memoir

Patricia Cornwell’s New Memoir

July 26, 2026 by Mark West

With the recent publication of True Crime: A Memoir, Patricia Cornwell, the now famous writer of crime fiction, provides her legions of fans with a candid account of her troubled childhood and adolescence, her career as a writer, and her personal life. Cornwell currently lives in Boston, but she has deep roots in the Charlotte area. In her memoir, she goes into detail about the pivotal years that she spent studying at Davidson College and working as a reporter for The Charlotte Observer.

As Cornwell recounts in True Crime, her connections to the Charlotte area began in August 1976 when she transferred to Davidson College on a tennis scholarship after attending King College in Bristol, Tennessee, for a year. She majored in English, and she studied with several English professors, including Charlie Lloyd and Anthony (Tony) Abbott. She credits these professors with helping her develop her skills as a writer. Another English professor who had an impact on her life was Charles Cornwell. In 1980, a year after she graduated from Davidson College with a B.A. in English, she and Professor Cornwell got married. The couple divorced in 1990, but she kept Cornwell as her last name.

Soon after graduating from Davidson College, she joined The Charlotte Observer as a cub reporter. She soon was assigned to the police beat, and in this capacity, she wrote a series of articles about prostitution and other types of crime in downtown Charlotte. This series received a great deal of attention, and it resulted in her winning the North Carolina Press Association’s Investigative Reporting Award in 1980. Although she left The Charlotte Observer in 1981, her experiences at the paper had a lasting impact on her career. In her memoir, she goes into considerable detail about her three years as a reporter.

Cornwell went on to draw on her experiences at The Charlotte Observer in her novel Hornet’s Nest, which came out in 1997. In this novel, Andy Brazil, one of the central characters in Hornet’s Nest, also works as a reporter for The Charlotte Observer. He is on assignment to write about the day-to-day work of the Charlotte police, and as a result he ends up helping the Chief of Police (Judy Hammer) and the Deputy Chief (Virginia West) solve a mystery surrounding the serial killings of several out-of-town businessmen. Hornet’s Nest launched Cornwell’s Andy Brazil Series. While Cornwell does not write much about this series in her memoir, the background that she provides about her own experiences as a reporter gives readers a better appreciation of Hornet’s Nest and the other books in the Andy Brazil Series.

For readers who want to know more about Cornwell and her books, please click on the following link: http://www.patriciacornwell.com/

Cornwell has not lived in the Charlotte area for several decades. However, as her memoir makes clear, her Storied Charlotte years contributed to her success as one of America’s foremost writers of crime fiction.

Tags: memoir Patricia Cornwell

Mark Peres’s New Memoir about His Father

June 06, 2026 by Mark West

With Father’s Day just around the corner, now is a perfect time to showcase Mark Peres’s new memoir about his father. Titled The Man Who Lived a Hundred Lives, this memoir not only tells the story of the remarkable life of Mark’s father, but it also touches on Mark’s relationship with his father. I recently contacted Mark and asked him for more information on The Man Who Lived a Hundred Lives and how he came to write it. Here is what he sent to me:

Father’s Day arrives differently at different stages of life.

As a child, Father’s Day is about gratitude. As a young adult, it can become an occasion for distance, independence, or even rebellion. But as the years pass, something changes. We begin to see our fathers not merely as parents but as people: complex, imperfect, contradictory people who lived entire lives before we arrived and who carried burdens, dreams, losses, and aspirations that we only partially understood. My memoir, The Man Who Lived a Hundred Lives, emerged from that realization.

The book began with a conversation. In 1992, when my father was in his seventies and I was standing at a crossroads in my own life, I sat down with him in Miami and began asking questions. I thought I knew his story. After all, he was my father. I knew where he had lived, what jobs he had held, and some of the colorful anecdotes that surfaced at family gatherings. But as the interviews unfolded, I discovered how little I knew.

My father, Ambrosio Benchimol Peres, had lived one improbable life after another. He grew up in a Jewish community deep in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. He was an early voice on the radio, a revolutionary, a law student, an AWOL soldier in the Brazilian Army. He sold lingerie in Havana before the Cuban Revolution. He migrated to the United States and took on odd jobs. He traveled the world, created wealth, and lost it all. He moved our family repeatedly, always chasing opportunity and imagining a better future just over the horizon. Over the course of his life, he seemed to become several different people, each adapted to a different place and time.

I still remember the yellow legal pads on the table and the tape recorder between us. Occasionally my father would pause, stare into the distance, and retrieve a memory that had lain dormant for decades. In those moments, I felt less like a son and more like a passenger carried to places and times I had never known.

The title of the memoir came naturally. My father did not simply live a long life. He lived many lives. Yet the deeper I listened, the more I realized that the story was not only about adventure or resilience. It was about identity. It was about what we inherit from our parents and what remains hidden from us. It was about the mysteries that exist even within the families we believe we know best.

