Two Peas in a Pod, One in a Podcast

April 13, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

When I used to teach writing courses many years ago, I advised my students to avoid clichés.  Back then I saw clichés as being hackneyed and unoriginal.  However, as the years have gone by, I have become more accepting of clichés.  I find that when I stop and think about a cliché, it often evokes a memory or a compelling image.  Such is the case with the cliché “two peas in a pod.”   My parents always grew peas in their large vegetable garden, and one of my jobs as a boy was to shell the peas.  I remember pulling the pods apart, revealing the emerald green peas maturing within.  For me, this cliché is not just about the similar nature of the peas, but it’s also about the protective nature of the pod. 

In many ways, Landis Wade’s Charlotte Readers Podcast and my Storied Charlotte blog are two peas in a pod, and Charlotte’s community of readers and writers is our common pod.  Both Wade and I share an interest in connecting readers and writers.  Both Wade and I draw attention to Charlotte’s talented writers.  Both Wade and I collaborate with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  As Wade expressed in a recent email to me, “It looks like our interests are similar, yours with a blog, mine with a podcast.”  

In a little less than two years, Wade’s podcast has become a fixture in Charlotte’s cultural scene.  Wade recorded the first Charlotte Readers Podcast episode in 2018, and he will release his 100th episode at the end of April.  I recently contacted Wade and asked how he came to create Charlotte Readers Podcast.  Here is his response:

At my 40th College Reunion last summer at Davidson College, someone paid me a back-handed compliment. It went something like this. “You were the last guy in our class who I thought would write a book and do something creative like start a podcast.” It’s true. I didn’t fit the mold. I was a college football player, who majored in history and then turned that into a law degree, where I then worked as a trial lawyer for 35 years in Charlotte.  Then what? Did you hear the one about the lawyer who walked into a podcast studio? True, it sounds like a bad Dad joke, but I wasn’t kidding when I announced I was doing just that in the fall of 2018 when I retired in December. My dad asked, “how do you make money at that.” I said “I don’t, Dad, I just want to do something creative in my Act 3.” He was mystified.

While still working as a lawyer, I wrote my first book, The Christmas Heist as a Christmas gift for my family, which one reviewer called a cross between My Cousin Vinny and Miracle on 34th Street. When the next Christmas rolled around, the characters returned to save Christmas once again in The Legally Binding Christmas. The trilogy was completed with The Christmas Redemption, which won the 2018 Holiday category of the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards and was the 2018 Holiday category Honorable Mention in the 10th Annual Readers’ Favorite Awards. My foray into writing and my experience as a trial lawyer made me wonder whether I could create an interview-based podcast to help authors give voice to their written words. I had a sense that this medium – this podcast thing – could be a great way to connect authors to listeners who enjoy good stories and poems. And thus, Charlotte Readers Podcast was born, the intersection between readers and writers where “Authors Give Voice to Their Written Words.”

When I started podcasting in the fall of 2018, I didn’t know the difference between a mixing board and a mixing bowl, why I needed an audio host, or how to get voices to travel into a microphone and end up in Apple Podcast land, but I loved to read and write, so I figured I might be able to learn the rest. Since then I have interviewed over 125 authors, done a number of live podcasts and on April 28th, I will release our 100th episode. With support from sponsors Park Road Books and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library and some help from member supporters and Advent Coworking where I record when I can do so in person, I’m getting closer to breaking even (not there yet), but I podcast because I enjoy engaging with interesting people who also happen to tell good stories and I like connecting readers with writers. 

Book lovers and writers who are interested in learning what’s coming on the podcast through our bi-weekly newsletter or engaging with, supporting or reviewing the show, can find those links here: https://linktr.ee/CharlotteReadersPodcast   They can find our website here: www.charlottereaderspodcast.com

Although we might feel alone in this the time of self-isolation, we should remember that there are other peas in our pod.  We still have our communities, and we still have stories to share.  I congratulate Landis Wade on his 100th episode of Charlotte Readers Podcast, and I thank him for his many contributions to Storied Charlotte.        

Tags: Charlotte Readers Podcastpeas in a podpodcast

In the Words of Two Charlotte Poets

April 02, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Charlotte’s community of readers and writers is reeling as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.  We have seen the recent cancelations or postponements of Sensoria, the Center City Literary Festival, many library events, and a number of book signings and readings by local writers.  However, the coronavirus cannot stop the National Poetry Month, which takes place each April (https://poets.org/national-poetry-month).  It is fitting, therefore, that Christopher Davis and Grace Ocasio, two of Charlotte’s most prominent poets, are launching new poetry collections this month.  Davis’s Oath is being published by Main Street Rag (https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/oath-christopher-davis/), and Ocasio’s Family Reunion is being published by Broadstone Books (http://broadstonebooks.com/Grace_C_Ocasio.html).  I contacted Davis and Ocasio and asked each of them to send me a brief statement about their connections to Charlotte.  I also asked each of them if they would provide a sample from their new collections, and they both agreed.

