Have you ever been surprised by unexpected kindness? 

How do you stay open to the future without discounting what’s come before? 

Has gratitude ever helped you pivot your perception from a loss into a gain? 

In Morning Fuel, Becky Galli explores questions like these – one for each day of the year – along with musings, meditations, and advice for how we can meet life’s challenges with openness and grace. Indeed, Galli has faced many hardships: the death of her brother when he was seventeen, parenting two children with special needs, and coming to terms with her own paralysis. Despite these difficulties, Galli has thrived, finding optimism in her friends, family, and within herself.

A Baltimore resident since 1983, Galli began her writing career in 2000 with articles in The Baltimore Sun. She hasn’t stopped writing since. In addition to columns that ran in The North County News and The Towson Times, Galli published a memoir, Rethinking Possible, in 2017. She also shares columns and musings with subscribers in her “Thoughtful Thursdays” series. 

Galli took time to speak with The Fishbowl about the process of writing Morning Fuel and to share some advice about finding positive ways to engage with the world.

Baltimore Fishbowl: The book is structured according to a calendar year, with one entry for each day. Does this structure reflect the process you used to write it? 

Rebecca Faye Smith Galli: I’ve always been a fan of daily morning readings. They have helped me get through some tough times. After the publication of my memoir Rethinking Possible, I was often asked, “How do you do it? What helps you cope?” Morning Fuel is one answer as it offers quotes, mantras, and stories I’ve written or retold over the last 24 years that continue to strengthen and guide me. 

As I began gathering my favorite stories and collecting material for new ones, I found it helpful to consider the seasons since nature has a prominent role in most of my work. I first grouped entries and put in Word files labeled by month. Then I created one Word file to house all edited documents to give me quick access to the body of work if I needed to check for duplication of thoughts, phrases, or attribution.

After about 100 entries, Excel became my new best friend. I realized I needed help in tracking, so I created a spreadsheet that numbered each entry, its title, month, and word count. Later as I reviewed the entries from the reader’s perspective, I added columns to include quote attributions as well as friend and family names so I could sort and sequence those references in a thoughtful way.   

BFB: You include quotations and ideas from several philosophers and wellness experts throughout the book. What are books that you return to over and over? Which authors do you consistently recommend to others? 

RFSG: I love authors who offer thoughtful takes on life, who meet life head on and aren’t afraid of asking the hard questions or giving a vulnerable response. Some of my favorites include: Anne Lamott, Gretchen Rubin, Mark Nepo, Sarah Young, Richard Rohr, C.S. Lewis, Melanie Beattie, James Clear, Kelly Corrigan, Shane Parrish, John C. Maxwell. I read and reread their work, rotating periodically. 

BFB: Family is central to the book, and nearly every entry involves at least one of your family members. How did your living relatives feel about being featured? Was everyone on board? Did you allow them to provide feedback during your writing process?

RFSG: Fortunately—or unfortunately—my family is accustomed to being featured in my writing. After my paralysis, my marketing career pivoted to writing when in 2000, The Baltimore Sun published my first column about playing soccer with my son—from the wheelchair. The next published piece was about his first wrestling match and launched my From Where I Sit column where I regularly wrote about family life. My first book, Rethinking Possible: A Memoir of Resilience told the full story of my life and included theirs.

I never considered it unusual to include my family in my writing. As a PK (Preacher’s Kid), I grew up with my antics often becoming a sermon illustration. My goal, however, is to use my father’s approach and recount each one with accuracy, relevancy, and great heart. The last thing I would ever want to do would be to make a family member uncomfortable. 

BFB: One major theme in the book involves the importance of being able to change your perspective to deal with the challenges life throws at you. What have you found to be the most effective technique (or techniques) to facilitate a shift in perspective?

