Storied Charlotte

The Story of a Tall Girl Who Became an Investigative Journalist

November 02, 2020 by Mark West

For long-time readers of The Charlotte Observer, Nancy Stancill’s name might seem familiar, for she worked as an award-winning investigative reporter and editor for the Charlotte paper for fifteen years, beginning in 1993 and ending in 2009. Although she retired from her career as a journalist, she has never stopped writing. In 2013, she published the first of two mystery novels set in Texas, where she lived before moving to Charlotte. This month, her publisher, Black Rose Writing, is releasing her memoir. Titled Tall: Love and Journalism in a Six-foot World, this fast-paced memoir explores how Nancy’s status as a six-foot tall woman has impacted her journalistic career, her relationships, and her sense of self. For more information about Tall and Nancy’s other books, please click on the following link: http://www.nancystancill .com/

One might assume that the process of writing a memoir would be a solitary endeavor, but not for Nancy. While writing Tall, she found support from former colleagues who worked with her at The Charlotte Observer, various writing teachers and mentors, and fellow writers she has met in classes and workshops. Nancy sees herself as a member of a community of writers. I recently contacted Nancy and asked her how this community of writers contributed to the writing of her memoir. Here is what she sent to me:

My biggest help in getting Tall done was a weekly class I took several times called “Under Construction.” The class is offered by Maureen Ryan Griffin each fall and spring with a few sessions in the summer. Maureen is a longtime prize-winning writing teacher who is also a gifted poet and writer. The classes usually consist of 6-8 advanced writers who are working on long-term projects. What Maureen’s class did for me was to give me deadlines. I knew that once a week I had to present a new or revised chapter to the class. My fellow classmates would offer valuable, gentle feedback. That was enormously helpful.

Since I’m a former Charlotte Observer investigative reporter and assigning editor, I use my former colleagues to get good feedback as well. I normally meet with two writers every week where we do parallel writing. That means essentially that we sit at a table and work on our own projects, stopping to talk occasionally.

I also have several excellent mentors. Poet Dannye Romine Powell has been an invaluable help on my two published novels set in Texas as well as my memoir. She has read all of them and given generous feedback. Another wonderful source has been former Observer copy editor Steve Johnston. Steve copyedited Tall and also takes care of my website. I don’t know what I would do without him.

There is plenty of help available to writers in Charlotte. I took a poetry class offered last spring by Charlotte Lit. Dannye Powell was teaching it. Charlotte Lit is also a great source for daylong seminars and for long-term programs for writers looking to start or finish novels or memoirs. The writers’ organization offers high-quality programs and will send out notices to members. Membership is low-cost and well worth it.

Tall tells the story of my life, but many people played a role in the writing of my memoir.

With the publication of Tall: Love and Journalism in a Six-foot World, Nancy joins several other Charlotte writers who have recently published memoirs. This group includes Judy Goldman, the author of Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap; Patrice Gopo, the author of All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way; Molly Grantham, the author of The Juggle Is Real: The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom; and Tommy Tomlinson, the author of The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America. Like these other Charlotte memoirists, Nancy shares a personal story, but in the process, she and her fellow memoirists contribute to the varied narratives that make up Storied Charlotte.

Tags: investigative reporter memoir mystery novels

Verse & Vino Goes Virtual

October 26, 2020 by Mark West

In November 2014, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation held its first Verse & Vino event. Bestselling authors from around the country came and interacted with library supporters from around the Charlotte area, and the wine flowed freely. A great time was had by all, and the event raised much needed funds for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. In the years since then, Verse & Vino has become more than an annual fundraising event. For many book lovers, including me, it is the most-anticipated literary event in Charlotte. As a regular attendee, I have enjoyed hearing the authors’ presentations, and I have taken satisfaction in contributing to the continued success of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

At least in terms of its name, Verse & Vino reminds me of a line from Sesame Street. I sort of expect Elmo to say, “This event is brought to you by the letter V.” There is one word that starts with V, however, that nobody wants anywhere near Verse & Vino, and that’s the word virus. To its credit, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation responded quickly to the dangers posed by the coronavirus. They decided not to have an in-person event this year, but they did not cancel Verse & Vino. Instead, they organized a virtual event that will take place during the evening of November 5, 2020. Just as in years past, this year’s Verse & Vino will feature five popular authors and will be hosted by radio personality and author Sheri Lynch. And just as in years past, the event will raise funds for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

All of the authors featured at this year’s event have the distinction of being New York Times best-selling authors, and all have new books that they will discuss during their presentations. India Hicks, a writer known for her amusing books about style and design, will talk about her latest release, An Entertaining Story, in which she combines advice and stories related to the art of throwing parties. Megan Miranda, a North Carolina author, will talk about her new thriller, The Girl from Widow Hills. Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon and several other novels for young adults, will discuss To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, his first science fiction novel for adult readers. Alice Randall will talk about her novel Black Bottom Saints, which captures the feel and spirit of Detroit’s legendary Black Bottom neighborhood, a community that is sometimes described as a midwestern rival to New York City’s Harlem. The fifth author, Christina Baker Kline, will focus her presentation on The Exiles, a historical novel set in Australia during the mid-nineteenth century. All of the books featured at this year’s Verse & Vino will be available for purchase at Park Road Books.

One of the people who has played a critical role in organizing this year’s Verse & Vino is Jenni Gaisbauer, the Executive Director of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation. In discussing the preparations for this year’s virtual event, she recently said, “We’ve worked with a team of experts in streaming media to reimagine the event’s format. We’ve retained the elements that make Verse & Vino what it is – the authors, the festive atmosphere, the community – and added interactivity and bonus features only possible on a digital platform. Verse & Vino is both an important fundraiser for our library and a joyous celebration of libraries, of literacy, and of investing together in our shared future. I can’t think of a better moment to look ahead with a community of friends and supporters.”