Here is what Christopher Davis sent me:

I moved to Charlotte in August of 1989, newly hired by the English Department at UNC Charlotte to teach creative writing workshops.  My first collection of poetry, The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future, had won the 1988 Agnes Lynch Starrett award from Associated Writing Programs, an organization bringing together creative writing programs, and writers, within academia.  The book was about to be published by Texas Tech University Press.  I had grown up in Los Angeles, received a BA in English Literature from Syracuse University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  I had taught creative writing for two years at Murray State University in western Kentucky.  I was 29 years old, and my life up to that point had seemed already full of adventure, trauma and insecurity: eleven years earlier, my younger brother had been murdered; my parents, both academics themselves, had subsequently gone through a difficult separation and divorce; as a young(ish) gay man, I felt the presence of the AIDS crisis, as did everyone who was experiencing it personally at that time, in complex, hard-to-compartmentalize ways.  I self-identified as a poet, and as an “arts” person in general, very strongly.  My first impressions of Charlotte, when I came to UNC Charlotte for an on-campus interview in February of 1989, were that it seemed like a lush, sunny, sensual, almost tropical kind of place.  It reminded me of the Wallace Stevens poems I loved, such as “In the Carolinas” and “Bantams in Pine-woods.”  Western Kentucky had been exciting too, to my suburban southern Californian eyes, but it was a landscape of wildernesses, whereas Charlotte contained cultivated gardens filled with day lilies and hosta, and crepe myrtle trees planted by the city along the Plaza, where I rented a small house throughout the 1990’s.  Hurricane Hugo hit, and my first days of teaching at UNC Charlotte were marked by, well, what I was used to:  adventure, trauma and insecurity.  Later in 1989, when the gorgeous flora in my front yard lost its flowers and receded into the ground for winter, I was so upset, assuming I had done something wrong, maybe not watered the plants enough, not fertilized anything.  My first spring here, in March of 1990, was a fabulous revelation.  I watched the day lilies burst out, the pear trees pop alive; I listened to Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” in my Walkman; I excitedly worked on poems that would eventually appear in journals, then in my second book, The Patriot, published by University of Georgia Press in 1998.  “One swollen evening / warm rain flooded the gutters. / Dogwood blossoms had come out / over a wash of green leaves. / The world seemed quietly willing.”  I was home.

Much time has passed since then, but, because I have remained in one place for half of my life, always responding to seasonal and historical events, always bringing my sensory experience, my body, my place, into my poems, it somehow seems as if no time has passed, like a “grace dissolved in place,” as T.S. Eliot names that feeling in his poem “Marina.”  Of course Charlotte has gifted me, and my poetry, with much imagery, language and experience.  But I think this poem, which will appear in my forthcoming collection, Oath, published by Main Street Rag Press, is most representative of my creative life, as lived in this part of our country, for so long.  In 2007 I received a grant from UNC Charlotte to support scholarship; I spent one week, in late January, at a hotel at the far end of Wrightsville Beach, in the Wilmington area; I wrote pages and pages of notes, and over several years shaped this poem.  If “that’s all she wrote,” I’m happy!

SHELL ISLAND

It’s weathered subject matter, this boutique hotel,

a revamped Holiday Inn at the end of a sand bar      

pulled this way and that, eroded by wind, rain,

currents, tides flooding the inland waterway.  

To restore expensive real estate, bulldozers

added three thousand more feet of beach

a little to the north, destroying habitats

for plovers, black flyers, sanderlings.

White water fowl wings

skim breaking waves.

*

An Adirondack chair the burgundy of dried blood

hunches against the rusty railing of the balcony. 

My muscles are already beginning to atrophy. 

Really do resent having to sit here, solitary,

slaving over rough drafts, shifting, shrinking,

when the sound of the surf pounds outside.

My heart, you know, feelings, needs to be

touched, doesn’t yours?  My neck hurts, 

my sharp nose and tight-lipped mouth

floating between my shoulder blades.

*

This human mike, this hollow, fragile body,  

a community perceptual center, embraces

it, this inside voice, radio free me, carries

it through books, buffet lines, museums;                                                        

in a pornography outlet beside Autumn Inn,

a care facility for seniors, it makes it moan.

Sun-bleached driftwood looks bone gray.

Well, I guess I am here on an arts grant,

i.e., to mix work, dying, and play. 

Pray, let’s wave at, never away, 

*

that obese sex tourist, trudging, in flip-

flops, along the boardwalk, two gay

Thai guys, twins, performing an act

behind his back, bowing, grinning,  

their four middle fingers lifted, tips,

bending in, slightly, wiggling, like

hooks catching trapped laughs,

flipping, “quote, unquote,”

the bird, supernatural,

rhetorical, rhapsodic. 

Here is what Grace Ocasio sent me:

As far as I was concerned, Charlotte was a foreign land, and I was a hardcore New Yorker when I moved to Charlotte in 1993, newly wed from the burbs of Westchester County.  The only thing I knew about Charlotte was that my mother had passed through it one time, years before she migrated to New York with my father and that my uncle, Dr. Arthur Grant, had received a B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University.  I truly became, upon learning from my then fiancé, Edwin Ocasio, that his company, Hearst Corporation, would be relocating to Charlotte the summer of 1992, like Eva Gabor’s Lisa of Green Acres fame.  “The stores” I implored as I conversed with Eddie long distance ten months before our wedding.  For sure, the asphalt jungle had rooted itself deep in my DNA, and no amount of persuasion on Eddie’s part was going to sell me on Charlotte.  Hence, I went kicking and screaming down south. 

Little by little, Charlotte grew on me.  Teeming with nature galore, the birds and trees of various kinds won me over.   All the writers I met wrote about flowers.  What is this? I wondered.  True, the amazing contemporary poet Thomas Lux taught me in a Sarah Lawrence College graduate seminar that one could use flowers symbolically, creating great potency of language.  One need not imbue one’s language with the literal meaning of flowers, I learned.  Still, I imbibed what the writers around me wrote, admired and appreciated their verse.  I, however, referenced nature in order to reflect/mirror my emotions.  The death of my mother in 2008 prompted me to write about her passing aided by the image of a dogwood.  Other poems emerged, some relating to nature in one way or another. A few of these poems made their way into my new collection, Family Reunion.  Nowadays, I sit or stand in my bones, content to wait for small moments to burgeon into poems.