The interviews sat in boxes and folders for decades. Like many people, I was busy building a career, raising a family, and pursuing other ambitions. The recordings and transcripts became part of the background of my life: important, cherished, but unfinished.

Years later, after my father’s death, I returned to them. By then, the urgency felt different. I was no longer simply collecting family history. I was trying to preserve a voice before it disappeared. I was trying to understand the arc of a life that stretched across continents and generations. I was trying to answer a question that many sons eventually confront: Who was my father when he wasn’t my father? The answer turned out to be richer and far more surprising than I could have imagined.

Charlotte played an important role in bringing that story into the world. For more than two decades, Charlotte has been my adopted hometown. It is where I have taught, raised a family, built friendships, and helped create organizations devoted to conversation, ideas, and civic life. The memoir found its final form through the encouragement of Charlotte’s literary community.

One of the most important influences was the Charlotte Lit Author’s Lab. Writing is often described as a solitary act, but books rarely emerge from solitude alone. They require readers, teachers, editors, and fellow travelers who help us see what is working and what is not. The Author’s Lab provided exactly that kind of community. Over many months, I shared pages, received feedback, wrestled with structure, and learned how to transform recorded interviews and memories into a narrative that readers could experience as a page-turning story.

The process taught me something unexpected. Memory preserves facts, but storytelling reveals meaning. Perhaps that is why Father’s Day feels so connected to this book. For many of us, the day on the calendar is not merely a celebration of a parent. It is an invitation to remember. To ask questions. To listen more carefully. To recognize that the people who raised us contain entire worlds that we may never fully know.

Writing the book allowed me to spend one more season in conversation with my father. It allowed me to see him not simply as the man who raised me but as a fellow traveler navigating uncertainty, reinvention, love, disappointment, hope, and time.

In the end, that may be what every family story is about. We begin by trying to understand our parents. Along the way, we discover that we are also trying to understand ourselves.

For readers who want to know more about Mark and his writings, please click on the following link: https://www.markperes.com/

I congratulate Mark on his new memoir, and I thank him for sharing the story behind the writing of this memoir. I also thank him for his many contributions to our community from founding the online magazine Charlotte Viewpoint (which ran from 2003 to 2016),to leading the Charlotte Center for the Humanities & Civic Imagination, to writing the speculative fiction novel The Accord. With the publication of The Man Who Lived a Hundred Lives, Mark is now also part of Storied Charlotte’s ever-widening circle of memoirists.

Tags: Mark Peres memoir

Rebecca McClanahan’s New Memoir

April 18, 2026 by Mark West

On December 21, 2020, I wrote a Storied Charlotte blog post about Rebecca McClanahan’s then recently published memoir titled In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays. As I noted in my blog post at the time, In the Key of New York City was Rebecca’s eleventh book, and it was about the eleven years that she and her husband lived in New York City. After returning to Charlotte, Rebecca found herself focusing much of her time and energy on taking care of her elderly parents. Now that her parents have died, Rebecca has drawn on her experiences of caring for her parents in a new memoir titled Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, which the University of North Carolina Press released on March 31, 2026. Here is the link to the publisher’s listing of the book: https://uncpress.org/9781469693217/light-falls-on-everything/

I contacted Rebecca and asked her for more information about her new memoir and her experiences as a Charlotte writer. Here is what she sent to me:

Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, my twelfth published book, focuses on the years of caring for my elderly parents after we moved them from Indiana to Charlotte and my husband and I became the “first responders,” with support from the extended family. My parents’ deepest wish had always been to stay together “until the end,” and that is what we attempted to help them do, no matter what it took. It took a lot. As is so often the case with long-term caregiving, many days were shadowed by exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, and anticipatory grief. Still, light flickered in even the darkest corners, revealing moments of tenderness, laughter, absurdity, surprise, and unrelenting love.

From the very beginning of the caregiving journey—which lasted nearly a decade—I felt compelled to write, if only a few notes on a hospital napkin, on the back of a pharmacy receipt, in the margins of my parents’ desk calendar. At the time, I had no idea that these scribbled notes, and later the segments and chapters that developed from them, might one day comprise a book. I was just trying to get from one day to the next, one night to the next. I now understand that this process was a way to hold myself still for a moment, just long enough to take a few steps out of the scene so I could see my parents—and myself—as characters in an ongoing, universal drama. Mother has been gone five years now; Dad, nearly a decade. And it has taken me yet another decade, since his death, to revise and shape the final book. As if any memoir is ever final. A memoir happens between two covers; it has a clear beginning and end. Life happens outside these covers, continuing its forward movement beyond the boundaries of any memoir.

