Storied Charlotte

My Friend Bill Hill Has Roller Derby Stories

August 20, 2021 by Mark West

Bill Hill and I go way back. We arrived at UNC Charlotte within two years of each other. Bill came in 1982 as a communications studies professor and debate coach, and I came in 1984 as an English professor with a specialty in children’s literature. Shortly after we met, we discovered that we both liked to play ping pong. Nearly every week we played fast-and-furious ping pong games during our lunch breaks, and we’ve been friends ever since. Over the years, our careers followed along similar paths. We both served as program directors, department chairs, and associate deans. Bill retired a few years ago, but we still stay in touch on a regular basis.

Another point Bill and I have in common is that we both pursued unusual careers before we entered academia. During the 1970s and early ‘80s, I worked as a professional puppeteer, and around the same time period, Bill pursued a career in the professional roller derby world. I’ve long enjoyed hearing Bill’s inside stories from his roller derby years, and I’ve often thought that these stories would be of interest to a wide audience. Well, I am pleased to report that Bill’s roller derby stories are included in Jim Fitzpatrick’s new book titled Ad-Lib to the Blow Off!: The True Story of Professional Roller Derby.

One of the chapters in Fitzpatrick’s book is titled “Bill Hill: The Debater and the Skater.” This chapter traces Bill’s involvement in roller derby, from watching roller derby on television with his father, to skating with the Chicago Pioneers and other teams, to working as a commentator for ESPN’s coverage of roller derby. This chapter is chockfull of stories from Bill’s roller derby days. I especially enjoyed the stories about how Bill entered the world of professional roller derby, including a story about hitchhiking to San Francisco so that he could participate in a roller derby training program. The chapter concludes with a reflection from Bill about his skating career:

Needless to say, Roller Derby changed my life. I have often said that I learned as much or more being on the road skating as I did in school. I grew quickly when I joined Roller Derby; it was an experience and a prerequisite for getting along. … I constantly think about the places, the people, the feel of the track, the sounds of the audience. Yes, I miss all the night drives, … I miss the bumps and the bruises, I miss the people, … I miss doing the TV. It may sound strange, but nothing can replace those things because there is simply nothing else like life in Derby.

Of course, Ad-Lib to the Blow Off! is not just about Bill’s connections to roller derby. Jim Fitzpatrick covers the entire history of roller derby in his book. In writing this book, Jim turned to Bill for research and editorial help. Bill also provided the foreword to the book. I contacted Jim and asked him for more information about the book and Bill’s role in making this book a reality. Here is what Jim sent to me:

I fell in love with Roller Derby and the San Francisco Bay Bombers as a small boy in 1968 and had a childhood dream to become a professional skater. Fast forward a number of years and I was able to live out my dream which ended up lasting 36 years (in a variety of roles which included skater, referee, track crew member, trainer, assisting in promotion, coach/general manager)! Things didn’t quite pan out as I had envisioned but it was a wild roller coaster ride that I would definitely take again if I had it to do over.

Over the years I became a collector and historian of the sport and a little over a decade ago began writing my book in order to preserve its history before it was too late. I reached out to Bill Hill for his insights into his time as a professional skater, from rookie to one of the top player coaches. Bill also gave me valuable assistance with editing and organizing the book.

As for my book, I feel one doesn’t need to be a fan of Roller Derby to enjoy it. It offers something(s) for a wide variety of audiences. The original Roller Derby’s rich history began during the Great Depression and survived through three wars (WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War), as well as decades of radical changes in society. Just when Roller Derby reached its peak in popularity and its future looked bright, in the blink of an eye it shut down. For years the fans, participants, and media were led to believe the sport succumbed to the oil crisis and gas rationing of the early 70s. In reality, the actions of a member of the Chicago Outfit (Al Capone’s Mob) were what actually led to the league’s demise. Since then, countless attempts to revive the sport have come and gone. Many were poorly executed or run. A few were totally bizarre reinterpretations of the game involving huge money and major TV deals but stood absolutely no chance of succeeding since those in charge lacked the understanding of what made the original sport so successful. Many of the attempts “muddied the water” as to what the original Roller Derby was and tarnished its reputation.