FALL FESTIVAL

We, my Edward and I, take Zoe to a pumpkin patch

where she dives into a horde of pumpkins

as though they will draw her close

as cousins she’s never met.

She commands the hayride––

first child to scramble up

into the tractor-drawn wagon,

first child to throw a bucket of hay over her head.

We walk through a meadow, snatch wildflowers,

cram our pockets with them,

lean against white oaks and watch the sun

slide down the sky like a child racing down a water coaster.

We flash our headlights from Mooresville to Charlotte,

letting people know harvest is the time to gloat

over chill in the air, the snap of grass under feet,

the scent of pumpkin buttercream,

the yellow, red, and orange leaves of tupelos

that entice us to sleep even when we’ve been up all night,

tossing stray sandman thoughts out the window

or in the trash can in our backyard.  

I thank Christopher Davis and Grace Ocasio for sharing their thoughts and poetry and for their many contributions to Storied Charlotte.        

Tags: Charlottepoetpoetrypoets

Mister Gavin Edwards' Neighborhood

March 24, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I didn’t know that Gavin Edwards lives in Charlotte when I spotted his book Kindness and Wonder:  Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever while shopping at Park Road Books the other day.  The store has a special display of their bestselling nonfiction books, and that’s where I saw Edwards’ book.  The cover features a photograph of Mister Rogers wearing his iconic red, cardigan sweater, and the photograph called out to me.  Being a longtime fan of Mister Rogers, I took the book off the shelf and read Edwards’ bio statement printed on the dust jacket.   It concludes with the line: “Gavin lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife, museum curator Jen Sudul Edwards, and their two sons.”  I turned to Sherri Smith, one of the store’s employees, and asked her if Edwards really lives in Charlotte.  She assured me that he does, and she added that they consider him a friend of the store.  Well, it was then clear what I needed to do.  I bought the book and read it the next day.

Edwards divides the book into two sections.  The first section focuses on Mister Rogers’ life and his long career in children’s television.  In the second section, Edwards distills Mister Rogers’ approach to life down to “ten ways to live more like Mister Rogers right now.”  I enjoyed all of the book, but the second half grabbed my attention.  Kindness and Wonder came out in the fall of 2019, so it predates the coronavirus outbreak.  However, I felt that Edwards’ discussion of the ten ways to live like Mister Rogers is especially relevant for our current public health crisis.  As soon as I finished Edwards’ book, I wrote a column titled “What Mister Rogers Would Say about the Coroavirus” for The Charlotte Observer.  To read the column, please click on this link:  https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article241363251.html

After I finished my column, I set out to learn more about Edwards.  I found out that he is a Yale-educated journalist who has published numerous articles in Rolling Stone, including twelve cover stories.  He has also published articles in The New York Times, Wired, Billboard, GQ, and many other periodicals.  Like most authors these days, he has a website.  After visiting his website, I learned that he has twelve books.  In addition to Kindness and Wonder, he has published such titles as The World According to Tom Hanks:  The Life, the Obsessions, the Good Deeds of America’s Most Decent Guy (2018), The Tao of Bill Murray:  Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing (2016), and Last Night at the Viper Room:  River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind (2013).  For more information about Edwards and his writings, please click on the following link:  https://rulefortytwo.com

On his website, Edwards makes several references to Park Road Books, but he doesn’t go into much detail about his life in Charlotte.  I wanted to know more, so I contacted him and asked him how he came to make Charlotte his home.  Here is his response: 

Before I moved to Charlotte five years ago, I had visited the city exactly once, on assignment for a magazine article where I entered a racecar driving school. So my initial impression of the city was that it involved mandatory jumpsuits and driving at 154 mph, making lots of left turns. That has turned out not to be the case.  We came to Charlotte (from Los Angeles) because my wife is a museum curator (she’s now the chief curator at the Mint Museum). I’ve moved around enough to know that the life of a writer can be isolating, if I’m not careful, so when we got here, I made sure to make friends and meet my neighbors and find places to volunteer. My actual neighborhood has “Driveway Fridays,” weekly potluck get-togethers all summer long, plus huge gatherings for Halloween and the Fourth of July. And I’ve found people in Charlotte to have lunch with, to play board games with, to discuss experimental novels with, so my appreciation of Charlotte is not based solely on the fact that the rest of my family is thriving here. One good friend can make all the difference in a new town; happily, I’ve got more than that here.  A lot of the writing I do really isn’t specific to Charlotte: my books on Bill Murray and Tom Hanks and Fred Rogers could have been written anywhere in the country. So I regularly try to take on some writing assignments that let me get to know North Carolina and its residents better, whether that means interviewing photographer Burk Uzzle for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/arts/music/woodstock-famous-couple.html) or reporting on the last days of a local music store for The Charlotte Observer(http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article212804554.html).

In reflecting on Edwards’ connections to Charlotte, I am reminded of the inscription that he wrote in my autographed copy of Kindness and Wonder.  It reads simply, “Hi neighbor!”  I like to think of Edwards as being part of my neighborhood.  Of course, some would say that Charlotte is too big to be called a neighborhood.  As I see it, however, the term neighborhood works perfectly for the community of writers and readers that make up Storied Charlotte. 

Tags: Mister Rogersneighbornonfiction

Patrice Gopo, Tommy Tomlinson, and Sensoria

March 10, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

One of the great strengths of Charlotte’s community of writers is that it usually makes room for newcomers.  Even in the 1950s, Harry Golden, a Jewish activist from New York City, found Charlotte to be a conducive place to pursue his writing career.   Nowadays, writers from many different places have set their roots in Charlotte, and Charlotte’s cultural scene is richer as a result of this infusion of talent.  Two notable examples are Patrice Gopo and Tommy Tomlinson.  Both of these gifted writers will be showcased during the upcoming Sensoria Festival, Central Piedmont Community College’s week-long cultural celebration that will take place from March 27 through April 5, 2020.

