Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
March 25, 2016

“I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa – where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.” – Alex Haley

A Writer’s Memoir to add to your Reading List

DIMESTORE

A Memoir by Lee Smith

KIRKUS REVIEW

Award-winning novelist Smith (Guests on Earth, 2013, etc.) recalls growing up in a small Virginia coal town and the indelible influence that background had on her adult life.

Situated in the mountains of southwest Virginia, Smith’s hometown of Grundy was beautiful but isolated. The author’s mother, a Virginia East Shore outsider locals called a “foreigner,” was a home economics teacher. Her father, a native son, owned the local dime store, where Smith typed on his typewriter and observed clients and employees from behind a one-way office window. “It was the perfect early education for a fiction writer,” she writes. As passionate as Smith’s mother and father were about each other, they each suffered from periods of the mental illness that would later strike Smith’s son. Yet the family household—and Smith herself—managed to stay whole thanks to the intervention of dear friends. Eventually, the author left Grundy for Hollins College… Read the entire review at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lee-smith/dimestore/

Who’s up next . . .

March 29: Fifth Tuesday

April 5: Liam Wilbur (???), Pat Edwards (???), Millie Mader (poem), Lisa McDougal (chapters, Tebow Family Secret), Eva Mays (chapter 3, Dhuoda), Bob Kralapp (???), and Randy Slagel (???).

April 12: ?

April 19: Mike Austin (???), Fran Wiedenhoeft (???), Hannah Marshall (poems), Kashmira Sheth (chapters, Journey to Swaraj), Judith McNeil (short story, part 2, “Just Visiting”), Cindi Dyke (chapter 26, North Road), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 27-30, Killing Ham).

Fifth Tuesday coming . . .

This is the month of FIFTH TUESDAY.

Yes, March 29 our two groups will come together for an evening of good food and good times at Ella’s Deli, 2902 East Washington Avenue. Plug that in your GPS and you’ll get there. First-and-third group hosts.

TWS alumni and published sci-fi author Pat Tomlinson will be with us to talk about how he got a book contract.

Here’s our Fifth Tuesday writing challenge: Write a story, essay, or poem using this as your writing prompt: “I’m a curious person. No, I’m a nosy person. No, I’m a snoop, and it’s finally gotten me into trouble.”

Do not, repeat, do not use the prompt as the first sentences of your short short story, essay, or poem.

Max length: 500 words.

Deadline for getting your mini-masterpieces to Jerry Peterson is March 24.

Meet our Writers Mail editors . . .

For April: Randy Slagel, randy@rsdigitalmedia.com.

For May: Lisa McDougal, gurlnlifemagazine@yahoo.com.

You, too, could be a part of this illustrious group.  Just volunteer!