The book also gives an unprecedented look inside the sport, from not only the business end but the skaters’ point of view. In order to do that, I had to shatter kayfabe (a term that was used in professional wrestling in which events were portrayed as “real” even though they were staged) and be the first to expose what really went on and how much of the sport was legitimate and how much was “set.” Numerous personal and touching insights are included which expose the hazards, hardships, and sacrifices skaters and personnel endured for the honor of being a part of Roller Derby. The allure of performing in an amazingly entertaining but extremely dangerous spectacle, in front of huge crowds and on television, was so powerful that most look back upon it as the best time in their life.

Barnes & Noble Press published Ad-Lib to the Blow Off!, and they have more information about the book on their website: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ad-lib-to-the-blow-off-jim-fitzpatrick/1139822756 Fitzpatrick includes the stories of many skaters in his book, and I enjoyed reading about these other skaters. Nevertheless, the skater’s story that interests me the most is Bill’s story. In a sense, this book captures a side of Bill that most of his professional colleagues at UNC Charlotte never saw during his long career as an administrator. I think of Bill’s skater self as his alter-ego. In his role as a Senior Associate Dean, Bill represented the interests of the university and behaved as one would expect an upper-level university administrator to behave. However, having played ping pong with him many times, I saw another side of Bill—a more rebellious, go-for-broke side. In a way, the multiple sides of Bill are like the multiple sides of Charlotte. The Chamber-of-Commerce side of Charlotte is all business, but the Storied Charlotte side of the city is far more interesting.

Depicting the Lives of Civil Rights Leaders

August 16, 2021 by Mark West

Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Shirley Chisholm both played leading roles in the Civil Rights Movement, and both are celebrated in new picture books that have important Charlotte connections. We Wait for the Sun, a picture book co-authored by Roundtree and Katie McCabe and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, focuses on a story from Roundtree’s childhood in Charlotte. Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress, a picture book written by Charlotte author Alicia D. Williams and illustrated by April Harrison, tells the story of Shirley Chisholm’s life. These picture books provide contemporary readers with insights into the lives of two remarkable African American women.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was born in Charlotte in 1914. After her father’s death in the 1919 influenza epidemic, Roundtree, her mother, and her three sisters all moved into her maternal grandmother’s home in Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood. Her grandmother fostered Roundtree’s curiosity and determination to succeed. We Wait for the Sun depicts the special relationship that Roundtree had with her grandmother. In the book, the two of them venture into the woods in the middle of the night to pick blackberries together, and in the process, they share a special moment of beauty. The memory of this nighttime adventure stuck with Roundtree throughout her long career as a pioneering civil rights lawyer and ordained minister. After Roundtree retired and returned to Charlotte, she shared this story with Katie McCabe when the two of them were writing Roundtree’s autobiography, which came out in 2009 under the title of Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree. The blackberry story is included in the final chapter of this autobiography, but Roundtree and McCabe decided to rewrite the story for a child audience. They set to work on We Wait for the Sun, but Roundtree’s death in 2018 meant that McCabe had to finish the project on her own. In addition to telling Roundtree’s blackberry story, McCabe provides the details of Roundtree’s groundbreaking career in the “Author’s Note” at the end of the book. Although Roundtree did not live to see the publication of this picture book, her spirit lives on in the book’s colorful pages.