Patrice Gopo took a long and winding road on her journey to Charlotte.  The child of Jamaican immigrants, Gopo grew up in Anchorage, Alaska.  During her early adult years, she spent time in South Africa, where she met her husband, before eventually moving to Charlotte about ten years ago.  Gopo draws on her unique background in her rich and highly personal essays.  She addresses such topics as race, immigration and religion in her essays, but she relates these topics to events and people from her life.  Her essays have appeared in numerous national publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.   A collection of her essays recently came out under the title All the Colors We Will See:  Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way.  For more information about Gopo and her writings, please click on the following link:  https://www.patricegopo.com/home

I recently contacted Gopo and asked her about her connections to Charlotte.  Here is her response:

Almost a decade ago, I arrived in Charlotte. At the time, I couldn’t begin to imagine what this city and the state of North Carolina would mean to my writing life. Those were my beginning writing days, and I discovered a warm, welcoming, and vibrant writing community. It is here that I found classes and conferences and connections. It is here, in Charlotte, that I found people and organizations who believed in the value and importance of my work and wanted to support me in my endeavors. People like Maureen Ryan Griffin with Wordplay and Greg Collard at WFAE. And organizations like CharlotteLit, ASC, and the NCArts Council. The Charlotte community has been a beautiful encouragement to my writing life, and I’m thrilled to always include in my bio, “Patrice lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.”

Tommy Tomlinson’s journey to Charlotte started in Brunswick, Georgia. He grew up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Brunswick.  He decided to pursue a career in journalism during his junior year at the University of Georgia.  He started his career as a reporter in 1986 when he joined The Augusta Chronicle.  In 1989, The Charlotte Observer hired him as a reporter, and four years later he became a feature writer specializing in popular music.  From 1997 to 2012, he wrote a prize-winning column that appeared in The Charlotte Observer three time a week.  Since then he has worked as a free-lance writer for such publications as Esquire, Sports Illustrated and Forbes.  In 2019, Simon and Schuster published his memoir titled The Elephant in the Room:  One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.  For more information about Tomlinson and his writings, please click on the following link:  http://tommytomlinson.com/bio/

Although Tomlinson’s career as a free-lance writer has taken him all over the country, he and his wife continue to live in Charlotte.  I recently contacted him about his connections to Charlotte.  Here is his response:

I’ve been in Charlotte for 30 years, which I never would have expected. Journalists often bounce around from one place to another, chasing better jobs. But I landed here in 1989 to work for the Charlotte Observer, and for the next 23 years that was the best home I could’ve asked for. The paper let me stretch, try new things, build connections with readers. Now I’m lucky enough to work at WFAE, where they have been generous enough to let me do a podcast even though I don’t exactly have an NPR voice. I’ve had to travel a lot for work over the years, and besides having a great airport, Charlotte provides what I need — a stable, lovely, warm place to call home. My wife and I don’t plan to live anywhere else.

Both Gopo and Tomlinson are participating in Sensoria this year.  On March 30, 2020, Gopo will discuss All the Colors We Will See at CPCC’s Central Campus in Tate Hall at 10:30 a.m. and at CPCC’s Cato Campus at 1:30 p.m.  Tomlinson will also speak on March 30, 2020.  His talk, which is titled “On Journalism and Writing:  A Conversation with Tommy Tomlinson,” will take place at CPCC’s Central Campus in Tate Hall at 12:30 p.m.  For a full schedule of events associated with Sensoria, please click on the following link:  https://sensoria.cpcc.edu/events/

In recent years, Sensoria has established itself as one of Charlotte’s premier cultural events.  CPCC’s Sensoria is a free weeklong festival at CPCC’s campuses, open both to students and to the public. It’s really quite extraordinary how much the festival offers each year, including not just literature but art and design, history and culture, leadership and service, and science and technology. For literary events, the festival includes local and regional authors, such as Gopo and Tomlinson, and always a major national writer brought as an Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lecturer—this year it’s US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Other renowned poets and writers have included Tracy K. Smith, George Saunders, Amy Bloom, Natasha Trethewey, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Mary Oliver. The festival also honors local and regional writers with the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for lifetime literary achievement and service to the literary community.  Sensoria provides a wonderful opportunity for students and the community to engage with literature and the arts.  There can be no doubt that Sensoria makes an important contribution to storied Charlotte. 

Tags: art and designCharlotte writersfestivalhistory and cultureliterary eventsregional authorsSensoriaWriters

Charlotte's Publishers

March 02, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

As an English professor, I am one of the unfortunate people who is expected to keep up the Modern Language Association’s ever-changing rules about citing sources.  I usually adjust to these changes without much complaint, but there is one change that made its appearance in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook that bothers me.  This change relates to how we are supposed to deal with the publisher of a book that is included on our works cited list.  Under the new rule, the location of a publisher is no longer mentioned.  I don’t like this change at all.  Publishers do not function in a vacuum.  In most cases, they are inextricably tied to the communities in which they do business.  The location of a publisher tells one something about the publisher, but it also says something about its home community.  MLA might not care, but I think it’s worth noting that Charlotte is now home to several successful independent publishers.