For me, much of my life happens within the context of Charlotte’s writing community. My history with our “storied” city goes back nearly 50 years. In 1978, when I completed graduate studies at University of South Carolina, I moved to Charlotte to join my husband, Donald Devet, who was an instructional television producer for CMS and also a professional puppeteer, having recently co-founded Grey Seal Puppets. Before that, as a former Marine brat, I’d never lived anywhere for more than a few years at a time and I never imagined I could plant deep roots in any city.

As it turned out, I was wrong, as I so often am! Within a year, I began teaching high school English (first at Olympic and then West Charlotte) and later served as director of the Poetry-in-the-Schools program, where, for fifteen years, I taught poetry to thousands of K-12 students in 110 schools, with assistance from visiting writers including Chuck Sullivan, Ruth Moose, Charleen Swansea, Ellen Johnston-Hale, and Suzanne Newton. Happy sidebar: Two of my former high school poetry students, Julie Funderburk and Michael Sadoff, are now published writers based in Charlotte!

Meanwhile, on the home front, three of my five siblings had moved their families from California and Indiana to Charlotte, thus expanding my role of semi-professional aunt. I was also knee-deep not only in poetry but also in teacher education as part of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project, and in music, performing with the Oratorio Singers and in musicals at The Little Theatre (now called Theatre Charlotte) while also composing music for Grey Seal Puppets’ productions.

But the literary community is what formed my deepest connection to Charlotte. Nearly every writer whom Joseph Bathanti mentioned in a recent Storied Charlotte post also welcomed me, along with many others too numerous to include here. But here’s a short list of folks in poetry critique groups I was part of: First, Cathy Smith Bowers, Judy Goldman, Mary Kratt, and, in later years, Gail Peck, P.B. Newman, Irene Honeycutt, Diana Pinckney, Tony Abbott, Dede Wilson, Barbara Conrad, and Barbara Presnell. I was also connecting with other local writers including Julie Suk, Susan Ludvigson, Dannye Romine Powell, Rick Chess, Chris Davis, Robin Hemley, and Fred Leebron, and with other Carolina writers who provided support and companionship, especially once I began publishing fiction, essays, memoir, and writing craft books—among them Frye Galliard, Ron Rash, Philip Gerard, Doris Betts, and Fred Chappell.

In 1998, Donald and I took a huge personal and professional (some called it “crazy”!) leap in pursuit of a lifelong dream to live in New York City, which turned into a decade-long experience I describe in my 2020 memoir, In the Key of New York City. During that time, I also started teaching in the newly formed Queens University’s MFA program, which brought me to Charlotte for twice-yearly residencies and helped maintain my relationships here. In 2009, we moved back to Charlotte to be closer to family and to set the stage for caring for my parents, eventually moving them from Indiana to Charlotte. Thus began the eight-year caregiving experience that is at the center of my newest memoir.

I began my literary life in our “storied” city and am grateful to be continuing it with support from friends, family, students, readers, and fellow writers. Charlotte Lit will host a book launch for Light Falls on Everything: A Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility, on Wednesday, April 22, at 6:00 p.m. at the Charlotte Lit studio (601 E. 5th Street, Suite 160). To save a seat, register here! I look forward to seeing readers of Storied Charlotte in the audience! Thanks again, Mark, for the chance to contribute to this ongoing conversation.

I congratulate Rebecca on the publication of Light Falls on Everything, and I thank her for her many contributions to Storied Charlotte’s community of readers and writers.

Tags: memoir Rebecca McClanahan

Barbara Presnell’s New Memoir about Her Father, World War Two, and a Family Quest

March 21, 2026 by Mark West

Long-time Charlotte writer Barbara Presnell has a deep interest in history, and this interest is reflected in her work as a creative writer. In her poetry collection Piece Work, for example, she delves into the lives of the textile millworkers who played such an important role in the history of the South. In her latest book, however, she delves into her own personal history. Otherwise, I’m Fine: A Memoir is a moving account of her efforts to come to terms with her suppressed grief related to her father’s death in 1969 when she was fourteen years old. At the time, her mother gathered Barbara and her two siblings together and told them that it would be best for them to get on with their lives and not talk about their deceased father.

Barbara attempted to follow her mother’s advice, but the grief that she felt did not dissipate—it just stayed bottled up. Many years later, Barbara came into possession of her father’s World War II belongings, including his uniform, a scrapbook, and his letters. These tangible reminders of her father prompted Barbara and her siblings to embark on a quest to visit the places in Europe where her father was stationed during his time in the military. Otherwise, I’m Fine tells the story of this quest, but it is also a personal reflection about the history of her family and the importance of renewing family bonds.