Shirley Chisholm Dares: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress is Alicia D. Williams’s third children’s book in as many years. In 2019, her debut novel, Genesis Begins Again, came out to great acclaim. She received both a Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for this children’s novel. In 2020, her picture book biography of folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston came out under the title of Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston. This year, Williams has a new picture book biography, and this time her focus is on Shirley Chisholm. Williams covers Chisholm’s growing-up years in Brooklyn, New York, and Barbados, her education at Brooklyn College and Columbia University Teachers College, and her entrance into the world New York politics. Williams shows how Chisholm’s formative years helped her become such an effective political leader. Williams does not go into the details of Chisholm’s political career, but she does cover the values and beliefs that motivated Chisholm over the course of her career in Congress. In writing this book, Williams draws on her experience as a teacher and storyteller in Charlotte. She clearly knows how to hold the attention of a child audience.

For readers who want to know more about Katie McCabe and her collaborations with Dovey Johnson Roundtree, please click on the following link: https://www.katiemccabeauthor.com/ For readers who want to know more about Alicia D. Williams and her children’s books, please click on this link: https://www.aliciadwilliams.com/my-books

We Wait for the Sun and Shirley Chisholm Dared make a perfect pair. They both tell the stories of pioneering African American women who helped change America. Although these books are written for children, they should appeal to anyone who wants to know more about how the childhood experiences of these women helped shape their careers. I think these books should be shelved together in the ever-expanding library that is Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Civil Rights Movement picture books

Salvation: A Charlotte Story from 1971

August 09, 2021 by Mark West

Leslie Rindoks, who writes under the pen name of Avery Caswell, has a history of bringing other people’s stories to light. As the driving force behind Lorimer Press, she has published the work of numerous local writers, including Anthony Abbott, Mary Kratt, and Ed Williams. Lorimer Press has recently evolved into Better Books, an author services company that Leslie runs, and in this role, she works as a writing coach with many area writers. Writing as Avery Caswell, in her novel titled Salvation, she brings to light a story of two African American girls who were abducted by a traveling evangelist from their home in the Druid Hills neighborhood in Charlotte in 1971.

Although written in the form of a novel, Salvation is based on a true story from Earthell Latta’s childhood. For Earthell, the experience of being abducted and spending several months traveling through Georgia and Florida with a preacher known as Mother Franklin was harrowing. Rather than repress the memory of this experience, she felt that it would be better to bring her story out into the open. She knew Caswell because both of their daughters went to the Davidson-Cornelius Day Care Center, and she knew about Caswell’s background as a writer, so she decided to approach her with an idea. In a recent interview, Caswell recounted what happened next:

Seventeen years ago, when we were both picking up our daughters at daycare, Earthell, whom I’d met before, approached me with a question. Her aunt had mentioned to her that I’d left my advertising job to write full time so Earthell asked if I would write about what happened to her and her sister in 1971. When she shared what had happened, I was floored. When they were seven and nine, she and her sister were kidnapped by a traveling evangelist. For decades, no one in her family had ever talked about it. Earthell wanted her story told.

So much has changed since Earthell first asked me to write her story. Seventeen years ago it was less remarkable that we might team up to tackle this project. She had a story and needed a writer; I was the writer she knew. Both of us, regardless of the task in front of us, are the type of person who strives to do what is right; we give everything our best effort. Neither of us, in Earthell’s words, “never knew all this was coming with it.” We naively started down the path and just kept taking the next step and then the next one.

By trusting me with her story, Earthell gave me an incredible gift. It forced me to become a serious writer, a better writer, a better person.

Though this is a work of fiction, at its heart is her story, told so that others will know what happened in 1971—what can still happen today, when religion seeks to justify a multitude of sins; when others choose to look away, to remain silent, to claim that being poor, or black, or small, means you matter less.

The official publication launch date for Salvation is September 15^th, but the book is already available for pre-orders. For readers who want to know more about the novel, please click on the following link: http://averycaswell.com/2021/07/a-story-about-a-story/

Salvation is this writer’s first novel, and it is an impressive debut. However, Salvation is not the work of a beginning writer. She has many years of experience as a publisher, editor, writing coach, and author of short stories and works of nonfiction. She has long been a player in Storied Charlotte, and this background has provided her with the perfect preparation to write Salvation.