Falstaff Books, one of Charlotte’s fastest growing publishers, made its debut in January 2016 under the leadership of John Hartness, and it is already publishing about 40 titles per year.  Known initially for writing popular works of urban fantasy, Hartness has a strong interest in genre fiction, and this interest is reflected in the titles that Falstaff Books releases.  On its official website, Falstaff Books is described as being “dedicated to bringing to life the best in fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, romance, and dramatic literature.”   Hartness often works with authors from the Charlotte region, including my friend and colleague at UNC Charlotte A. J. Hartley.  In April, Falstaff Books will release A. J. Hartley’s Impervious, a fantasy novel that deals with the topic of school violence.  For more information about Falstaff Books, please click on the following link:  http://falstaffbooks.com

I have a particular fondness for Falstaff Books since it is the publisher of The Herald of Day, a fantasy novel by my wife, Nancy Northcott.  Because of my wife’s associations with the company, I have learned about their many connections with Charlotte’s community of genre authors.  A prime example of Falstaff Books’ involvement with this community is its Saga Conference, a two-day, professional development conference for genre writers that’s held in Charlotte every year.  This year’s Saga Conference will take place on March 6-8 at the University Hilton.  For more information about the Saga Conference, please click on the following link:  http://sagaconference.com

Main Street Rag Publishing Company, another one of Charlotte’s successful publishers, got its start as the publisher of The Main Street Rag, a quarterly literary magazine that began in 1996 under the editorship of M. Scott Douglass.  Since then, Main Street Rag has developed into a well-regarded independent press known especially for poetry.  Unlike most small presses, Main Street Rag owns its own printing and binding equipment, which it uses in the production of its releases.  It has published a number of regional and national authors, including Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Irene Blair Honeycutt, Randall Horton, Maureen Ryan Griffin, Diana Pickney, Tony Abbott, and Michael F. Smith.  I am pleased that Christopher Davis, one of the creative writing professors from UNC Charlotte’s English Department, is about to join the list of authors published by Main Street Rag.  Oath, his most recent collection of poems, is scheduled for release this spring.  For more information about Main Street Rag, please click on the following link:  http://www.mainstreetrag.com/about-main-street-rag/

One of Charlotte’s quirkier independent publishers is Dark Lantern Tales, the brainchild of Mark Williams.  Ever since he was a boy, Williams has loved to read dime novels and other forms of sensational fiction from the late nineteenth century.  Over the decades, he has built an impressive collection of these publications. However, they were originally printed on cheap paper and are now so fragile that they are nearly unreadable.  In an effort to bring these crime thrillers back into circulation, he started Dark Lantern Tales.  As he states on his informative website, he has now published trade paperback and electronic book versions of numerous “rediscovered crime and detective stories from the 1800s.”  Among the books he has published are the Joe Phenix Detective Series by Albert W. Aiken.  Although Williams obviously does not publish Charlotte-area authors, he does work with Charlotte’s Park Road Books to make the trade paperback versions of his publications available to Charlotte’s reading public.  For more information about Dark Lantern Tales, please click of the following link:  https://darklanterntales.wordpress.com

The aforementioned publishers are by no means Charlotte’s only publishers, but they serve as excellent examples of this aspect of Charlotte’s literary community.  These and Charlotte’s other publishers all make important contributions to storied Charlotte. 

Tags: Dark LanternFalstaff BooksMain Street Ragpublishers

Park Road Books and Dr. Seuss

February 20, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I love visiting Park Road Books, and I love reading Dr. Seuss’s stories aloud to children.  Drawing on these two loves of mine, I joined forces with Park Road Books to organize our annual Seuss-a-Thon, an event that is now in its 9th year.  This year’s Seuss-a-Thon will take place on February 29 (Saturday) at Park Road Books (4139 Park Road) from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  At the Seuss-a-Thon, local educators and literacy advocates will participate in a four-hour marathon of reading Dr. Seuss’s books aloud to children. Dr. Seuss-themed crafts will be available for children throughout the event, and his books will be on sale at a discount throughout the day.  In conjunction with this year’s Seuss-a-Thon, Park Road Books will donate to Smart Start (a local literacy organization) one Dr. Seuss book for every two Dr. Seuss books that it sells over the course of the day.     

We hold the Seuss-a-Thon on the Saturday closest to the birthday of Dr. Seuss, who was born on March 2, 1904.  The National Education Association always sponsors its Read Across America Campaign to coincide with Dr. Seuss’s birthday.  As a long-time children’s literature professor, I am a big supporter of this campaign.  One of my goals in organizing the Seuss-a-Thon is to sponsor an event that contributes to this larger literacy campaign.

The annual Seuss-a-Thon is just one of the many ways that Park Road Books contributes to the vitality of Charlotte’s literary community.  Charlotte’s only independent, full-service bookstore, Park Road Books regularly partners with local cultural organizations to promote the reading of literature.  Every year, for example, Park Road Books helps the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation with its Verse and Vino fundraising event.  This high-profile event brings bestselling authors to Charlotte, and Park Road Books takes care of ordering and selling these authors’ books to the event’s attendees.  The store also works with over thirty area book clubs by providing the members of these clubs with opportunities to purchase (at a discount) the books that they discuss at their meetings.  In addition to working with these area book clubs, the store supports three book clubs that meet in the store.  During the holiday season, Park Road Books partners with Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Communities in Schools on a project they call their Book Tree.  This project provides area children with free books that they can keep.

Park Road Books’ connections to the Charlotte literary community can be traced back to 1977, when John Barringer founded the bookstore under the name of Little Professor Book Center.  In August of 1999, Sally Brewster joined the store, and they changed the name to Park Road Books.  She bought the store from Barringer in 2003, and she has run it ever since.  Over the years, she has assembled a dedicated staff, all of whom are avid readers.  Her longest serving staff member is Sherri Smith, the store’s children’s book buyer, who has been working at the store since 1991.