Anyone who is interested in participating in this year’s Verse & Vino event has several options available. For those who want to turn the event into their own party or date night, they can order packages, but the deadline for placing these orders is October 27. For those who just want to purchase a ticket to this event, the deadline is November 3. For more information about participating in this year’s event, please click on the following link: https://foundation.cmlibrary.org/verse-vino/

While I will miss the in-person event, I will be sure not to pass up the opportunity to participate in in this year’s virtual Verse & Vino. After all, participating in Verse & Vino is a wonderful way to engage in our Storied Charlotte community and support our storied public library.

Tags: book lovers literary event Verse & Vino

Learning about Poetry from Cathy Smith Bowers

October 18, 2020 by Mark West

The poet Cathy Smith Bowers and I were next-door neighbors during the mid-1990s. At the time, I knew that she served as the poet-in-residence at Queens University, and she occasionally mentioned news about her latest publications. She regularly published poems in literary journals and reviews, but she aimed higher. In 1998, she submitted a poem titled “Crepe Myrtles” to The Atlantic Monthly, and they accepted it. This exciting news swept through the neighborhood, and we all felt a sense of pride in her success. Not long thereafter, Cathy moved out of my neighborhood, but I continued to follow her career. I still remember feeling impressed and pleased when I learned that Governor Bev Perdue named Cathy as the sixth North Carolina Poet Laureate, a position that Cathy held from 2010 to 2012. In keeping with Cathy’s status as one of North Carolina’s most celebrated poets, the North Carolina publisher Press 53 brought out The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers in 2013. This book brings together in one volume all of Cathy’s previously published collections along with an introduction by Fred Chappell.

Back when Cathy and I were neighbors, we sometimes talked about teaching. During these conversations, I came to realize the she took a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in helping her students write their own poems. I remember her talking about sharing a favorite poem with her students in an effort to inspire them to write a poem about a particular image or emotion. After one of these conversations, I thought to myself how lucky her students were to have Cathy there to guide them as they tried their hands at writing poetry. Well, now everyone can benefit from Cathy’s gifts as a teacher thanks to the publication of her newest book, The Abiding Image: Inspiration and Guidance for Beginning Writers, Readers, and Teachers of Poetry, which Press 53 released in September 2020. I recently contacted Cathy and asked her about how she came to write this book. Here is what she sent to me:

This book has been in the making for fifty years. My work at Queens in both undergraduate and graduate programs has been crucial in the making of this book. It was also in Charlotte where I first became connected with the Haden Institute, where I still teach in both Spiritual Direction and Dream Leadership Programs.

The book began with an attempt to finally gather in one place all the lectures, seminars, and workshops I have done through the years. I just got tired of hunting down all those folders. When I did realize I might have a book in the making, I decided it must be the book I wish I had had when I was a beginning reader, writer, and teacher of poetry.

I believe there has always been and continues to be great misunderstandings of what a poem is, how poems come to be written, and how one might experience a poem after it has come into being. Each poem included in this book illustrates a significant point about a poetic element such as sound and syllabics, tension and metaphor, needed to explore and illuminate the power of what I call an abiding image. These are the images that might register with us through sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste—images that hook us and refuse to let go. I believe these images are asking something of us—Look closer. Here is where the poem begins—not with some profound idea, but with a single abiding image that contains, at some deeper level, much more than what has registered with us on the surface level.

I wanted to let people know you do not have to be a prophet, have advanced (or un-advanced) degrees in literature, or be some kind of prodigy upon whom brilliant ideas and knowledge have been bestowed. I, myself, could have been the poster child for the one least likely to succeed at anything, much less the art and craft of poetry. Writing and reading and teaching poetry saved and continues to save my life. I wanted to share with others the miracle-making gift of poetry–in understandable, readable, inspiring, and applicable prose.

My vision for this book is part handbook, part memoir, part stand-up-comedy routine for any writer, reader, and teacher of poetry. From those who have no idea where to begin to those in need of practical and innovative ways to reboot, revive, and begin again.

Here’s to the language that saves us.

Cathy no longer lives in Charlotte. She now calls Tryon, North Carolina, home. However, she still teaches in the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Queens University, and she still participates in Charlotte’s poetry community. Through her ongoing work with creative writing students at Queens University and through the publication of The Abiding Image and her various poetry collections, Cathy continues to play a role in the development of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: poet laureate poetic elements

In Memory of Tony Abbott (1935-2020)

October 12, 2020 by Mark West

When I heard the sad news that Dr. Anthony S. “Tony” Abbott died on October 3, 2020, I flashed back to the first time I heard Tony read his poems aloud. His first poetry collection, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat, had just been published, and he read a number of the poems from this collection at an event sponsored by Poplar Street Books, a charming used bookstore that was located in a historic home in the heart of Charlotte’s Fourth Ward. Rosemary Latimore, the owner of the store, was a great lover of poetry, and she often held poetry readings at her bookstore. I went to Tony’s reading, and I remember being moved by the deep emotions that run through his poetry. For example, in his poem about the girl in the yellow raincoat, Tony helped those of us in attendance better understand the continuing sense of loss that a parent experiences following the death of a child. I also remember the sound of his voice as he read aloud. There was a warmth to his voice that helped him establish a rapport with those of us in the audience. Although that poetry reading took place more than thirty years ago, I remember it very well. I can still see Tony reading his poems, surrounded by stacks of old books. I recall that at the end of his reading, he repeatedly thanked Rosemary for organizing the event, and he thanked those of us in the audience for coming out to hear him. As I see it, Tony didn’t just share his poems with us that afternoon. He shared part of his essence. His passion for poetry, his desire to connect with readers, his graciousness, and his commitment to the larger literary community all came through during his reading.