Tags: kidnapping novel true story

Telling Charlotte’s Stories of COVID-19

August 02, 2021 by Mark West

I am sure that most of us have read news accounts about the impact of the COVID-19 on the residents of Charlotte. For the most part, these accounts focus on statistical information, such as the latest trends related to the number and severity of COVID-19 cases reported in the Charlotte area. Statistics, however, only tell part of the story. Behind the statistics are real people with personal and often gut-wrenching stories about their experiences with COVID-19. These personal stories are the focus of a new book titled PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID-19.

A joint project of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative and BOOM Charlotte, PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID 19 has the look of a graphic novel. Each of the stories is told by a Charlotte journalist and illustrated by a Charlotte artist, and each of the stories is told in both English and Spanish. Most of the stories are about individual Charlotte residents and their particular experiences with the pandemic. Chapter 1, for example, is about Cedric Meekins, a Charlotte music teacher who contracted COVID-19 while attending a music conference in Cincinnati in March 2020. The story tells about his harrowing experience in the hospital and his long struggle to regain his strength and relearn how to do basic activities, such as walking and holding a pen.

Many people contributed to PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID-19, but the project was coordinated by Chris Rudisill, the Director of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative. Chris’s Charlotte connections extend beyond his work as a journalist. He grew up in the Charlotte area, graduated from UNC Charlotte, and founded a Charlotte company called Artstreet Creative. I contacted Chris and asked him for more information about how this project came to be. Here is what he sent to me:

In October 2020, the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative (CJC) launched PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID-19, an innovative project that brought together Charlotte’s art and local news communities to share stories of COVID-19. The CJC was formed in 2019 as a partnership of six major media companies and other local institutions focusing on issues of major importance to the Charlotte region. It has been focused primarily on the topic of affordable housing and modeled on the Solutions Journalism Network method of investigating and reporting news with a primary focus on solutions to community problems.

When the pandemic surge occurred in Charlotte, the collaborative (whose members include The Charlotte Observer, WCNC-TV, WFAE 90.7, QCityMetro.com, Qnotes, La Noticia, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Queens University and Free Press) saw the importance of producing stories that would keep citizens informed and safe. Chris Rudisill, the director of CJC, told The Charlotte Observer’s Liz Rothaus that they “wanted a creative way to get relevant, reliable information to people who might not be reading or tuning into traditional news sources … something that combined the visual punch of a 1950s-style monster movie poster with the integrity of solid news reporting.”

The answer was a graphic novel and in the spirit of collaboration CJC found a partner in local arts organization BOOM Charlotte. PANDEM!C brought together eight local artists and reporters from each news outlet to translate news stories into a comic book form. With new installments every two weeks the project tackled the challenges of contact tracing, wearing masks, homelessness and the pandemic’s impact on minority communities. These stories were published online in both English and Spanish on https://digitalbranch.cmlibrary.org/cjc/graphic-novel/, on the organization’s Instagram @CLTJournalism and through an app called WebToon. Participating artist Wolly McNair described the collaboration as a “game changer and hopefully will be something others use to model ways they can tell stories.” Each artist worked directly with a journalist to produce a graphic version of the published news stories.

Those installments are now part of a print edition that will be distributed through the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library this month. With support from a Cultural Vision Grant from Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council (ASC), the CJC will distribute over 2,000 free copies to local residents and has produced a series of programming that highlighted the experience, including an online forum with reporters Nate Morabito and David Boraks and artists Marcus Kiser, Makayla Binter and McNair. As the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative continues to grow, it remains focused on bridging the gap between the local news ecosystem and the community to tackle important issues. The group just released its 2021-2022 Strategic Plan which outlines its future development and the creation of a $1.5 million sustainability fund to support the local news ecosystem.