When Brewster purchased the store, it was one of several independent bookstores in the city, but these other bookstores have since closed in part because so many people now purchase their books from Amazon.  Park Road Books, however, has continued to prosper, in part because of its many connections to Charlotte’s literary community.  It’s not just a retail outlet where one can buy books.  It’s also a special place where Charlotte’s readers gather, share book recommendations, attend book signings, and sometimes listen to Dr. Seuss books being read aloud.  Park Road Books has established itself as an integral part of storied Charlotte. 

Storied Charlotte: Celebrating the Stories and Storytellers of Charlotte

February 11, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Charlotte, Carson McCullers, and Harry Golden — Welcome to the inaugural post of Storied Charlotte, my new blog about the stories and storytellers of Charlotte.  Storied Charlotte is an outgrowth of my Monday Missive, a blog I wrote during the seven and a half years that I served as the chair of UNC Charlotte’s Department of English.  When I stepped down as chair in December 2019, I drew the curtain on my Monday Missive.  Since then, numerous people have told me that they miss reading my Monday Missive, and they asked me to consider starting a new blog.  Their requests prompted me to launch Storied Charlotte.

I often promoted literary events in Charlotte in my Monday Missive, but I usually focused on the people and events associated with the English Department.  In Storied Charlotte, my focus will be on Charlotte’s vibrant literary community.  As a long-time member of UNC Charlotte’s English Department, I have a deep interest in Charlotte’s evolving literary community.  This community includes more than writers. It also encompasses librarians, booksellers, publishers, literacy activists, and (most importantly) readers.  My hope is that Storied Charlotte will be of interest to everyone who has connections to Charlotte’s literary community or who is curious about how Charlotte became such a storied city.

In reflecting on the history of Charlotte’s literary community, I think that there are two writers who played particularly important roles in establishing Charlotte as a place that attracts and inspires important writers.  One is Carson McCullers, and the other is Harry Golden.  Neither of these writers grew up in Charlotte, but both of them began their careers as writers while living in Charlotte.

Photo by Gavin West
Photo by Gavin West

McCullers moved to Charlotte from Columbus, Georgia, in 1937 when she was just twenty years old.  She and her husband moved into a boarding house on East Boulevard, and it was here that she began her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.  A few months later, they moved to a house on Central Avenue where she continued to work on her novel. They left Charlotte in the spring of 1938 and moved to Fayetteville, and she finished The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter while living there.  The book came out in 1940 to great acclaim and immediately established McCullers as an up-and-coming writer.  McCullers spent much of the rest of her life in New York, but she continued to write about the American South in her fiction.

During her time in Charlotte, McCullers generally wrote in the morning and then took long walks in the afternoon.  She drew on the observations she made during these walks in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.  She did not identify Charlotte as the setting for this novel, but she incorporated details from Charlotte in her descriptions of the unnamed mill town where the characters live.  She also included in her novel reflections on the racism and sexism that she witnessed during her time in Charlotte.  Given that she wrote the book in the late 1930s, her sensitive treatment of these issues can be seen as prophetic.

Shortly after McCullers published The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and moved to New York, a New Yorker named Harry Golden moved to Charlotte.  Golden spent most of his boyhood and young adult days in New York City before settling permanently in Charlotte in 1941.  The next year he published a trial run of the Carolina Israelite, a newspaper intended primarily for North Carolina’s Jewish community.  It was a success, and in 1944 he began publishing the newspaper on a regular basis.  He continued to publish this paper until 1968.

In addition to publishing his newspaper, Golden wrote numerous best-selling books, including Only in America (1958), For 2¢ Plain (1958), and Enjoy, Enjoy! (1960).   Although these books became known for their folksy humor, they had a serious side to them, too.  In many of his publications and public appearances, Golden spoke out against racial segregation and called for an end to the Jim Crow laws.   At the time of his death in 1981, Golden was Charlotte’s most famous writer.  Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett provides a thorough discussion of Golden’s career as a writer in Carolina Israelite:  How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights.

Photo by Gavin West
Photo by Gavin West

Both McCullers and Golden have left their marks on the streets of Charlotte.  The former boarding house on 311 East Boulevard where McCullers started her writing career still stands.  It is now the location of the Copper Restaurant, and in front of the restaurant there is a historical marker commemorating McCullers’s association with the building.  The final home where Harry Golden lived is also still standing and is still used as a private residence.  It’s a bungalow at the corner of Hawthorne Lane and E. 8th Street, right across from Hawthorne Lane Methodist Church.   There is a historical marker near that house indicting that Golden lived in this building.  The marker is located at the corner of 7th Street and Hawthorne Lane.  Also, the Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte has a permanent display covering Golden’s life and writings. 

McCullers and Golden found inspiration in Charlotte.  Neither saw Charlotte as a perfect place, and both were attuned to the prejudice that was commonplace in Charlotte in the mid-twentieth century. Still, for both of them, Charlotte proved to be a fertile place where they could pursue their careers as writers.   As the years have gone by, many writers have followed in their footsteps.

Tags: booksCarson McCullersCharlotteHarry GoldenlibrariansliteraryliteratureStoriesWriters

Monday Missive - December 16, 2019

December 16, 2019 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Turning Over the Keys —  On August 1, 2012, I began serving as the Interim Chair of the English Department, and on August 6 of that year, I sent out my very first Monday Missive.  Since then I have sent you a Monday Missive every week.  The only exceptions have been during the weeks when UNC Charlotte has been closed for the holidays and one week in March 2017 when Jen Munroe wrote the Monday Missive because I was hospitalized.  I did some quick calculations, and I am pretty sure that today ‘s edition is the 370th Monday Missive.  It is also the last one.