I am just one of many people whose lives are richer because they knew Tony or read his work. During his thirty-seven years as an English professor at Davidson College, he taught countless students about literature and drama. Even after he retired in 2001, he continued to teach occasional courses. As one of the founders of the Davidson Community Players, he helped bring the joy of theater to the lives of many residents of Davidson and beyond. Through his many books, he reached readers, most of whom never met him in person. Over the course of his long career, he wrote seven books of poetry, two novels, and several works of literary criticism. He participated in various writers’ groups and organizations in the Charlotte area, and he could always be counted on to lead writing workshops.

For the purposes of this blog post, I contacted three people who knew Tony well and asked them to provide me with more information about Tony’s many and varied contributions to Charlotte’s community of readers and writers. One of these people is Ann Wicker, who was one of Tony’s students at Davidson College in the 1970s and who went on to become one of his friends. Another is Amy Rogers, who was the publisher of Tony’s first novel, Leaving Maggie Hope. The third is Leslie Rindoks, who Tony sought out as his designer many times, over several decades.

Here is what Ann Wicker sent to me:

Through his service in so many organizations and in his personal life, Dr. Tony Abbott was a bridge builder and one of his many gifts was bringing writers and readers together. His readings were entertaining and his classes inspirational. Further, he had a gift for bringing individuals together—if you were a friend of Tony, you had a vast network of friends you just hadn’t met yet.

While Tony was active in literary endeavors across the state and beyond, he spent a lot of time both before and after his 2001 retirement from Davidson College teaching classes for the Charlotte community. His classes through Queens University were always full, and he taught many classes and workshops for various groups in Charlotte and the region.

For many years he was active in the Charlotte Writers Club, serving as the organization’s president as well as several terms on their board. The Charlotte Center for Literary Arts wrote in their newsletter that Tony was “a supporter, faculty member, and friend of Charlotte Lit from our inception” in 2015.

Beyond Charlotte, Tony served as president of the North Carolina Writers’ network from 1990-1992. He received the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2015 and in 2020 entered the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. He served multiple terms on the boards of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society.

In 2008, Tony received the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts from Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. He was twice honored by the NC Poetry Society in the Brockman-Campbell Competition: in 2012 as co-winner for If Words Could Save Us and in 2014, an honorable mention for The Angel Dialogues.

Here is what Amy Rogers sent to me:

One of the best things about being a publisher is saying yes to writers who most often hear the word no when they submit their work. Saying yes to Tony Abbott’s novel was easy.

So when I heard the sad news that Tony had died, I did what book-lovers do: I went seeking solace from my bookshelf and pulled down my copy of Leaving Maggie Hope. It’s an elegant, coming-of-age story of a boy who struggles to develop self-reliance in a world that often defies understanding.

I remembered back to when I first sat down with Tony’s manuscript; before then, I’d only been familiar with Tony’s work as a masterful poet.

As part of the publishing team at Novello Press, I evaluated hundreds of submissions each year. We’d all seen the sad truth: Even skilled wordsmiths often lack the ability to sustain a long-form narrative over the hundreds of pages that comprise a novel.

But this, this: Expansive and somehow tight, lyrical and yet muscular, Leaving Maggie Hope was a treasure. We not only added it to our roster of published books, we named it a Novello Literary Award winner.

That was back in 2003 and so much has changed since then. I didn’t get to know Tony as a beloved professor who shaped the creative minds of so many students. I can’t imagine the loss to his beloved Davidson community. But I have a keepsake of his legacy on my shelf, along with the memory of the joy of saying yes.

Here is what Leslie Rindoks sent to me:

Thirty years ago, Tony Abbott was directing Davidson Community Players’ production of Inherit the Wind and needed a set designer. New to North Carolina, I was a freelance designer with a theatre degree and little else. That play was the first of our collaborations, some theatre-based, but many more book-related, all of which enriched my life—as his neighbor, a designer, an editor, and ultimately as a writer myself.

I designed the cover of his first book, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat (St. Andrews Press, 1989). Later, I designed the first edition of his autobiographical novel, Leaving Maggie Hope (Novello Festival Press, 2003), and as the book became a perennial favorite, I published, with Lorimer Press, the subsequent second edition and many reprints thereafter. Lorimer went on to publish collections of Tony’s poetry: New and Selected, If Words Could Save Us, and Angel Dialogues, all to great acclaim.

Tony delighted in collaboration, especially when sharing poetry with new audiences. He read poems accompanied by Baroque cello; he stepped into the recording studio so a cd could accompany If Words Could Save Us; he enlisted an artist to depict Gracie, the bridge-playing, Girl Scout cookie-selling, chandelier-swinging angel in Angel Dialogues; then, while promoting the book, he paired with various readers across the state to give Gracie a voice.

In “Blood Talk” he wrote, “I got nothing but goddam words working for me,” but goddam, what he did with them! As N.C. poet laureate Joseph Bathanti said, Tony refused “to flinch or shy away from his spiritual preoccupation intrigues” and he mined with “profundity and lyric intensity that sacred vein—with an imaginative finesse and sense of humor that is at once mystical and accessible.”