I recently contacted Barbara and asked her for more information about her memoir. Here is what she sent to me:

The process of both living and writing the story of the book, Otherwise, I’m Fine, began in 2014 when, along with my brother and sister and two spouses, we researched, planned, and executed a 21-day tour of Europe, following our father’s maps, journal, photos, and the generous offerings of multiple guides. Our father was a WWII veteran (30th infantry division) who entered France at Omaha Beach, D-Day + 6, and was in every major battle across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, finally reaching the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany, where he and his company shook hands with officers and soldiers of the Soviet army, and the war was essentially over.

He returned from the war to marry, return to his job at the textile factory in Asheboro, and begin to raise his family. He died unexpectedly in 1969, and in order to face the practical and emotional aftermath of his death, our mother instructed us children not to dwell on his death but to move on. We took her advice to heart, and for over 30 years until her death, we did not talk about him. Our Europe trip became a resolution for unresolved grief and renewal of sibling relationships. We all healed, each in our own way.

The book parallels our Europe journey in 2014 with events before and after our father’s death. One of my goals in the telling was to bring my father back to life on the page, and I hope I did that. The University of South Carolina Press, specifically editor Michael McGandy, saw potential in an early draft and offered objective insights, particularly on structure. The book was released in April 2025. In many ways, it is a raw and vulnerable book, full of emotional highs and lows, but it has been praised for understatement (whew!) and emotional balance. It does have a happy ending. It is, of course, a poet’s memoir, with a focus on language, imagery, and suggestion.

The Charlotte launch was held at the home of Malcolm and Lauren Campbell. Members of the Charlotte writing community, of which I have long been a part, as well as UNC Charlotte faculty and Charlotte family members–my husband grew up in Charlotte and two brothers as well as our son live in Charlotte–filled the Campbell living room on a very rainy Saturday.

As you probably know, I graduated from the MFA Creative Writing program at UNCG and earned an additional degree in literature at the University of Kentucky. Mine has been a career of balancing teaching and writing. In addition to Otherwise, I’ve published five poetry books. I taught writing at UNC Charlotte for twenty years. I spent twenty years prior to that teaching writing–creative, expository, advanced, you name it–to people of all ages at colleges, community centers, state arts programs, and more.

Finally, I will point you to my website, www.barbarapresnell.com. There you’ll find reviews and links to reviews. DO take a look at the magnificent trailer made for me by a Greensboro filmmaker–https://youtu.be/XXw_IUsMGqU?si=hTg5tfcEALqcWwqB (it’s also on the website).

I congratulate Barbara on publication of Otherwise, I’m Fine: A Memoir. It’s an important addition to Storied Charlotte’s growing corpus of memorable memoirs.

Tags: Barbara Presnell memoir

Earl G. Gulledge’s New Memoir about Growing Up in Charlotte During the Post-War Years

January 10, 2026 by Mark West

During my forty-two years in Charlotte, I have seen many changes in the city that I now call home, but the changes that I have witnessed are practically nothing compared to changes that Earl G. Gulledge has witnessed during his eighty years as a resident of Charlotte. Gulledge was born in Charlotte in 1945, and he has lived in the city his entire life. For years he worked for one of Charlotte’s leading architectural firms, and his background in construction and project management has contributed to his ongoing interest in the city’s built environment.

Over the course of his career, Gulledge has often been asked about what the city was like back in the day, and these questions prompted him to record his memories in a book. He decided to focus his book on his growing-up years. Titled Charlotte: Haulin’ Around Town Streetside 1950-1963, his book came out in November 2025 with Redhawk Publications. The publisher describes the book as “part memoir, part historical commentary.” When I saw the announcement about the release of the book, I wanted to know more, so I contacted Gulledge and asked him for additional information about his memoir. Here is what he sent to me:

I am a native of Charlotte. I grew up on the westside in the neighborhoods of Barringer (west of Wilmore) and Ashley Park. My mother passed away when I was three and a half and, as you might presume, I spent a lot of time with my grandmothers. My father was a city bus driver. As time passed, I spent a lot of time riding buses, both for transportation as about everyone did and to pass time after Saturday movies. In those days boys my age could go “downtown'” by themselves and spend most of a day. I knew the city well. As it turns out I have a quite good memory – back to three years of age. As I note in my book, I clearly remember the start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950.

As time went by, I found myself in countless conversations about “old” Charlotte. In 2019 while attending a meeting uptown and in a conversation about an old railroad right of way, I decided to write about growing up in the city. There are numerous books about Charlotte. Charlotte: Haulin’ Around Town Streetside 1950 – 1963 is not a then vs now comparative discussion of Charlotte. It is, in fact, a narrative memoir that encompasses, places, people, lifestyles, and vignettes.

