REPLAY CENTRAL: Summer 2024 Virtual Thursday Dire Literary Series (plus links to all)

The Summer Series features were wonderful readers. Talented, extremely intelligent, and easy to be in conversation with.  Check out the ones you missed.  

June

 Susan Zalkind

Jessica Anya Blau

July

Gregory Wolos

Melissa Cundieff

August

Ben Tanzer

John Amen

====================================================

The Rest of the Replay Centrals

Winter/Spring 2024 (link to website)

Doug Crandall, Mathew Olzmann, Martin Ott, MP Carver, Phil Temples, William Orem, Mag Gabbert, Robert Fleming, Danielle Legros Georges, Michael Keith, Mark Wish

Autumn 2023 (link to website)

Marianne Leone, Tiffany Davenport, Jennifer Friedman Lang, Ray Guidrox, Gary Grossman, Elizabeth McKim, Carla Panciera, Dr. Dannagal G. Young, Ellis Elliot, Enzo Silon Surin, Josh Barkan, Laura Zigman, Tom Laughlin

Spring/Summer 2023 (links to website)

Jane Roper, John Wesick, Jennifer Martelli, John Fulton, Tricia Barker Barton, Cynthia Atkins, Katie Moulton, Yael Goldstein Love, Julia Lisella

Winter 2023 (link to website)

Suzanne Frischkorn, Kim Addonizio, Thomas McNeely, Jenna Le, Sarah Bridgins, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Lise Hanes, Dr. Paula Perez, Michael Mark, Maya Williams, Hannah Sward, Caitlin Avery, Carla Swartz, Stacy TenHouton, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Morgan Baker

Autumn 2022 (link to website) 

Jonathan Papernick, A.K. Small, Aaron Tillman, David Rockland, Kimberly Ann Priest, Sain Griffiths, Harris Gardner, Lisa Taylor, Michael Keith, Jim Shepard, Zach VandeZande, Rusty Barnes, Daniel Nester. Kurk Lovelace (reading from Annemarie O'Connell's book), and Nina Shope

Spring/Summer 2022 (link to website) 

Sara Lippmann, Robin McLean, Gregory Orr, Rich Murphy, Diane Suess, Ron Tanner, Aleathea Drehmer, Christina Adams, Sharon Applegate Greenwald, Lucas Scheelk, 

Joseph Milosch, Barbara Legere, Ellene Glenn Moore, Vincent Cellucci and Chris Shipman

Winter 2022

Renuka Raghaven, Jessica Cuello, Jen Knox, Daniel Biegelson, Alison Stine, 

John Rosenthal, Peter Crowley, Maggie Doherty, Erin Khar, Elan Barnehama, 

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard

Autumn 2021

DeMisty Bellinger, Cheryl Pappas, Matt Bell, Michael Keith, Gloria Mindock, 

Molly Gaudry, CD Collins, Kevin Prufer, Beth Robinson/Chris Joseph, Alina Stefanuscu, Meg Smith, Gregory Wolos, Damian Dressic, Jason Wright, Blake Butler 

Summer 2021

Natalie Brobin Bonfig, John Domini, Anna VQ Ross, Rachel Yoder

Spring 2021

Sandra Simonds, George Wallace, Caroline Levitt, Charles Coe, Susan Henderson, 

Major Jackson, Kara Vernor, Meredith Goldstein, Kimberly Ann Priest, Joanna Rakoff

Winter 2021

Rick Moody , Laurette Folk, Mark Saba, Sarah Anne Johnson, 

Josh Barkan/ Jennifer Haigh, Keetje Kuipers, January O'Neil,  Elle Nash, 

Danielle Zaccagnino, Marty Beckerman, Nathan Graziano , Steven Cramer

Autumn 2020

Carly Israel, Daphne Kalotay, Ryan Ridge, Marge Piercy, Kerry Beth Neville, 

Yuyutsu Sharma, Chris Joseph, Elizabeth Gordon McKim, Diana Spechler, 

Jonathan Escoffrey, Dewitt Henry, Brian Sonia-Wallace, Rebecca Fishow,

 Marguerite Bouvard, Pamela Painter, Kim Chinquee, Jessica Keener, Amy King

Reveals. We have front. We have back. We will have an available book within 30 days.

 

We have front                                                 

          

We have back.

Sadness. Easy or Difficult to write?

     Early in the revision process I received the manuscript back for Almost Bluing for X-tra Whiteness from Big Table Publishing with the below note. It's not surprising. I've heard it before as it applies to my writing. Sad can be beautiful in writing, but, to many, not beautifully lived. I am very grateful for my publisher and notes like this. 

1) Sad. Oh, that's easy to write. 

 It's okay to be sad. We are often told to brush it   off, as if sadness is some sort of insect, some gigantic negative, that people don't ever want to see. Repeat. People don't like it because they don't want to see it. I'd say it's like walking up a sidewalk and seeing chunks of dogshit in your path. Please, brush it away.  Always keep in mind that the world is a difficult place, and emotions are a normal way to deal with that fact. 

  So, it's all okay. Sadness is okay. For me it's   being in a familiar place. According to official diagnosis, for me, it's in remission. Still, it's there---it's, if you can believe it, something which feels comfortable. It's something that I can hold, know it's there at times, and just go on with my life. For those who are on Team Brush It Away, things are good now. As a sober person, I get to walk through things. 

2) Sad. Oh, that's hard to write. 