Tony’s belief in the power of words—if words could save us (and they can, my darling)—was in full force when he served as volume editor for What Writers Do, a retrospective of Lenoir-Rhyne’s Visiting Writers Series (Lorimer Press, 2011). When he reached out to writers such as Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, and Ron Rash, they delivered: poems, essays, stories, all which, as Tony said, “celebrate life and language and hope … making us want to be the human beings we were intended to be.” The very definition of Tony’s lifelong mission.

How fitting Tony should leave us now. The leaves on his favorite trees, those sugar maples, demand our attention before they loosen their hold and drift away.

Blood red of late October in the South,

and from the cemetery to the college campus

on the hill, the leaves bathe my eyes. I

turn each corner into dazzling surprise.

As Ann, Amy, and Leslie make clear in their statements, Tony was more than a gifted writer. He always valued friendship and community, and he took seriously his role as a teacher and mentor to the many writers he nurtured and supported over the course of his long and productive life. He will be missed, but through his books, he will continue to play a role in Storied Charlotte for years to come.

Tags: poetry collection

David Boyd’s Translations of Japanese Picture Books

October 05, 2020 by Mark West

I remember when Piedmont Airlines debuted its nonstop service between Charlotte and London in 1987. Even before the first flight to London took off, the city installed new signs for the airport with the word “international” proudly added to the name of the airport. Our international airport is just one of many examples of Charlotte’s international connections. Another example is UNC Charlotte’s Department of Languages and Culture Studies. This department offers a diverse smorgasbord of language courses and programs, including one of the nation’s top-ranked programs in Japanese Studies.

David Boyd is one of the professors in UNC Charlotte’s Japanese Studies Program. He specializes in teaching courses on Japanese-English translation. He also works as a professional translator, and he is winning high praise for his English translations of Japanese picture books. His translation of Hiroshi Osada’s Every Color of Light: A Book about the Sky recently came out with Enchanted Lion Books, and already it is receiving excellent reviews. Publishers Weekly praised his translation in a starred review. Publishers Weekly also featured him in an article titled “Building Bridges: The Art of Children’s Book Translation.” I recently contacted David and asked him about his work as a translator of Japanese picture books. Here is what he sent to me:

I came to UNC Charlotte in 2018, where I’m fortunate enough to teach what I love: Japanese-English translation. Most of my courses have been workshops, in which the students and I have had detailed discussions about a wide variety of texts and translation strategies. Ultimately, my goal is to help them become more sensitive to the structures and nuances of both Japanese and English.

In 2017, I published my first translation of a children’s book: What What What, illustrated by Ryoji Arai and written by Arata Tendo. This was also my first time working with Enchanted Lion Books, a Brooklyn-based publisher with a discerning eye for great stories and art from around the world. What What What tells the story of a young boy who can’t keep himself from asking questions. As the book begins, the boy’s constant questions irritate and exasperate everyone around him. But, in the end, the boy’s inquisitive nature saves the day. Sometimes you really do need to keep on asking. What What What is both haunting and touching as it affirms the power of a child’s boundless curiosity.

This month, Enchanted Lion is publishing my translation of another book illustrated by Arai, with text by the late poet Hiroshi Osada. What What What is a very human tale, but Every Color of Light: A Book About the Sky is focused on the natural world. In the book’s opening pages, it starts to rain, and over time what begins as a light rain builds into a full-fledged storm. With every turn of the page, the weather grows more and more fierce—until the storm finally subsides and the sky returns to blue. In this stunning work, Osada’s words evoke nature’s moving lullaby while Arai’s art brings those words to life.

Through his work as a translator, David is helping American children make connections with Japanese children’s literature, but he is also contributing to Charlotte’s connections with the wider world. His English translations of What What What and Every Color of Light add an international dimension to the ever-expanding library of books that make up Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Charlotte international connections English translations of Japanese picture books

Charlotte’s Creators of Comic Strips

September 28, 2020 by Mark West

My love of comic strips goes back to my early childhood. When I was a boy, my father read aloud to my siblings and me. In addition to reading books aloud, he regularly read the Sunday comics to us. We always called them the “funnies.” Every Sunday morning, before our mother got up, one of us would hand Dad the comics sections from our local newspaper, and he would start reading. One Sunday, when I was around seven or eight, I decided to play a trick on him. I dug through the stack of old newspapers next to the fireplace, found the comics from the previous Sunday, and slipped them inside the current week’s comics. Then, after Dad woke up, I handed him a double dose of comics to read aloud. He began by reading Dennis the Menace, and then he turned the page and found another Dennis the Menace. To my glee, he also read the second one. He went on to read both weeks’ worth of every comic strip, never letting on that something was not quite right. Needless to say, I reveled in my own Dennis-the-Menace moment.

I still regularly read Dennis the Menace although nowadays I tend to identify more with the character of Mr. Wilson. Given my long history with Dennis the Menace, I was pleased to learn that one of the current creators of this comic strip is from the Charlotte area. His name is Marcus Hamilton, and he has been creating the daily Dennis the Menace comic strip since 1995. Hamilton, however, is not the only creator of comic strips with Charlotte connections. Charlotte can also claim Jim Scancarelli, the current writer and illustrator of Gasoline Alley, and the late Doug Marlette, the writer and illustrator of Kudzu.

Marcus Hamilton did not create the character of Dennis the Menace. That honor goes to Hank Ketcham, who started the Dennis the Menace comic strip in 1951 and continued to write and illustrate it until the mid-1990s. When Ketcham began making plans to retire in 1993, he set out to find someone who could keep his comic strip going. Hamilton, a Charlotte-based illustrator, heard that Ketcham was looking for a successor, and the opportunity appealed to him. He contacted Ketcham, who was living in California at the time, and applied for the position. Ketcham liked Hamilton’s style of illustration, so he flew Hamilton to California, and they spent three days working together on the comic strip. Hamilton later said, “I learned more in those three days than I did in four years at college.” Hamilton has been illustrating the daily panels of Dennis the Menace ever since.