RFSG: Acceptance is the key to shifting perspective, in my experience. When a new challenge comes my way, I first decide what I need to accept, even if it’s, ‘I don’t know’ or “I need help.”  Then comes the tricky part—deciding what can be done this day about that issue. If possible, I act or make a plan. However, if there’s nothing more I can do, I place it gently on a shelf in my mind out of the center of my thinking so I’m not looking through it. I allow other parts of my life to come into focus, prompting a perspective shift. 

One of my favorite exercises that helps elevate my perspective is:

Even though________ (the unwanted circumstance) I can still________(name a present action or focus that’s available despite the circumstance)

If I’m still having trouble shifting my perspective, I try to find something to be grateful for—a magenta sunrise, progress on a lengthy project, or even remembering to break down the boxes for this week’s recycling.

BFB: So much of the book involves memories from your own childhood. What was it like uncovering those memories? Were there stories you had forgotten that re-emerged through the process of writing Morning Fuel? What was that experience like?

RFSG: It was an adventure, for sure! Many of the Morning Fuel readings are family classics: April 28: “No, I love you,” is a story my father told when I was seven and my sister Rachel was three. It was raining and Rachel had asked him with those mischievous eyes of hers if she could go outside to play. Dad looked outside and playfully answered, “Yes. Sure, honey.” Shocked, she asked again, and then again, but our father continued to give the same response. Finally, she said with a quiver in her voice, “Daddy, you don’t love me!” 

What a message that story has been to me through the years—parenting my four kids and now watching my kids parent their own– about the importance of setting boundaries and how those limits can show our love.

Writing about that scene brought it back to life –Rachel’s impish eyes, Dad’s playful smile, the huge hug they both shared after Dad told her that he was teasing and that of course she couldn’t go outside. It made me cherish my family home a little more and miss my father, now deceased, and my sister, now 800 miles away, even more.

BFB: Do you keep a daily journal? What role does writing play in your life when you are not actively working on a manuscript?

RFSG: I do keep a journal, but don’t hold myself to “daily.” After a bout of sepsis and a seventeen-day hospital stay in 2018, I grew impatient with my recovery progress. I had little energy and kept experiencing post-hospital complications. I felt like I was on a loop, never progressing forward, living the same day over and over. So, I got a beautiful spiral notebook and started journaling in seven areas: 

Body, Life, Mood, Goals, Accomplishments, Gratitude, Insights

With a journal, I could review the previous entries and track my progress. I had EVIDENCE of progress—I didn’t have to rely on my feelings (or memory!)  alone. Granted, sometimes my goals were small: Sleep seven hours. Drink eight glasses of water. Exercise ten minutes. But it gave me a wonderful feeling of success to check those boxes.

I usually journal after my morning readings. The process keeps my mind in gear, ready to capture insights or inspirations from my morning readings that later become fodder for Thoughtful Thursdays or other writing.

BFB: If you could share one piece of advice with your younger self, what would it be?

RFSG: Stay possibility-driven and hold plans lightly. Trust more in the process and worry less about the progress.         

Events for Morning Fuel

The Ivy Bookshop
October 26, 2024 10am-12pm, details here

Barnes & Noble Pikesville
November 2, 2024 2 PM to 6 PM

Baltimore County Public Library Cockeysville
Nov 7, 2024 6:30-7:30

The Yale Repertory, an institution of American theater, celebrated its 50^th anniversary eight years ago, in 2016. James Magruder’s book about the Rep’s history was first dreamed of as a way to mark that anniversary, but for many reasons (including a pandemic), the book is only now arriving on bookshelves. No matter. The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966-2016) is well worth the wait.

With 317 pages, more than 100 photographs, and thirty-six “sidebars” about “Persons of the Drama” and other off-stage aspects of the Yale Rep, Magruder has written a book of epic scope that is also readable, an informative book that entertains. His goal, as stated in his preface, was to “be fair, thorough, and accurate, and to write decent sentences.” He has met that goal – and done so much more.

