Writing Through Clouds

Taking the stage at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, seven students and one instructor from the CA’s first “Write Here, Write Now” class read their poetry, short stories, essays, and chapter excerpts to an appreciative audience. It was an exhilerating experience, and marked the first public reading of Seeing Through Clouds.

The reading was the inspiration of the co-instructors of the “Write Here, Write Now” class — Chris Stewart, the CA’s writer in residence, and Gregg Wilhelm president of the CityLit Project. Thank you both for your efforts!

Photo: Gregg Wilhelm (c) 2006 CityLit Project

I read the first scene from Chapter 1, which begins with the line, “The news of the Hindenburg crash didn’t just make Erich Lindemann’s miserable day worse. It changed his whole life,” and ends when Erich and Rudi arrive at the school. It was fun reading the scene out loud, into a microphone. I tried to read the dialogue the way that Erich and Rudi would have said it, but without trying to imitate their voices. I’m a writer, after all, not an actor! I guess we’ll just have to wait for the movie to come out!

When I was done reading, Mary Jo leaned over to me and whispered, “That was great! Now I want you to read the whole book to me!”

Well, to tell you the truth I have been thinking about reading the entire book as a podcast for download off the website, chapter by chapter. It would be a lot of work! But I think it would be fun too, and reading the first scene gave me some idea of the work that would be involved. Like everyone, I think my voice sounds funny when I hear it played back. So maybe if Mary Jo ends up editing the recording, that will be the way she gets me to read it to her! (Of course, after hearing a scene recorded for the fifth time, maybe she’ll end up regretting that she ever asked…)

Here’s the lineup:

• Chris Stewart, reading her short story “Hot Water” (visit Chris’s website, The Real Writer)
• Eric D. Goodman, reading his short story “Cicadas” (visit Eric’s weblog, Writeful)
• Paul Lagasse, reading from Seeing Through Clouds
• Kathy Franks Spath, reading her essay “Remembering Nan” and her poems “Deer” and “Remembering Dad”
• Mare Cromwell, reading her poems “Abcission,” “A Plastic Soldier,” “She Is,” “Imported Capers on Foreign Salmon,” “The Pew Could Not Hold Me,” and “The Bead Worker”
• Barbara Friedland, reading from A Member of the Force (visit Barbara’s weblog, Adtractive)
• Fernando Quijano III, reading his essay “A Little Puerto Rican” (visit Fernando’s blog, The Cunning Linguist’s Tongue Wags)
• Nancy Greene, reading her short story “The End”

Back Row: Kathy Franks Spath, Mare Cromwell, Gregg Wilhelm, Eric D. Goodman, Chris Stewart, Nancy Greene. Front Row: Barbara Friedland, Fernando Quijano III, Paul Lagasse. Photo: Gregg Wilhelm (c) 2006 CityLit Project

Afterwards, we had chips and cookies, sodas and wine, and Fernando’s famous mojitos (which I didn’t try beforehand because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to read straight once I got up on stage) It was a lot of fun. I think Barbara put it best when she said, “Let’s do this again tomorrow night!”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 9:12 am and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.