Jim Scancarelli, like Hamilton, worked as a freelance illustrator in Charlotte for years before entering the world of comic strips. In fact, both of them worked as artists for WBTV (Charlotte’s CBS-affiliated television station) in the 1960s. Also like Hamilton, Scancarelli ended up taking over an existing comic strip. Gasoline Alley, the comic strip that Scancarelli now writes and illustrates, debuted in 1918, making it the longest-running current comic strip in the United States. Frank King originated the strip and continued to produce it until the mid-1950s. King created a large cast of colorful characters who live in the fictional town of Gasoline Alley. In 1956, Dick Moores stepped in as the writer/illustrator of the strip, and in 1979 Moores hired Scancarelli as his assistant. When Moores died in 1986, Scancarelli took over Gasoline Alley. In commenting on this transition, Scancarelli recently said, “When I came along, I put my own personality into it. The art is a little different. Dick had a certain way of doing the expressions, and I’ve kept the characters in character but put my own swing to them. Now it’s more fun because I don’t have to sit there and emulate him as much as I did in the beginning.”

For Doug Marlette, the creation of his comic strip Kudzu was tied to his career as an editorial cartoonist. Marlette worked as the cartoonist for The Charlotte Observer from 1972 to 1987, and he launched Kudzu during this time in his career. Kudzu ran from 1981 until 2007 when Marlette died in a car accident. At its peak in popularity, the strip was syndicated in 300 newspapers nationwide. Kudzu is set in the fictional town of Bypass, North Carolina, and much of the humor relates to the tensions between the traditional South and the New South. Although Kudzu is no longer published in newspapers, there are several collections of the strips that are still available, including Gone with the Kudzu.

Marcus Hamilton, Jim Scancarelli, and Doug Marlette are all major players in the world of comic strips. It takes a special talent to be able to tell a story in just a few panels, and these three cartoonists excel at telling stories in this compressed format. Their artistry, wit, and insights into human nature are reflected in their comic strips. As I see it, their comic strips are delightful contributions to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: comic strips Sunday comics

UNC Charlotte Graduates Find Success Writing for Children and Young Adults

September 21, 2020 by Mark West

In the fall of 1984, I joined UNC Charlotte’s English Department with the understanding that I would focus my teaching and scholarship on children’s literature. During the early years of my career as an English professor, I took a lot of pride and satisfaction in my successes in publishing articles and books. I remember, for example, when I sold a piece to the New York Times Book Review, I used the honorarium to throw a party for the entire English Department. I started the invitation by saying, “This party is being brought to you by the New York Times.” Nowadays, however, much of my sense of satisfaction comes from the successes of our students and former students.

Given my interest in children’s literature, I am particularly pleased that two recent graduates of our M.A. program—Lora Beth Johnson and Susan Diamond Riley—have found success writing books for children and young adults. This summer, Razorbill, a Penguin imprint, published Lora Beth’s Goddess in the Machine, a YA fantasy novel. Also taking place this summer, Koehler Books published Susan’s The Sea Turtle’s Curse, the second book in her Delta & Jax Mystery Series for middle-school readers. Both Lora Beth and Susan honed their writing skills while pursuing their M.A. degrees. I contacted these authors and asked them to provide me with information about their books and to comment on how their experiences as graduate students in UNC Charlotte’s English Department contributed to their successes as published authors.

Here is what Lora Beth sent to me:

Goddess in the Machine is my debut novel and the first in a duology from Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House. In it, a girl wakes from cryonic sleep on a planet she doesn’t recognize and must team up with the mysterious soldier who woke her to navigate a future world where technology is considered magic and its practitioners revered as Deities. Goddess received a starred review from the School Library Journal and was selected for the American Bookseller Association’s Indies Introduce list. The Nerd Daily calls it “exhilarating and gripping,” and that it “reinvents one of the most beloved genres of fiction and leaves you wanting more.” I describe it as The 100 meets Jupiter Ascending, with a little bit of a linguistic twist.

When people ask me where I got the idea for Goddess, I always start by telling them about my experience at UNC Charlotte. I wrote the first draft of the manuscript that would become Goddess in Dr. Beth Gargano’s YA Fantasy course. It was a very different book then, with a different title, characters, and plot. But I had the opportunity to explore the themes and worldbuilding elements that I wanted to weave into the narrative. I did the next few revisions during the following semester, learning to work on deadlines and turning in multiple drafts to Dr. Gargano, who was my creative thesis committee chair. At the end of that semester, I put a 400-page, unbound manuscript into the boxes of Dr. Gargano, Dr. Balaka Basu, and Dr. Paula Connolly. They passed me anyway.

Since the first few drafts of Goddess were written while I was at UNCC, it was inevitably shaped by the courses I took, most notably by a linguistics course I had with Dr. Pilar Blitvich. Goddess is told from the perspective of two different characters who speak in different dialects. Depending on which character’s point of view you’re reading from, you’ll either be reading a science-fiction story or a fantasy. What one character calls technology, the other calls magic, and that difference in language is all it takes to put these two characters sharing a narrative into alternate realties. This is an idea that germinated from our studies in Dr. Blitvich’s course and grew into the entire crux of the novel.

Graduating wasn’t the end of my journey with Goddess—there were still revisions to be done, and queries to be sent, and editors to submit to—but my time at UNC Charlotte inspired and directed what would become my debut novel and continues to shape my writing. I’m currently revising the second and final book in the Goddess duology and plotting my next series. You’ll be able to find information about future work on my website: https://www.lorabethjohnson.com/.