  A funny thing happened after the announcement that my the novel,  The Shadows of the Seen (coming, 2025) was being accepted for publication. I've shared a lot about how his novel was draining and difficult to write. First of all, t has to do with gun deaths and shootings in this country, Second, what was more difficult was the  writing of one of the characters (Lucky) who is based on a challenging and difficult year I had experienced. Writing it, I was re-affected and exhausted after each reliving of my personal experiences. As a writer, as many of us know, often, there is nothing you can do about this except to go with it, and just keep writing. 

    So, what's the funny thing?  The Shadows of the Seen was accepted by Pierian Springs Press first, before Almost Bluing for X-Tra Whiteness. So, next up for me as a writer is the "What's next?" game.  I thought to look in my 'Poems' folder, thinking maybe there would be enough for maybe half a collection, and I could get to work on that. I was surprised to find there was enough for a full collection. Equally surprising I found the poems, written between 2022 and now, covered much of the same difficult times I had just finished writing within the novel. In a way these two books are companion pieces, covering a lot of the same people, places, and things.  

     I am very proud of both of these books, and very excited for the soon to be launch of Almost Bluing for X-tra Whiteness, and, later, in the future for The Shadows of the Seen, which, I feel, is a strong read, but more so, a very important book. 

Virtual Thursdays Dire Literary Series Schedule, Sep-Dec, 2024

 

September

6: VERY SPECIAL FRIDAY:            Jackie Corley

19: Dawn Tripp

  

October

3: Sara Letourneau

10: Kristin Bock

24. Edward Belfar 

November

1: VERY SPECIAL FRIDAY Joanne Hart 

14. Gabby Gilliam

December   

5. Margaret Young 

19. Lee Varon

What I Learned About Vulnerability from Charles H. Gager

     When my father passed, two and a half years ago, I posted his obituary, edited into the bottom of a blog I'd written three days before he would die. That post was about how it sucked getting old and how bad the "system" treated elders.  Emotionally, posting the obituary was all I could get out. 

    Now, it is time. 

     My father was a brilliant man, a genius, who didn't have a wide skillset to display emotion. I learned to keep a lot of things inside, only allowing the extrovert in me to throw most everything out into the wind, especially humor. Dad was an engineer who worked on radar systems, the early ones, that could detect missiles, where upon detection, they could be intercepted. Layman's terms it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the Star Wars Defense System. He is the inventor for a patent filed in 1959 for: 

COHERENT VlDEO INPUT-W REACTANCE TUBE UENCY MODULATOR CARRIEROSCILLATOR NORMAL VIDEO INPUT- AND LIMITER FREQUENCY DISCRIMINATOR DELAYED COHERENT VIDEO OUTPUT AMPLITUDE DETECTOR DELAYED NORMAL VIDEO OUTPUT 

          ---INVENTORS, CHARLES A. FOWLER CHARLES H. GAGER. (see,  Method and apparatus for multiplexing and delaying normal and coherent video on one delay line)

   Because of the classified nature of his job, I never knew exactly what he did for work when I was growing up. I learned, upon clearing out his condo I found the documentation, the completion of his security clearance with an inked signature from Donald Rumsfeld. From this, I learned that we don't always know what others do, what they are going through, and how some secrets need to be held because they can change lives.  

   Perhaps biggest thing I learned from my father was forgiveness. As an adult, I had to forgive my father. Some things are more difficult that others, and this was a big one, but he had proven to me that I could forgive him. It  was one of my biggest life lessons. Forgiveness and kindness need to be as important as food and oxygen for us to survive as the best people we can be. 

                                                                     * * * * * * * *

 Now, the kicker.

  

   I spoke to someone recently who had lost their father about at the same time, in the same way as I lost mine. It was the first time I'd really spoken about my father, and the loss. The funeral was about who he was but there wasn't any closure---and that's a word I don't agree with, but it had been two and a half years. Two and a half...stuffed into a locker, no key, no combination. 

  Here and Now: The blackhole reappearing, the locker flung open---after I so successfully closed it at the beginning of 2023. After a year of bad things happened. 

  After his death in 2022, things came out sideways. They say there is no correct way to grieve, but I know I didn't do a very good job. My behavior was erratic, unpredictable, from being disengaged to displaying irrationality and wrath around something as trivial as how to score a spare while bowling. I chased away important people in my life, people I loved. Other things happened, other loses and I went to a very dark place. Things got progressively better after, but the locker grew bigger.

     Since his death, I've not formed many meaningful relationships; not the ones I used to form. My ability to function in a non-work, non-creative environment disappoints me, to say the least. Often I say too much---words come out strangely in all kinds of ways: too many jokes...too much misunderstanding...saying way too much to people I don't know....too many folks who are going North to my South. I'm subtlety chasing people away I open up to. The blackhole kept pulling, and I was sad, wanting people, places, and things to make me feel better. They couldn't. 

   It popped into my fiction and poetry. There are poems about my father, and about 2022. But there is also my to be released novel, The Shadows of the Seen, where one of the characters loses their father, has a breakup, suffers the death of a friend, and the death of a pet....and things came out sideways. It was the hardest most difficult character I've ever written, myself, in all of my failing. It left me exhausted and vulnerable---after each session in my writing room, alone.  

  My outlook today is that I'm pretty lucky. Things did get better, although the bumps in the road still happen. I'm grateful I can identify what is going on, and throw it out in the universe. It's like the Star Wars Defense System, intercepting the bad things or trying to minimized the damage. Today I'm throwing it out in the universe, and I don't know in what form, but I know something will come back. 

Now. It is time.