I searched through my old email and found my first Monday Missive.  In it, I used David Bowie’s song “Changes” as a springboard to discuss the changes that were taking place in the English Department at the time.  Today’s Monday Missive is also about changes.  At the end of this week, I am literally turning over the keys of the English Department to Paula Eckard.  She officially becomes the new chair of our department on January 1, 2020, but she has already transformed the chair’s office and has made the space her own.  

At the same time that Paula is taking on the role of English Department Chair, Liz Miller is assuming the role of Associate Chair/Director of Undergraduate Studies from Jen Munroe, and Beth Gargano is assuming the role of Director of the English Honors Program from Kirk Melnikoff.  Lara Vetter is staying on in her role as the Director of Graduate Studies.

This current period of transition is not the first time that I have turned over the administration of a program to Paula.  When I became an associate dean in 2002, I needed to step down as the Director of the American Studies Program.  Paula took over the administration of the program at the time.  During her long and successful tenure as its director, she has done an excellent job of building the American Studies Program.  When I turned it over to her in 2002, there were about 50 students minoring in American Studies. Today, the program has more than 350 minors, making it one of the largest minors in the university.

Just as she did when she became the Director of the American Studies Program, Paula will draw on her experience and excellent judgment in her new role as the Chair of the English Department.  As I conclude my time as your chair, I pledge to do all I can to help Paula and the department through this period of transition.  I know that I am leaving the English Department in good hands.

Commencement Report — Last Saturday the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences held its winter commencement ceremony.  Jen Munroe, Liz Miller, Lara Vetter and I took responsibility for lining up our graduating students in alphabetical order before they filed into the Dale F. Halton Arena.

For 76 of our students, this ceremony marked their transition from current students to graduates.  A total of 9 of our graduate students are listed in the commencement program, and 67 undergraduate students are listed.  I am especially impressed with how many of our BA students fall under the heading of “Graduation with Distinction.”  Of the 67 students, 12 earned the distinction of Cum Laude (GPA between 3.4-3.7), 10 earned the distinction of Magna Cum Laude (GPA between 3.7-3.9), and 3 earned the distinction of Summa Cum Laude (GPA between 3.9-4.0).  This total comes to 25 students.  Also, 4 of our students graduated with English Honors.  I am very proud of all of our graduating students, but I want to mention by name the 3 students who earned the distinction of Summa Cum Laude.  They are Riley Michelle Davoren, Britney Lussier, and Amy Eileen Murray.

Kudos  — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.  Here is the latest news:

Everyone in the English Department —  I commend all of the members of the English Department (both past and present) for building and sustaining an inclusive department that is dedicated to teaching high-quality courses, producing thoughtful and innovative scholarly and creative publications, and promoting a sense of departmental citizenship.  

Upcoming Events and Meetings — Here is a list of upcoming events and deadlines:

January 8 — First day of classes for the Spring 2020 semester.

January 15 — Last day for students to add or drop a course with no grade.

Quirky Quiz Question — In my first Monday Missive, I asked the following Quirky Quiz Question:  “I am not the first Interim Chair of the English Department.  Who was the last person to serve as the Interim Chair of our department?”  Paula Eckard was the first person to provide the correct response (Jay Jacoby), and this seems very fitting to me.   Here is my last Quirky Quiz Question–what is the connection between Jay Jacoby’s current place of residence and Paula Eckard’s research interest in Thomas Wolfe?

Last week’s answer: Mathematics

In addition to writing children’s books, Lewis Carroll spent many years teaching at Oxford University.  What subject did he teach?

Monday Missive - December 9, 2019

December 09, 2019 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Storied Places — I just return last night from participating in a symposium at Oxford University.  The symposium was interesting, but what I enjoyed the most was wandering the streets of Oxford.  As a children’s literature professor, I think of Oxford is a special place.  It is associated with a number of important children’s books, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  The good people of Oxford celebrate their connections to the classic works of children’s literature that were written there.  There are plaques and guidebooks that point out special places in Oxford associated with children’s literature, and most everyone, including me, is eager to help visitors as they go on their literary pilgrimages.  When I walked to the site of the symposium, I went right by the pub called The Eagle and Child, where Tolkien, Lewis and some of their colleagues met every week to visit and to critique each other’s manuscripts.  As I was walking by the pub, a woman asked me if I would take her picture standing under the sign.  We ended up chatting for several minutes about Tolkien.  This type of interaction is common in Oxford.  The city’s connections to children’s literature fosters a sense of community that I find appealing.

I am not the only member of our English Department who is interested in the connections between place and stories.  Daniel Shealy, for example, has a deep-seated interest in the many authors from Concord, Massachusetts, including Lousia May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.  As a frequent visitor to Concord, Daniel has developed an expertise in the unique literary culture that emerged in Concord in the mid-nineteenth century and persists to this day.  Another example is Bryn Chancellor.  Bryn spent some of her formative years in the American southwest, and she often sets her stories in this region. For Bryn, the desert-like conditions in American southwest spark her imagination.  In her novel Sycamore, the setting is so important to her story that almost seems like a character.

In reflecting on the relationship between places and stories, I am reminded that stories can also take us to places just through the act of reading.  For me, one of the pleasures of being an English professor is that I am able to introduce students to a wide variety of wonderful places.  My students might not be able to stroll the streets of Oxford, but they can experience some of the magic of storied places by picking up a book.  As Dr. Seuss once said, “You’re off to Great Places!”

