Posts Tagged ‘Molly Gleeson’
This month’s Bloomington Writers Guild sponsored “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (see April 7, et al.), at Bloomington’s Juniper Gallery, returned to its classical pattern of two featured readers and, after a break, brief closing readings from audience members — in this case three.
Thus, Bloomington-raised and current Evanston, Illinois resident Freda Love Smith, author of the memoir I QUIT EVERYTHING and full-length book RED VELVET UNDERGROUND, opened the session explaining how, in Bloomington for her niece who graduated yesterday from the university, she had also stopped by and chatted with students at the pro-Palestinian encampment in Dunn Meadow and, for today, had decided instead of reading from her book, to read excerpts from a just-written essay scheduled to appear this fall in INDIANA REVIEW on 1970s activist/Symbionese Liberation Army member — and herself an Indiana University graduate (class of 1970) — Angela DeAngelis.
She was followed by IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology PhD candidate, and production volunteer and past Lotus Education and Arts Foundation staff member Jeremy Reed with excerpts from his dissertation, with sections on public space, rumors, and limits on permitted and non-permitted speech centered, in this case, on the Jaresh Festival of Culture and Arts, an annual summer celebration in Jordan.
Then after the break, there were three volunteer readers of which I was last, following humorous segments by Writers Guild member Tonia Matthew and First Sunday Moderator Molly Gleeson, bringing us back to the possibly more somber mood of the opening essays with a flash story, “The Third Prisoner” (no, no, my position in the lineup is pure coincidence), on a sort of South/Central American activism . . . with zombies.
April’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (see March 3, et al.), at the Juniper Gallery on West Kirkwood Ave., deviated from the usual pattern of two featured readers, a break, and an open session for walk-on participants. In view of a soon-ending spring school semester, coordinator Molly Gleeson opted instead for a special program honoring local students and teachers. Thus seven readers (truncated from nine, as two were unable to make it) with short presentations comprised the first part, with (as it turned out, due to limited time) a segue, sans break, to three audience readers.
Thus the program began with Writers Guild member Tonia Matthew discussing her role with Bloomington’s VITAL– Volunteers In Tutoring Adult Learners — program at the Monroe County Public Library; followed by three high school students, Percy Patterson, Maci Day, and Allister Farrell, with poetry; Guild member Erin Strole on her path to becoming a teacher at Bloomington North and on teaching in general; another high school poet, Mya Coleman; and “70-year-old Ivy Tech student” Andre Deloney on, among other things, his work with county jail staff on helping inmates improve reading skills.
This then was followed, as noted, by we three walk-ons, with me coming last with a very short story combining the theme of teaching and learning with one of darkness, the latter in view of tomorrow’s upcoming solar eclipse (participants also found eclipse glasses on their chairs when they came in, courtesy of MC Gleeson), “School Nights,” originally published in Gothic Blue Book, October 2014, on the journey of a possibly naive young girl to her realization that she was a vampire.
A mostly gloomy, going-on-chilly afternoon greeted December ‘s “Bloomington Writers Guild First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” patrons at Morgenstern Books (see November 5, October 1, et al.), perhaps adding to a healthy, edging on overflow crowd. Hopefully this will be a good omen in that the first reader, multi-published Pushcart Prize nominee Molly Gleeson, currently working on a new novel, will also be taking over the reins of the First Sunday sessions from long-time moderator Joan Hawkins beginning in March, and who offered for now a selection from a near-future dystopic story along with a more upbeat essay, “A Walk in the Park,” on the making and keeping of new friends.
She was followed by writer and activist Claire Arbogast with selections from her non-fiction LEAVE THE DOGS AT HOME: A MEMOIR (Indiana University Press, 2015) on loss, and re-building a better life, followed by a scene from her novel IF NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH, currently in press, on a young woman’s experiences as a part of the late 1960’s counterculture, some of these not at all pleasant! Then after a short break, and with about half the audience still present, we had six walk-on readers of which I was fourth, with a quick reprise of a horror poem I’d read at this year’s Halloween-themed “Last Sunday Poetry” (cf. October 29) to introduce a new story, with it as inspiration, both titled “Night Child.”
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