The years 1950 and 1963 offer a duality for my narrative. In 1950 I was old enough to process happenings around me, and in 1963 I graduated from high school. The year 1950 was the front bookend of the Cold War years, and 1963 was the closing bookend at the transition point to the last half of the century. I believe I have offered a granularity of detail not found in any other single source including the first generation of theaters, our airport, railroads, and many other topics of interest.

The book is available from Redhawk (https://tinyurl.com/CharlotteEarlGulledge), Park Road Books, Barnes and Noble (Arboretum and Morrocroft), The Buttercup, The Mole Hole, Myers Park Methodist Gracious Gifts, Renfroe Hardware in Matthews, and Amazon.

While reading Gulledge’s memoir, I learned a lot about the history of our city. Gulledge provides keen insights into the history of Charlotte’s neighborhoods and landmark buildings, but he also includes commentary on the nature of life in Charlotte during these post-war years. I especially like his discussion of the impact of racial segregation on his childhood. I also like the many photographs and other visual images that he includes. Gulledge’s memoir should appeal to anyone who is interested in reading about the history of Storied Charlotte as a lived experience.

Tags: Earl G. Gulledge memoir

Martin Settle’s New Memoir about Growing Up on the Banks of the Mississippi River

October 18, 2025 by Mark West

I got to know Martin (Marty) Settle during the years that he taught in the English Department at UNC Charlotte. During one of our conversations in the faculty/staff lounge, Marty and I discovered that we share an interest in Mark Twain. He mentioned to me that he, like Twain, grew up in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River. He talked about how as a child he identified with the boy characters in Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He said that he hoped to write about his childhood experiences someday when he had more time to devote to writing. Well, that time is now.

Since retiring from teaching in 2010, Marty has focused on writing and various other creative endeavors. His latest publication is a memoir about his growing-up years. Titled This Little Ichnolite of Mine: A Memoir, the book was just released by Legacy Book Press. I contacted Marty and asked him for more information about his memoir. Here is what he sent to me:

The first question people ask me about my book is, “What’s an ichnolite?” An ichnolite is a fossil footprint, and I took the word from an Illinois artist that loved decay as much as I do – Ivan Albright. He has a painting called “This Ichnolite of Mine,” which displays his love of old worn things.

My memoir is about my childhood in a small city on the Mississippi River during the 1950s and ‘60s. Quincy, Illinois, was part of the rust belt when I was born and had seen its golden age pass by in the riverboat era. However, to me and my friends, all the abandoned buildings, the rusted junk, painted-peeled porches, and brick streets with hitching posts represented a land of enchantment. In addition, we had the river with its mythology of Huck Finn and Hogback Island for exploration and eating turtle eggs. Quincy, also, had plenty of woodlands surrounding the city, which were places to build camps and encounter the fascinating behaviors of creatures that did not live in the city.

Besides how children played in my time, I have devoted a number of chapters in Ichnolite to my colorful relatives. River towns tended to be rather independent and lawless and, participating in this frontier spirit were my ancestors, who were bootleggers, gamblers, and barkeeps. At one time in Quincy, I had five uncles and one aunt, who ran bars. I was raised behind bars, and I got to hear some of the finest storytellers around. I include a lot of these tall tales in the book.

Not all is fun and nostalgic in Ichnolite. I have chapters in the memoir about the racism and homophobia at the time (our bar would not serve Black people; and I had a gay brother, who thought he was the only homosexual on earth). I include a look at some of the morose aspects of a Catholic education. Finally, I write about a friend, who was the most adventurous person I’ve ever met, but who finally succumbed to cocaine addiction and suicide.

Why does one write a memoir? I can tell you positively it’s not because I had such a fantastically interesting life nor that my ego required some flattery. There are two quotes I will use to explain my attempt at memoir. First, Ellen Meloy has said, “It seems as if the right words can come only out of the perfect space of a place you love.” My love for my childhood place runs deeper than the Mississippi waters. I have lived in many places in my seventy-nine years, but none qualify for the epithet “home.” Finally, Olga Tokarczuk states, “A thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes.” In a small way, I would like my past in this place and time with all its varied characters to stay remembered. Quincy, Illinois, is built on limestone bluffs with fossils from an extinct sea. I would like to add a small fossil to those bluffs.

Marty will be reading from his book This Little Ichnolite of Mine this Tuesday, October 21, at Troubadour Booksellers (Sardis Crossing, 1721-7C Sardis Rd N) from 7-9.

For more information about Marty and his books and other creative endeavors, please click on the following link: https://martinsettle.com

In thinking about Marty’s memoir, I am reminded of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which came out in 1883. A lot has changed in the 142 years between the publication of these two memoirs, but the Mississippi is still just as mighty as ever. In both of these memoirs, the Mississippi River is not just a geographical feature; it is almost a character in these stories. By focusing on the Mississippi River and the communities that are located on the banks of this river, both Marty and Twain show us how our stories are shaped by places. As I see it, this theme reverberates throughout our community of readers and writers, for Storied Charlotte is not just about stories—it’s also about a place.