Here is what Susan sent to me:

My novels The Sea Island’s Secret (University of South Carolina Press, 2019) and The Sea Turtle’s Curse (Koehler Books, 2020) are the first two books in the Delta & Jax Mystery series, with a third book currently in the works. While set in the present day, each book takes place in the Carolina Lowcountry and has the sibling duo solving a mystery from a particular era in our country’s past. In The Sea Island’s Secret, for instance, Delta and Jax find a skeleton and a mysterious message in a bottle in the salt marsh, sending them on a quest for a forgotten Civil War treasure. In their second adventure, the kids discover an ancient carving of a sea turtle on the beach, but soon find that the relic has magical powers that send them back nearly 500 years to the time of Spanish explorers and Native Americans. And did I mention that the turtle carving has apparently put their sea island home under a curse, with a hurricane hurtling their way? You can find more information about my novels on my website: https://www.susandiamondriley.com/

I am not exaggerating when I say that neither of these books would have existed if I hadn’t decided—at age 50—to enroll in UNC Charlotte for my M.A. degree in English. Up to that point, I had spent my professional career primarily writing nonfiction pieces for newspapers and marketing departments, as well as editing other writers’ works. If I was ever to achieve my dream of writing a fictional novel for children, though, I needed the structure and accountability that I believed a graduate program would provide. What I received was so much more. I found mentors in the field of Children’s Literature, instructors and published authors who graciously shared their insights and experiences in both the writing process and the world of publishing itself. My M.A. thesis consisted of an early draft of my first novel, and I admit that I would have been satisfied with that manuscript alone. After all, my bucket list item had been to write a novel, and I had done that. But my mentors would not let me leave it at that. Even after I graduated and moved out of state, the members of my thesis committee continued to check on me regularly to ensure that I was pursuing publication of my book. Without their encouragement, I don’t know that I would have ever seen my books on the shelves of bookstores and libraries, let alone in the hands of eager young readers asking, “When will the next Delta and Jax book be out?”

My life has completely changed since my days at UNC Charlotte. I now live on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and have become part of a dynamic network of authors and artists who include me as one of their own. I regularly attend book launches (sometimes my own!), lead writing workshops for adults and children, and speak to groups of all ages—all via Zoom these days, of course. You might say I’ve started a whole new chapter of my life, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

The successes that Lora Beth Johnson and Susan Diamond Riley have achieved as published authors are of their own doing. Their novels are the products of their fertile imaginations and their hard work. Still, I like to think that the time they spent as graduate students in UNC Charlotte’s English Department helped in the launching of their writing careers. As graduates of our M.A program, Lora Beth and Susan are alumni of UNC Charlotte and are part of the community of readers and writers that make up Storied Charlotte.

Tags: mystery series YA fantasy novel

Charlotte’s True Crime Writers

September 13, 2020 by Mark West

My introduction to the genre of true crime took place while I was still in high school. I decided to read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood after I saw the 1967 film adaptation of Capote’s book. Since I had already seen the film. I had a pretty good sense of what to expect from the book, but it still disturbed me. It wasn’t just Capote’s account of the murders of the four members of the Clutter family that got to me; what troubled me the most was Capote’s ability to bring his readers inside the minds of the two killers. Capote helped me understand these men’s thinking process, and I found it unsettling to see the world through their eyes. Works of true crime can do that. As a genre, true crime is about more than the crimes depicted. Works of true crime can shed light into the dark corners of human nature and reveal sides of our society that we generally like to keep out of view.

Charlotte is home to several excellent true crime writers, including Karen Cox, Pam Kelley, and Cathy Pickens. These three writers have recently published works of true crime that provide readers with insights into the seamier side of life in the American South. Karen Cox, a history professor at UNC Charlotte, published Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South in 2017. UNC Press brought out a paperback version of this book last month. Pam Kelley, a former reporter for The Charlotte Observer, wrote Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South, which the New Press published in 2018. Cathy Pickens, the author of the Southern Fried Mystery Series, wrote Charlotte True Crime Stories: Notorious Cases from Fraud to Serial Killing, which came out with the History Press in 2019. I contacted all three of these authors and asked them to provide me with information about their books and their interest in the genre of true crime.

Here is what Karen sent to me:

I wasn’t searching for a true crime story to tell, the true crime story found me. I was in the Mississippi state archives wrapping up research for a different book, when a story caught my eye. In 1932, an elderly white couple from Natchez, known for their eccentricities and who lived with their goats in a crumbling down antebellum mansion, were charged with murdering their neighbor in Depression-era Mississippi. It was southern gothic come to life. I mean, who could resist such a story? I couldn’t. That is where things began, but it is not where they ended.

Certainly, the notoriety that the case received in the national media at the time made this a fascinating story. Known locally as the “Goat Castle murder,” the focus had remained on the white protagonists for decades. But as I learned, at the heart of the story was a tale of racial injustice. It’s more likely that a journalist or nonfiction writer might have written about this story, but I saw in it an opportunity for me, a historian, to write creatively about various topics that are central to understanding southern history–race relations, Jim Crow segregation, the double-standard of southern justice, the decline of the southern aristocracy, the southern gothic, and mass incarceration. These are tough issues for readers to grasp, but woven into a story of true crime they become easier to digest and understand.

At some point, my interest in writing about this case became an obsession to set the story right, to give some historical justice to the poor black domestic–Emily Burns–who was convicted of the crime and sent to one of the South’s most notorious prisons, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman. She was innocent, but white southern society demanded that someone, especially a black someone, pay the price for taking a white life–even if the eccentric white neighbors were complicit in the crime. I think that writing Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South freed me as a historian to write for broader audiences. Academia can beat the creativity out of a person, but through true crime, I found my way back.