For readers who want to know more about the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, please click on the following link: www.charlottejournalism.org For readers who want to know more about Charlotte BOOM Charlotte, please click on the following link: www.boomcharlotte.org For readers who want to know more about Artstreet Creative, please click on the following link: www.artstcreative.com

While reading PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID-19, I was reminded of the following quotation by Daniel Kahneman: “No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.” The individual stories included in this book transcend all of the numbers associated with the pandemic. In the face of the current pandemic, all of us have to make decisions about getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and maintaining social distancing. The stories in this book help readers make better-informed decisions about their own responses to the pandemic. In so doing, this book makes an important contribution to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: COVID-19 graphic novel

Two New YA Novels by Charlotte Authors

July 25, 2021 by Mark West

Since I regularly include young adult novels in the literature courses that I teach at UNC Charlotte, I am always on the lookout for new YA novels by Charlotte authors. In recent weeks, I discovered two such novels: List of Ten by Halli Gomez and Phoebe Unfired by Amalie Jahn. These novels pair together perfectly. They are both about sixteen-year-old protagonists who are struggling with mental health issues. Troy Hayes, the central character in List of Ten, suffers from both Tourette Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Phoebe Benson, the central character in Phoebe Unfired, wrestles with germophobia and depression. Although these characters have serious problems, their personalities are not defined entirely by their problems. Troy and Phoebe are fully developed and sympathetic characters, and both forge meaningful and complex relationships with other characters. In the end, it’s these relationships that make List of Ten and Phoebe Unfired such powerful stories.

I recently contacted Halli Gomez and Amalie Jahn, and I asked both about their new novels and their experiences as Charlotte writers.

Here is what Halli sent to me:

List of Ten, a young adult novel about a teen with Tourette Syndrome (TS) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), is a story I’ve been trying to tell most of my life. It is one that explains what having these disorders feels like on the inside. This book follows Troy Hayes who is tired of the pain and humiliation that frequently accompanies TS and OCD, and, despite his new friendships, is planning to end his life. Troy’s story isn’t my story, but as someone with these disorders, I do admit there is a lot of me wrapped in those pages. Deciding to write this novel has been a priority since I began writing ten years ago, but I couldn’t find the right plot or character. Until one day as I walked the beautiful tree-lined paths of one of Charlotte’s many greenways, the details came to me.

I was fortunate to have had a friend (a local literary agent and fellow martial artist) recommend joining the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), an association with an incredible Carolinas chapter. At their yearly conferences (always held in Charlotte) I met wonderful local writers and was quickly welcomed into their group. I also met the woman who would become my agent and sell List of Ten. I’m happy to say the story doesn’t end there. While working with Park Road Books for my book launch and pre-order campaign, I was told about an open bookseller position. One of the many things writers and booksellers have in common is reading. Well, it just so happens I’ve been in love with books my entire life. I got the job and as a writer and Park Road Books bookseller and events coordinator, I am deeply involved with the Charlotte literary community. A place that feels right at home.

Here is what Amalie Jahn sent to me:

The major underlying theme in each of my YA books is that no one is ever alone. Adolescents spend an unfathomable amount of time worrying that they aren’t going to fit in or that no one has ever experienced what they’re going through. I like to show teenagers, through my stories, that their experiences and feelings are largely universal and regardless of what they’re feeling, they’re not alone. To that end, I developed severe germaphobia after my first child was born. The trauma of a difficult pregnancy and her premature birth triggered severe anxiety, and it took years of suffering and therapy to learn how to navigate the world from inside my diagnosis. Like my pregnancy, I recognized the recent stress of living through a global pandemic was going to be extremely triggering for a lot of people, especially kids, and I wanted them to know they’re not alone, it’s okay if it takes time to figure things out, and they shouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed to ask for help. I wrote Phoebe Unfired to show readers that when it comes to mental health, sometimes the only way around is through, and even though “normalcy” might seem impossible, there is always, always hope.