Tags: Martin Settle memoir

Former Charlotte Writer Robin Hemley on How to Change History

September 13, 2025 by Mark West

My friend Robin Hemley has a long association with Charlotte. Robin served as a creative writing professor at UNC Charlotte from 1987 to 1994. In the years since he left Charlotte, Robin has taught at universities all over the world, including a six-year stint as the director of the Writing Program at Yale-NUS in Singapore. However, he occasionally returns to Charlotte to give readings and to teach writing classes.

Charlotte Lit is bringing Robin back to Charlotte on September 26, 2025, to lead a master class titled “The Imagined Object: Memory and Imagination” and to give a faculty talk with Judy Goldman on “Stitching Together Your Memoir.” Robin’s master class will meet from 3:00 to 5:00. For more information about this class, please click on the following link: https://charlottelit.org/ Robin and Judy’s faculty talk starts at 5:30. The talk is free, but registration is required. Here is the link: https://charlottelit.org/events/

Both Robin’s class and his talk relate to his new memoir titled How to Change History: A Salvage Project, which the University of Nebraska Press published a few months ago. In commenting on this memoir, author Brenda Miller, wrote, “Reading How to Change History is akin to sitting with an intimate friend, going through old photos and scrapbooks, conversing deep into the night about what connects us to the past and what might endure into the future.”

I contacted Robin and asked him for more information about his new memoir. Here is what he sent to me:

My latest book, How to Change History: A Salvage Project, can be described variously as a collection of linked essays or a memoir-in-essays, a tricky form no matter what you call it. I say it’s tricky because it implies (though doesn’t quite admit) that the essays were written separately as stand-alones rather than written with the intentionality of a book. That’s not to say that the essays were slapped together randomly, but that the intentionality of the book proceeded the writing of the contents. That’s certainly true in my case and I’d wager, in the cases of most such books. Still, it’s important for such a book to have the cohesion of a book that was intended from the start as something large and of a piece.

Why is that important? I’m not saying such cohesion is important to me when I read some random collection of essays or random collection of stories. In fact, I love hodge-podge collections that show an author’s stylistic and thematic range and roving interests. But editors and perhaps most other readers want something that builds, that leads somewhere.

If I tell you the range of subjects in the book, you’ll be forgiven (well, maybe not. I’m sensitive) for clapping back, “Well, that’s just a hodge podge after all, with a fancy title slapped on it.” My subject matter includes photography, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, war memorials, skeletons in the closet, scrapbooks, pre-cancerous moles, murder, the Philippine-American War, Sherwood Anderson, James Agee, curses, divorce and skinny dipping.

I’d argue that all these subjects are as one, first because they all sprang from my mind, but also because they reflect my obsession with memory and erasure. I am at once attracted and repelled by gestures of memorializing. I want not only to be remembered but to remember others, and I know that this is a losing battle.

And so, I write about a memorial plaque to a former colleague who died of a heart attack during my time at UNC Charlotte. The English Department made a little memorial plaque for him and hung it on the spot where he used to hang out in the hallway, smoking (in the days when people smoked indoors) and chatting with anyone he could collar. Jim’s Corner, it was called. But not long after, the department moved to a new building and Jim’s Corner was no more, the plaque likely thrown away or lost in the move. I had since moved across the country, so I did not know of its removal until a couple of years later.

Another essay features a scrapbook I bought at an estate sale in Virginia, of a woman who had meticulously collected the ephemera of her life over a four-year period during WWII. The scrapbook was amazing to me, and I bought it despite a hefty $75 price tag. Among its treasures were the pair of nylon stockings she wore throughout the war, theater tickets, a performance review (rather mixed) of her job as a volunteer on the psych ward of Walter Reid Memorial Hospital, a menu from Antoine’s in New Orleans, her birth certificate (we share the same birthday, though many years apart), dental x-rays, you name it. This was her own memorial to herself, but a memorial with little context. How to piece it together into a life, a remembrance from scraps?

If you read the book, and I hope you will, far from a hodgepodge, I’m confident that you will see that these are indeed linked essays. This is a memoir-in-essays. But it took me years – 25 years to be exact – to see what now seems obvious. For years, I wanted to collect my essays into a book, and I tried various configurations and titles. It took me so many years because it took me that long to finally see what held these essays together. I don’t remember all the titles I tried out, thankfully, but one that stays with me is A Handbook for Haunting. Not a bad title, actually. But not the right title for my book. Once I understood that the best title for my book was How to Change History, I understood everything about my book that previously had been obscured. That’s the only way I can frame it – it was like all my essays were poured into a funnel and out the other end came that title. Suddenly, I knew which essay would anchor the book and which one would end it, and that has never changed.