The book is structured in four parts, one for each of the Yale Rep’s artistic directors: Robert Brustein, who created a radical new approach to teaching drama when he founded the Rep; Lloyd Richards, who championed and helped make famous the great playwright August Wilson (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, etc.); Stan Wojewodski, Jr., who left Baltimore’s Center Stage for Yale; and James Bundy, the longest serving (and still) Yale Rep artistic director.

A Baltimore resident who for many years worked as a dramaturg at Center Stage, Magruder approaches his subject from a literary vantage. His compelling tales about the Rep’s productions are the next best thing to being in the audience.

Along the way, readers gain insights into Yale Rep students and performers whose names they’ll know. Among them are Christopher Walken, the late James Earl Jones, Frances McDormand, Dianne Wiest, Meryl Streep, Tony Shalhoub, Joe Morton, Charles S. “Roc” Dutton (a Towson University grad), Paul Giamatti, and Lupita N’yong’o.

But it is Magruder’s prose and insights into theater that take the star’s turn (and helped earn the book a coveted star from Kirkus Reviews). With nimble sentences and observations that are witty and smart, Magruder breathes life into theater history. Even readers who can’t tell Hedda Gabler from Nora of A Doll’s House will find themselves eager to turn the page and learn more.

Magruder talked with me about his new book on a Friday afternoon at a picnic bench on the lawn behind Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop, where Magruder also works as a bookseller. He is, like many entertaining storytellers, digressive. With a Ph.D. from Yale’s School of Drama and a published dissertation, he knows theater so thoroughly that names of plays, playwrights, stage designers and dramaturgs came to him easily (with one exception; see below). Our conversation of about a half-hour ranged widely and wildly. It has been edited for brevity and to obviate the need for footnotes.

On favorite interviews with famous performers who have appeared in Yale Rep productions

Frances McDormand: She was hilarious. It was a phoner, because she was in Colorado. She’d just turned 63 or something. She said, Oh my God, I’m 63! I couldn’t put this in the book – you know – but she said the most difficult thing about being in the drama school was sleeping with your classmates on the weekend and then having to do an acting scene with them on Tuesday. … She was just fun. 

And you know, Dianne Wiest … She was my very first interview. She’s the one who has that hilarious quote about “Oh, you know, Hedda went very well, but Nora, I felt like I was dragging a dead horse behind me the whole time.” Actors, they know when they’re not as good as they could be. They know when maybe they haven’t gotten the right direction. They’re actually – I shouldn’t say this – but they’re actually smarter than I sometimes give them credit for.

And James Earl Jones saying, “I didn’t know what I was doing” with (Timon of Athens). He had such a hard time with his lines. The set was sand, and he’d have some lines under the sand, and he’d just brush it aside with his foot to get his lines.

Christopher Walken was the only one who did not agree to the quote I attributed to him. He said “That didn’t sound like me!”

On the difference between actors and Henry Kissinger.

I can give an imitation of gregariousness, but I actually don’t want to talk to strangers.

I’d have six interviews in three days, and I was going, “F***! I can’t believe I have to talk to somebody else!” Because you’re putting out to interview people, and you’re listening, and it can be draining. But after – maybe 90 percent of the time – I’d say, that was great! I loved that! I love that person. You have to remember that theater people love to talk about themselves. It’s not like … Kissinger! They can’t wait to talk.

On the cross-pollination between Baltimore and New Haven when Yale hired Stan Wojewodski, then director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, as its third artistic director.

With Wojewodski, the synergy between Center Stage and Yale was pretty heavy. It was because Stan had built (Center Stage), and he knew it was still upholding his idea of how and what a theater could be.

Center Stage in its heyday, in its glory days – you can underline that because those days are long gone – you know, it was a smarty-pants institution.

So when Stan got picked – and again, Center Stage’s taste in those years when everything was awash in cash, they did really risky work, the kind of work that really today only Yale can do –  when Stan came he brought his ethos and his taste … his heavy intellect, his love of language.