Writing is often a solitary endeavor that can be quite isolating. After several years of toiling away on my own here in Charlotte, I began searching for other local YA authors to commiserate with over publishing’s many ups and downs. I conducted a quick Twitter search, discovered several names, and after working up the courage to ‘slip into their DMs,’ a group of us ultimately started the Charlotte Area YA Writer’s Group. At the moment, we have thirty-three members, and although I would like to say we get together frequently to write, we mostly just hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Truly, though, one of the best parts about having author friends who write in your genre living in your city is knowing someone will always show up to your latest event!

Halli and Amalie each has her own website. For readers who want to know more about Halli, please click on the following link: https://halligomez.com/ For readers who want to know more about Amalie, please click on the following link: https://www.amaliejahn.com/

Halli’s List of Ten and Amalie’s Phoebe Unfired are welcomed additions to my ever-expanding list of YA novels by authors who call Storied Charlotte home.

Tags: germaphobia books obsessive-compulsive disorder books tourette syndrome books YA novels

Abbigail Glen and her Pop-Up Bookstore

July 13, 2021 by Mark West

There was a time when Charlotte supported lots of bookstores, but nowadays the Queen City has only a handful of bookstores that are still in business. However, not all of the news is bad. Two years ago, Abbigail Glen launched a pop-up bookstore called Shelves, a black-owned business that is finding success by making books available where people already congregate.

A native of Philadelphia, Abbigail is an avid reader and for years she had a dream of owning her own bookstore. After moving to Charlotte following a road trip to the Queen City 6 months earlier, she secured an HR position at a small technology company where she worked for 3 years supporting their employees. She eventually resigned from that role and launched Shelves as a Pop-Up Bookstore at Queen City Grounds in Uptown shortly thereafter. She realized early on that the key to making her pop-up bookstore work was partnering with other small businesses like Enderly Coffee Co. and Mint Hill Roasting Company.

Continue reading to learn more about Abbigail’s mission for Shelves.

I launched Shelves in June of 2019 and have been serving as Charlotte’s friendly neighborhood bookseller ever since. In addition to being a dream come true, Shelves is both an online and mobile pop-up bookstore that partners with other small businesses that have a brick & mortar presence in the Charlotte Metro area. We are committed to educating families and celebrating the joy that reading books brings to people all over the world because we believe that reading is freedom. We are on a quest to not only provide our supporters with great books, but also create amazing lifestyle products made exclusively with readers, writers, and dreamers in mind. It’s been quite a journey so far and continues to surprise me along the way.

Shelves has two upcoming Pop-Up Bookstores hosted by Enderly Coffee Co., which is located at 2620 Tuckaseegee Road in West Charlotte. The first will take place on Saturday, July 17th from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm EST, and the second will take place on Saturday, July 24th from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm EST. These events provide Mecklenburg County readers with a chance to discover and purchase new books, while enjoying a cup of coffee made from coffee beans roasted locally by Enderly. If you are unable to attend their Pop-Up Bookstore, you can always shop with them online at shelvesbookstore.com. In addition to USPS shipping, Shelves also offers Local Pickup and Friday Home Delivery options to Mecklenburg County residents. In my opinion, the combination of books and coffee has the makings for a perfect day in Storied Charlotte.

Christopher S. Lawing’s Photographs of Charlotte’s Disappearing Landmarks

July 06, 2021 by Mark West

Like many long-time residents of Charlotte, I am saddened by the recent closing of Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream, Price’s Chicken Coop, and Zack’s Hamburgers. I especially miss Mr. K’s since its location is just a few blocks from my home. Our dog misses Mr. K’s, too. Nearly every day the two of us would walk by Mr. K’s, and often the owner, George Dizes, would give our dog a piece of a hotdog bun. Mr. K’s closed in March, but our dog is still on the lookout for more hotdog buns. Just as Mr. K’s played a role in our daily life and the life of my neighborhood, Price’s Chicken Coop and Zack’s Hamburgers played important roles in the neighborhoods where they did business for so many years. These three businesses were not just places where one could get a quick meal. Each of them had a distinct character and colorful history. They were Charlotte landmarks.