Kudos  — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.  Here is the latest news:

Meghan Barnes recently presented the following three papers at the Literacy Research Association Conference held in Tampa: “You Can’t Un-See Color:  A PhD, a Divorce, and The Wizard of Oz;” “Contested Pasts, ComPlicated Presents:  Pre-Service Teachers’ Developing Conceptions of Community;” and “Activism and the Academy:  Public Literacy Scholars’ Reflections on our Past and Future Work.”

Paula Connolly recently published a book review of Radiant with Color & ARt:  McLaughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books”  in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.

Dina Massaachi, one of our part-time faculty members, recently published an article titled “’Written Soley to Please Children’: Is Oz Still A Story for Kids?” in The Baum Bugle.

Ralf Thiede published an article titled “Synesthetic Entrainment in Interactive Reading Sessions of Children’s Books” in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. His was one of five articles selected for a special issue on “Cognitive Approaches to Children’s Literature.” The same issue also contains a very favorable review by Hugh Crago of Ralf’s book Children’s Literature, Brain Development, and Language Acquisition.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to writing children’s books, Lewis Carroll spent many years teaching at Oxford University.  What subject did he teach?

Last week’s answer: Tom Hanks

Fred Rogers was a big advocate of pretend play as is reflected in the following quotation by Rogers: “When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality.  A stick can be a magic wand.  A sock can be a puppet.   A small child can be a superhero.”  What is the name of the actor who plays the role of Fred Rogers in the current film about Fred Rogers’s life? 

Monday Missive - December 2, 2019

December 02, 2019 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive
Artwork by Clem White

The Intersection of Play Studies and Narrative Studies — This week I am heading off to Oxford University to participate in the Oxford Education Research Symposium for the fourth time since I have been chair of the English Department.  Last year, I had lunch with one of the symposium’s organizers, and I expressed my appreciation at being invited back repeatedly.  He responded by saying, “We like your stories.”  I suppose that is a good thing for me since this year I am presenting a paper titled “Astrid Lindgren’s Stories, Junibacken, and the Playful Approach to Literacy Education.”  This paper is based on research I did last summer when I interviewed the Manager of Public Operations at Junibacken, a children’s cultural center in Stockholm that celebrates stories by Astrid Lindgren and other Scandinavian children’s authors.  In the paper, I discuss the ways in which Junibacken uses dramatic play in their literacy education program. 

For the past ten years, I have been researching and writing about the relationship between children’s play and children’s literature.  I have learned that the emerging field of play studies has many connections with the more established field of narrative studies.  Children’s dramatic play, for example, always involves a narrative element.   I have also learned that I am not the only member of the English Department who is doing research that relates to play studies.  Janaka Lewis and Aaron Toscano are also currently engaged in research projects related to this area.

I contacted Janaka about her interest in the field of play studies, and she sent me the following summary of her current research:  “My current research related to play looks at both child’s play as well as children’s performance of roles that they will be expected to perform upon entering adulthood.   I am interested in how this type of play is used by children and specifically Black girl protagonists to negotiate difficult circumstances that challenge their social mobility.  Through an examination of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Bluest Eye, and PUSH, I am looking at how Black girl characters (both real and fictional) use creative play as an opportunity to escape from trauma or to overcome trauma.  I am also looking at how readers, who see themselves represented in the stories, can draw on these depictions of play to navigate where they are and where they can be.”

Aaron’s interest in play studies directly relates to his current research into the playing of video games.  In his forthcoming book titled Video Games and American Culture:  How Ideology Influences Virtual Worlds, Aaron places the playing of video games within a cultural context.  Lexington Books, the publisher of Aaron’s book, provides the following summary of Aaron’s approach to this topic:  “Although video games have a worldwide audience, this book focuses on American culture and how this multi-billion dollar industry entertains us in our leisure time (and sometimes at work), bringing us into virtual environments where we have fun learning, fighting, discovering, and acquiring bragging rights. When politicians and moral crusaders push agendas that claim video games cause a range of social ills from obesity to mass shooting, these perspectives fail to recognize that video games reproduce hegemonic American values. This book, in contrast, focuses on what these highly entertaining cultural products tell us about who we are.”

As Janaka’s and Aaron’s research demonstrates, the field of play studies is not just about fun and games.  The study of play, like the study of literature, is rooted in culture.  I am reminded of a famous quotation about play by Johan Huizinga:  “Culture arises and unfolds in and as play.”

Kudos  — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.  Here is the latest news:

Boyd Davis recently presented a co-authored paper titled “A Closer look at Formulaic Language in Dementia Discourse” at the Linguistic Society of New Zealand Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Jordan Costanza, one of our graduate students, just published an article titled “Of Ravens and Romanticism: Edgar Allan Poe’s Enduring Legacy in American Education and the Juvenile Adaptations of his Poetry and Prose” in the journal Edgar Allan Poe Review. This article was originally Jordan’s Honors thesis.

Allison Hutchcraft recently published a poem titled “Alice in the Cloisters” in Western Humanities Review.

Janaka Lewis recently published an article titled “Building the Worlds of Our Dreams:  Black Girlhood and Quare Narratives in African American Literature” in the fall 2019 issue of the journal South. 

Upcoming Events and Deadlines — Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines:

December 9 — The English Department holiday party will be held from 11:30-1:30 on Monday, December 9, in the department lounge.

Quirky Quiz Question — Fred Rogers was a big advocate of pretend play as is reflected in the following quotation by Rogers: “When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality.  A stick can be a magic wand.  A sock can be a puppet.   A small child can be a superhero.”  What is the name of the actor who plays the role of Fred Rogers in the current film about Fred Rogers’s life? 

Last week’s answer: The Macy’s Parade

There are many traditions associated with Thanksgiving, including a large parade in New York City.  What is the name of this parade?