Here is what Pam sent to me:

My book focuses on true crime – cocaine dealing – but when I decided to write Money Rock, I also wanted to explore Charlotte’s legacy of racism. In a way, this book was a do-over. I’d first written about Belton Lamont Platt, a flashy coke dealer nicknamed Money Rock, when I covered his trial for the Charlotte Observer in 1986. When I reconnected with him in 2011, he’d spent more than 20 years in federal prison and become an evangelical minister. That’s when I started asking deeper questions that I hadn’t considered the first time.

I find the genre of true crime a double-edged sword. Done badly, it can be exploitive, reinforcing stereotypes about criminals without exploring why they commit crimes. I’d put my original 1986 story about Money Rock in this category. I focused on the man’s jewelry and money and cars but didn’t dig deeper. On the other hand, the best true-crime reporting can spotlight and even correct injustice. One terrific example – not a book, but a podcast – is In the Dark’s series on Curtis Flowers, a man who was tried six times in Mississippi for the same murder. Its meticulous reporting uncovers a botched investigation and stunning prosecutorial misconduct. The podcast drew national attention to the case, and last week, Mississippi’s attorney general finally dropped it. Flowers is free after 23 years in prison.

When I first began researching my book, I was trying to understand what drove Belton in his Money Rock days. I wanted to hear what it was like to be a major cocaine dealer, why he bought so much jewelry. Eventually, I began to look at larger issues, such as the role structural racism – segregation, urban renewal, mass incarceration – played in his family over several generations. It’s been gratifying to hear readers say the book opened their eyes to Charlotte’s racial history. What I love about the true crime genre is that it can illuminate so many things besides crime.

Here is what Cathy sent to me:

When I decided to become a mystery writer, I journeyed through courtrooms, high-profile trials, morgues and autopsy suites, jails, all the places where we wrestle with often insurmountable questions of good and evil. I was first intrigued with the crime solvers and the crime scientists, rather than the crimes and criminals. Then I stumbled on the crime reporters, those who made reportage its own art form: William Roughead, Edmund Pearson, F. Tennyson Jesse, Rebecca West, Zora Neale Hurston, Edna Buchanan.

Along the way, I’ve learned only the edges are black and white. The stories behind the headlines are the most fascinating, but we seldom get to peek back there.

In trying to understand my fascination with true crime, I’ve pored over academic studies and random apologist essays. None offer satisfying answers. I started reading true crime because I needed to understand. How could I write good crime fiction if I didn’t understand why crimes were committed, how they were solved, what it felt like to be a victim? The real fascination? I love a good story. Nowhere have I found better storytellers than lawyers, police officers … and crooks.

Our fascination with crime stories isn’t new, we just have more ways of engaging with the stories than ever before, the latest being podcasts, cable TV networks, and do-it-yourself social media sleuths. The demographic for the true crime “consumer” skews female. Is the puzzle-solving attraction a simple hearkening to Nancy Drew or Miss Marple? As for readers of mystery fiction, readers of true crime are often attracted by the puzzle, by wanting to mentally (and safely) engage in unraveling the mystery of who-dunnit or why. The stories are complex—and subtle. And endlessly fascinating.

Crime is a mirror that reflects its society, the people, the place, the time when it occurs. To understand any city, it helps to know its extremes, and crime is certainly an extreme, one that alters the lives of those who commit crimes, those who suffer, those who solve, and those who try to understand. In its broad outline, Charlotte crime varies little from that in other cities. But like any city, Charlotte lends its own unique flavor to the ways people can go wrong. Though regularly reported, “annual statistics” or “average” stories seldom grab headlines—and imaginations—for long. So what makes a story become part of the warp and weft, woven into the essence of a city and the people who call it home? With over one million residents, the Charlotte area is full of stories. In Charlotte True Crime Stories: Notorious Cases from Fraud to Serial Killing are stories that started in dark places but that show the heart of a city still southern and, in good ways, a bit small-townish.

Like Truman’s Capote’s In Cold Blood, the true crime books written by Karen Cox, Pam Kelley, and Cathy Pickens can leave readers feeling a bit unsettled, but they can also help readers better understand why some of our fellow humans turn to lives of crime. Karen, Pam, and Cathy have all written books that belong on the shelves of the ever-expanding library that is Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Charlotte true crime writers southern gothic true crime genre

Allegra Westbrooks, Charlotte’s Pioneering African American Librarian

September 07, 2020 by Mark West

courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler
Carolina Room

I never met Allegra Westbrooks. She retired from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (then called the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County) in 1984, the same year that I arrived in Charlotte. She did, however, have an impact on my early years in Charlotte. Soon after my arrival, I met Pat Siegfried, the library’s Director of Youth Services. When she found out that I once made my living as a professional puppeteer, she obtained funding for me to do puppet shows at every branch of the public library. I remember being impressed with the library’s extensive network of branches. These branches had their own community outreach which they used to promote my puppet shows. I was especially impressed with how these outreach programs connected with Charlotte’s African American communities. I shared with Siegfried my positive experiences performing at the various branches, and she mentioned that the strengths of the branch system had a lot to do with the woman who had long served as the Supervisor of Branches. That woman was Allegra Westbrooks.

When Westbrooks moved to Charlotte in 1947 to manage the Brevard Street Library branch of the public library, the library system was still segregated. The Brevard Street Library was one of only two branches that served African Americans at the time. After the library system desegregated in 1956, Westbrooks moved to the Main Library where she ran the acquisitions operation before being promoted to Supervisor of Branches in 1957, making her the first African American to hold the position of supervisor in the Charlotte public library. Over the years, her title changed, but she continued to serve as a leader of the branch system throughout the rest of her career.