Charlotte photographer Christopher S. Lawing has a passion for preserving the history of such Charlotte landmarks. I have a copy of his book Charlotte: The Signs of the Times—A History Told Through the Queen City’s Classic Roadside Signage, and I recently thumbed through it. I am pleased to report that it includes photographs of the signs associated with Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream, Price’s Chicken Coop, and Zack’s Hamburgers. As Christopher sees it, photographing these signs is part of a larger, ongoing project. For readers who want to know more about his Charlotte Signs Project, please click on the following link: https://www.cltsignsproject.com/

Looking at Christopher’s beautiful photographs of the signs for these landmarks brought back good memories for me. I am grateful that Christopher had the foresight to photograph these places while they were still in business, serving their customers and participating in their local communities. I decided to contact Christopher and ask him for more information about his efforts to preserve the history of such Charlotte landmarks. Here is what he sent to me:

When I first started photographing iconic Charlotte signs back in 2010 for a darkroom photography class at Myers Park High School, all I had was an analog Nikon FM SLR 35mm film camera and rolls of Kodak Ektachrome 100 slide transparency film. A few years later, after I’d moved on to college, I was able to make the investment in a Nikon D3200 DSLR digital camera, but by that point I’d already photographed some of the Queen City’s most well-known, locally (but also regionally!) famous, and of course beloved landmarks. Signs representing this ‘film period’ of my ongoing Charlotte Signs Project, included none other than Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream, Price’s Chicken Coop, and Zack’s Hamburgers – places most recently in the news due to their bemoaned and too-soon closures.

Each spot represented an incredible array of diversity, welcoming people from all walks of life, and while the delicious ice cream, fried chicken, and hamburgers will be sincerely missed, the true loss of these businesses will be in losing the salt-of-the-earth, humble, easily-approachable, and simple nature of these places. The shared collective experience and sense of community is what made them significant, meaningful, and profound!

I am thankful to have two sets of specific memories from each of these places: one being the repeat enjoyment of these places from a patron’s point of view, and the second being the Sunday afternoon drives my parents and I would take to these places for me to photograph their respective signs for my project. Many times over the course of the project, I have been able to interact with the owners of these businesses I photographed, and that has certainly been true with these three icons. The families and faces behind each one of these spots are exactly as you imagine them to be – friendly, smiling, and enthusiastic.

Fortunately, I was able to be on-scene the last day of business for both Price’s Chicken Coop (I waited 6 hours, but it was worth it!) and most recently Zack’s Hamburgers (this line moved quicker, and I waited only 1.5 hours). In my own way through my simple food orders, I was paying tribute to the greater legacy that each business has given to me, my family, and to Charlotte overall. And while I didn’t bring either of my Nikon cameras or film or memory cards to mark the occasion, I did take plenty of pictures on my smartphone.

With a combined 159 years of dedicated service to the Charlotte community, these 3 places exist now in our memories, our stories, and our photographs. We owe it to our friends, families, and future Charlotteans, to tell them of the storied past that these places were, while also supporting our remaining classic eateries, places that make our community a community!

The photographs in Christopher’s Charlotte: The Signs of the Times remind me of Rod Stewart’s 1971 hit song, “Every Picture Tells a Story.” Each of the photographs in Christopher’s book has a story associated with it. When viewed together, these photographs add an important visual dimension to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Charlotte landmarks Charlotte signs

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

June 27, 2021 by Mark West

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

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

Here is what Cheris Hodges sent to me:

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

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

Here is what Erika Montgomery sent to me:

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

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

Here is what Kim Wright sent to me:

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: beach book Charlotte writers novel

Charlotte’s Brandon Reese and His Cave Dada Picture Books

June 20, 2021 by Mark West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: picture books

Celebrating the South’s LGBTQ Literary Tradition with Paula Martinac

June 14, 2021 by Mark West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: lesbian characters LGBTQ fiction writers novels Southern LGBTQ experience

Contact Me

Links

Archives