I always say that my blog is all about celebrating Charlotte’s community of readers and writers, so as I see it, Storied Charlotte and ConCarolinas are made for each other.  

Megan Miranda’s New Thriller

May 16, 2023 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

A regular reader of my Storied Charlotte blog recently asked me how I find out about the new books that I feature on my blog.  Well, in the case of Megan Miranda’s new thriller, The Only Survivors, I learned about the publication of the book from an announcement that I received from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library about their Around the World in 21 Branches Festival Tour:  https://foundation.cmlibrary.org/events/around-the-world/ 

This year-long festival kicked off with an event on May 6, 2023, at the North County Regional Library, and Megan served as the featured author.  During the event, she talked about The Only Survivors, which Simon & Schuster published on April 11, 2023.  It seems fitting to me that Megan spoke at this event held at the North County Regional Library since she lives near this branch of the public library.  For more information about Megan and her novels, please click on the following link:  https://meganmiranda.com

After seeing the announcement, I decided to find out more information about The Only Survivors.  I immediately became intrigued when I discovered that much of the novel takes place in and around a beach house located on the Outer Banks.  I have visited the Outer Banks many times over the years, so the setting appealed to me.  However, in Megan’s new novel, the Outer Banks is not a place to kick back and relax. It’s a place where the water surges ominously and danger lurks around every corner.

The novel focuses on a group of former high school classmates who survived a tragic event during their senior year.  These students were participating on a school trip when their two vans crashed into a ravine, killing all but nine of the students.  The survivors decide to have an annual reunion on the anniversary of the tragedy, and they always meet at the same beach house. 

On the tenth anniversary, the reunion takes a frightening turn.  The seven remaining survivors are isolated in the beach house because of terrible storm, which results in the roads being closed.  As the survivors huddle together in the beach house, it gradually becomes clear that there are secrets related to the original tragedy that cause the survivors to mistrust one another.  Things are made worse when one of the characters finds a washed-up cell phone on the beach.  Once the phone is dried out, it starts working.  The information retrieved from phone increases the tensions in the beach house.

As the novel progresses, the focus alternates between the events surrounding the original tragedy and the escalating tensions in the beach house.  These two plot lines converge in an unexpected way. The Only Survivors is a fast-paced thriller, full of intriguing plot twists. 

The setting plays an integral role in The Only Survivors.  This is a story about the dark side of the Outer Banks, a side most tourists never see.  Still, if you have ever spent time on the Outer Banks during a bad storm, Megan’s portrayal will resonate with you. I remember once arriving at our hotel in Nags Head at 2:00 in the morning in the middle of a drenching rain with high winds.  It seemed so ominous that I had an impulse to get back in the car and drive back to Charlotte.  The next day the sun came out and we had a great vacation, but I can still recall the sense of dread that I felt during that truly dark and stormy night.

For readers who enjoy thrillers, The Only Survivors is a great book to read while vacationing on the Outer Banks or anywhere else for that matter.  Megan is one of Storied Charlotte’s bestselling authors, and the success of The Only Survivors helps explain why she is such a popular author.