Readers who want to know more about Robin should check out his Substack Turning Life into Fiction https://robinhemley.substack.com/ as well as his writing retreat and editing venture, https://authorsatlarge.com/

I plan to attend Robin and Judy’s joint talk on September 26, and I am looking forward to reconnecting with Robin and hearing about his latest book. Robin truly is a world traveler, but he will always have a place in Storied Charlotte, and he will always be my friend wherever he goes.

Tags: memoir Robin Hemley

Samis Rose Remembers

June 28, 2025 by Mark West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: memoir Samis Rose

Peg Robarchek’s Irreverent Faith Memoir

March 11, 2024 by Mark West

On the back cover of Peg Robarchek’s recently published faith memoir titled Welcome to the Church of I Don’t Have a Clue: My Irreverent, Post-Evangelical, Sacred Life there is a short blurb by my friend Frye Gaillard, the author of Southernization of America (with Cynthia Tucker) and many other books about the American South. Frye’s blurb reads, “In this page-turning memoir, Peg Robarchek writes of growing up in the segregated, Christ-haunted South, searching for God in all the wrong places.”

I think it is fitting that Frye is listed as one of the endorsers of this book, for he is an expert on the role that religion has played in the history of the South. As Frye has discussed in many of his books, Southern culture is steeped in conflicting religious traditions. In her memoir, Peg also writes about Southern religious traditions, but she focuses on her own personal responses to these traditions. The result is an irreverent yet deeply spiritual memoir.

For much of her adult life, Peg has lived in Charlotte, and Charlotte figures in the second half of her memoir. I recently contacted Peg and asked her about how her experiences in Charlotte relate to the themes that she explores in her memoir. Here is what she sent to me:

When I moved to Charlotte in 1980, I had no idea that the next couple of decades would change my life completely. Charlotte seemed friendly and progressive and like the perfect place to put down roots. It also came across as completely different from Birmingham, Alabama, the city where I’d grown up and escaped as soon as I was able.

I found like-minded people, including other journalists and writers. I also found, however, that Charlotte did have one thing in common with my hometown—a church on nearly every corner. And plenty of those like-minded people started inviting me to their churches. This wasn’t an invitation I welcomed or expected.

In my memoir, Welcome to the Church of I Don’t Have a Clue, I share a spiritual journey that started in childhood when I walked out on church and God—a journey that ultimately brought me to a different understanding of both the Divine and a life of faith. One of the experiences that set me on a different path took place when I attended a lecture and meditation event at Charlotte’s Spirit Square. The concert and event venue on North Tryon had been a prominent church in this city of churches. It sat empty for a while after its original congregation moved to a new location. Spirit Square turned out to be a favorite spot in my new city, a place where I was able to see some of my favorite performers over the years, from Allison Kraus to Lyle Lovett to jazz great Cleo Laine, and many more. Also, as it turned out, the evening when I sat in that former church sanctuary with hundreds of others and experienced a guided meditation became a turning point in my spiritual journey.

And ultimately, I found a community of seekers and clergy and others who became my companions on the journey to connect with the Divine, an outcome I never expected. Charlotte not only became my home in a way that my hometown never was, but it also became my spiritual home.

For readers who would like to meet Peg, Park Road Books will have a reading and book signing at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 21. For readers who are interested in purchasing Peg’s book on Amazon, here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Church-Dont-Have-Clue/dp/B0CNZRG4B9/ref

As Peg makes clear in her memoir, Charlotte’s faith community extends beyond the buildings and belief systems associated with traditional organized religion. Charlotte is sometimes known as a city of churches, bit it is also a city of stories. Peg’s memoir is one of Storied Charlotte’s most riveting and revealing accounts of a deeply personal faith journey.

Tags: memoir

Rebecca McClanahan Goes to New York City

December 21, 2020 by Mark West

My father grew up in New York City. He spent most of his boyhood living in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, and that experience shaped his taste in movies. He loved movies set in New York, and he especially loved the New York movies written by Neil Simon. He felt a special bond with Simon in part because they shared a birthday. My father was born on July 4, 1928, and Simon was born on July 4, 1927. I remember going with my father to see Simon’s The Out-of-Towners as soon as it came out in 1970, and I have loved the movie ever since. The movie stars Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, and it deals with a middle-aged couple (Gwen and George Kellerman) who leave their home in Ohio and go to New York so that George can interview for a new job. What follows is a series of hilarious mishaps that tests the couple and changes their perspective.