During her thirty-six years with the public library, Westbrooks played a major role in developing library outreach programs and expanding the library’s branch system. Early in her career, she collaborated with community groups and organizations to make books available to children who did not live near branches, and then she started a bookmobile program to bring books to residents throughout Mecklenburg County. Later in her career, she helped expand the number of library branches operating in the county, and she encouraged the branches to sponsor book-related events that would draw local residents to the branches.

Toward the end of her career with the library, Westbrooks worked closely with Judith Sutton, who became the Deputy Director of Libraries in 1977. As Sutton recently recalled, Westbrooks “did everything in her power to orient me to the system I joined, the community we served and to the nature, history and resources of the variety of branches of the library. Allegra was a calm, quiet-spoken but strong advocate for the best in public library services.”

Westbrooks talked about the highlights of her career during an oral history interview conducted in 2007. To listen to this interview, please click on the following link: https://repository.uncc.edu/islandora/object/uncc%3A2152

Westbrooks retired in 1984, but she remained involved in the Charlotte community until her death in 2017. In recognition of Westbrooks’ many contributions to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees recently decided to rename the Beatties Ford Regional Library in her honor. In April 2020, this library branch officially became known as the Allegra Westbrooks Regional Library. It’s a testament to Westbrooks’ lasting legacy that her contributions to Charlotte Mecklenburg Library are still remembered and honored some thirty-six years after she officially retired. As a librarian, Allegra Westbrooks devoted her career to making books and stories available to the residents of Charlotte. In the process, however, she made a place for herself in the pages of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: bookmobile

Labor Novels Set in the Charlotte Region

August 31, 2020 by Mark West

Given that Labor Day is nearly upon us, I have decided to focus this Storied Charlotte blog post on labor novels that take place in the Charlotte region. Not that many decades ago, the Charlotte area was known not for its banks but rather for its textile mills. I am reminded of this fact on a daily basis, for the house where I live started off as housing for the textile workers employed by Atherton Cotton Mills in what is now known as South End. Working conditions in our region’s textile mills were often far from ideal, and some of the workers in these textile mills responded to these conditions by participating in labor unions. These unions organized a number of strikes, the most famous of which was Gastonia’s Loray Mill Strike of 1929.

Over the years, numerous authors have written novels about the impact of the labor movement on the lives of textile workers in our region. For the purposes of today’s Storied Charlotte blog post, I will focus on three of these novels: Olive Tilford Dargan’s Call Home the Heart (1932), Doug Marlette’s The Bridge (2001), and Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad (2017).

Olive Tilford Dargan’s Call Home the Heart originally came out under her pen name of Fielding Burke. The novel is largely set in Gastonia, and it deals with the Loray Mill Strike. The central character in the novel is a working-class woman named Ishma Waycaster. She moves from the Great Smokey Mountains to Gastonia in order to find work in a textile mill. Partially inspired by the strike leader Ella May Wiggins, this character becomes involved in the efforts to improve working conditions at the Loray Mill. The strike figures prominently in the conclusion of the novel, but most of the story focuses on the central character’s personal conflicts and her growing sense of desperation. Sometimes compared to Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker, Dargan’s Call Home the Heart is now recognized as one of best novels to come out of the labor movement. A writer for the Saturday Review described the book as “perhaps the best novel yet written of the industrial conflict in contemporary America.” The Feminist Press republished Call Home the Heart in 1983.

Doug Marlette is best remembered as The Charlotte Observer’s Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist and creator of the Kudzu comic strip, but he also wrote two novels before his untimely death in a car accident in 2007. His first novel, The Bridge, takes place in a small North Carolina town where the central character, a newspaper cartoonist named Pick Cantrell, grew up. Pick returns to this town after his career takes a nose dive, and he reconnects with his grandmother, who is known as Mama Lucy. As the story progresses, Pick learns that his grandmother played a key role in the General Textile Strike of 1934. In many ways, The Bridge spans generations. The grandmother’s story and Pick’s story interconnect in unexpected ways. The Bridge was named best book of 2002 by the Southeastern Bookseller’s Association.

A native of Gastonia, Wiley Cash delves into the history of his boyhood hometown in The Last Ballad. I heard Cash talk about the origins of The Last Ballad when he spoke at the Charlotte Library’s Verse & Vino event in 2017. He mentioned that his parents and grandparents worked in the textile mills in the region, so he grew up having a general familiarity with the history of the textile industry. However, he went on to say that it wasn’t until he was in graduate school that he learned much about the Loray Mill Strike. He became fascinated with Ella May Wiggins, one of the leaders of the strike, and he decided to base The Last Ballad on her short but eventful life. In addition to being a labor organizer, she was a talented singer, and Cash became particularly interested in this aspect of her life. Cash tells the story of Ella May Wiggins through the voice of Ella May’s daughter Lilly, who shares the story of her mother’s life with her nephew some seventy-five years after the 1929 strike. The Last Ballad received the Southern Book Prize and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.

All three of these novels emphasize the roles that women played in the history of the labor movement in our region. These novels bring to life the struggles of North Carolina’s textile workers and shed light of their efforts to improve their working conditions and provide a better future for their children. As we celebrate Labor Day, I think we should take a moment to reflect on the stories of the textile workers who played such an important role in the history of Charlotte and the surrounding communities. The stories of their lives and struggles are part of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: industrial conflict labor novels labor unions Loray Mill Strike textile industry textile mills textile strike

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