I thought about The Out-of-Towners when I discovered In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays by Charlotte writer Rebecca McClanahan. Published by Red Hen Press in September 2020, this book is Rebecca’s eleventh book and her second memoir. Like Gwen and George Kellerman, Rebecca and her husband, Donald Devet, left the security of their comfortable home and headed off to New York City to explore new possibilities. Rebecca and Donald were about the same age as the Kellermans when they went to New York in 1998, but unlike the Kellermans, they ended up staying in the Big Apple for eleven years. Rebecca and Donald, like the Kellermans, approached New York from the perspective of outsiders, and this perspective helped them notice details that native New Yorkers often ignore as they bustle about their business. Rather than provide a chronological record of her years in New York, Rebecca writes focused essays in which she delves into particular moments and events. I recently contacted Rebecca and asked her for more information about In the Key of New York City. Here is what she sent to me:

When my husband and I moved from Charlotte to New York in 1998, it was a midlife leap into the unknown. We’d talked for decades about living in the city someday and had visited New York whenever we could. Then one day, while we were walking on 8th Avenue celebrating Donald’s 50th birthday, I surprised myself by saying, “If we’re going to make the move, we better make it now.” That was in May, and by August we had put our house on the market, stored the possessions we had not given away, found a furnished sublet, left our jobs, and said goodbye to family and friends—and even to our cat! Neither of us is impulsive by nature, but I guess the urge was strong. We figured that with the sale of the house and our savings, we could make it for two years if we didn’t find jobs there. We ended up staying for eleven.

In the Key of New York Cityis a memoir-in-essays about the first several years of our time there. We were newcomers, outsiders, and, as is the case with most outsiders, our senses were heightened as we struggled to navigate an alien landscape. Despite my training as a military brat who moved often during childhood, I was extremely lonely at the beginning, or maybe homesick is a better word for it. We’d been comfortable in our North Carolina lives and I missed that easy comfort. I missed my home and garden, my friends and family, my students and colleagues in the writing community.

Making a community in New York was a tough learning experience, but little by little we made connections—through our new jobs, mostly, and by reconnecting with New York area friends we’d lost track of over the years. But much of the growing feeling of connection came from the constant interaction with strangers. This was due in part to street activity—with walking rather than driving, encountering diverse faces close-up and personal, hearing the broth of languages on our walks, sharing subway seats or park benches, and learning how to give each person we met their own valuable space. It may sound strange, but I discovered a new form of intimacy in those encounters. I felt part of a world much larger than myself, my neighborhood, or my circle of friends. I hadn’t expected the intensity of this feeling and it surprised and comforted me. So, sprinkled among the longer essays in the book are brief moments that suggest these connections: an encounter on the subway involving two sleeping children, the drunken young man on 8th avenue holding a dying pigeon out to me as if I might save it, the post 9/11 park scene where I see a Muslim woman in a headscarf running toward a child who is in danger. All of these encounters, and more, forced me to imagine what New York—or, indeed, our nation—might look like if we all, horror of horrors, went “back where we came from.”

The book opens and closes with scenes of Central Park. The park bench was such an important part of my experience of New York—not only as my own physical (if temporary) stake on the landscape and a place from which to view the scene, but also as an opportunity for conversations with strangers who were always eager to share their stories and their odd but intriguing wisdom. A park bench is where public and private meet, which echoes my experience of the city. The book moves between the public and the private, the joyous and the sorrowful (9/11, my cancer surgery and recovery, moments of loneliness and regret) and the present and the past.

The title (“In the Key…”) is of course related to music, and music weaves its way throughout the book: in sounds heard through apartment walls, the cacophony of the streets and subways, the music I hear during the 9/11 prayer service, and even in the hospital essay when I hear the dying man’s wife echoing his cries—an opera of shared pain. Music touches the deepest parts of our experience; it transcends language. Which is why music is such an important part of the book.

In another way, though, the “key” to New York could also be seen as an object, something that opens the door into a new experience. That is what I hope the book might do for readers, not only those readers with connections to New York. I hope that the book’s reach extends to anyone who has ever been uprooted or who has felt like a newcomer or outsider, who has longed for connection, and who has been lucky enough to experience a place that changed them in remarkable ways. Maybe that’s reaching too high, but that was my aim in writing the book. I am grateful to each and every reader. Readers make books possible. Thank you, Mark, for the opportunity to talk about my book.

Rebecca and Donald, like the Kellmans, have returned home. Rebecca is maintaining her connections in Charlotte, including teaching in The Queens MFA program, and Donald is working as a video producer here in Charlotte. Rebecca is having great success in her writing career, the details of which can be found on her website: http://www.rebeccamcclanahanwriter.com

Rebecca still sees herself as a Charlotte writer, but her experinces living in New York have rippled through her writing career in a variety of ways. Her embrace of both Charlotte and New York is reflected in the fact that she is the recipent of fellowships from both the North Carolina Arts Council and the New York Foundation for the Arts. As I see it, Rebecca’s new book adds an appealing New-York-City vibe to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: essays memoir