On writing his first book of nonfiction.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no plan. It was just like: Get it done!

On his reaction when a friend asked him What’s your book’s thesis?

I said, “That is the worst question you could ask me. I am just doing research and writing one sentence after another.” But I will say, maybe by the time I got to Stan’s years, I realized that in addition to being a history of the Yale Rep, it’s sort of my feelings and beliefs about theater, about what makes good theater, about what makes a good play, about what’s kind of crappy about American theater. I managed to insert all of my opinions in there without becoming really didactic, and, hopefully, it’s entertaining and fun. 

So I could not have expected that, that it’s also my summa of what I think theater is, and I’m glad I kind of had the chance to do that.

On how writing the book made him proud to be a Yalie. 

It’s an amazing institution. I became more and more proud of having gone there as time went on. This (book), of course, was supposed to come out in 2016, and it was three weeks before the Trump inauguration, and there was a big round table, an anniversary party at Yale Rep, and I was asked to moderate these ten august people. There’s footage of it on YouTube. I remember thinking at the time, “well, this is just another rumba.” By the time it was over, it was like, “Wow. I got to to share the stage with Carmen de Lavallade and Brustein and Sarah Ruhl. And I’m part of this continuum.” And that was something I would never have expected.

On sands falling through the hourglass.

Here’s the breakdown: Two years of research, two years of writing, one year of revision, three years of production.

Those sentences, they have been written and rewritten fifty to one hundred times.

There were so many f****ng hoops, and they were always throwing more at me. The hoops were peer review, then legal review, then you have to respond to the peer reviews. I had to get 117 releases. I wish I’d known that. I would have brought a f****ng piece of paper to every interview.

The last thing I had to do was I had to strike Taiwan and Hong Kong from the text because (the book) was produced in China, and they didn’t want to get it held up. It’s made in China. Fortunately there was only one reference to each.

Eight years. And I’m – eight times eight is sixty-four, right? I’d have to say: this is an eighth of my life. I’ll be sixty-four in a couple of weeks. 

On length.

And then it was thirty-five thousand words over what I thought it should be. I cut out thirty thousand words, which was like 15 sidebars.

On what he cut from the book and misses, starring Bob Hope and King Lear.

There’s two or three productions that I’d done some time with. One is Gozzi’s The King Stag. Another is Horvath’s Tales from the Vienna Woods. That’s back in the Brustein Days. King Stag is from the Bundy days. And from Lloyd Richards’ days there’s a famous (Athol) Fugard play. … Well, it’ll come to me. Then there were a couple of sidebars. Fun sidebars! When I was in school there, as some sort of tax write-off, Bob Hope gave a million dollars to the Yale Rep to do comedies. So they did about three of these, including John Guare’s absolutely foul but hilarious Moon over Miami. And then the money just sort of disappeared. I took that out but it was fun. There was a long one about Actor’s Equity. And then there was one about Hunter Spence – he was a “Person of the Drama.” He was the props master who invented the eyeball-gouging apparatus for King Lear. He was a very interesting, strange character – a little frightening in a way. I wish I’d could have put him in there.

On productions he wrote about but never saw, and wishes he had.

Prometheus Bound. That was Irene Worth and Ron Leibman, and it was Robert Lowell’s free adaptation of Aeschylus, anti-war Aeschylus, without being overtly anti-war. And The Possessed. Midsummer’s Night Dream, and that’s with Meryl Streep as Helena. Anyone who ever saw it never forgot it.

On that Fugard play.

Road to Mecca is the Fugard play.

On COVID-19 shutting down his access to Yale archives

When I think of the ephemera I wish I could have found, I wish I could have found a page of August Wilson’s text with his rewrites. It’s that kind of ephemera that is as important as a photo. But I couldn’t access the library, and I’d have to see it to believe it.

On productions he’s looking forward to this season in New York City.

I have to see Oh, Mary! again. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it? Oh, my god. It’s the most hilarious. It started off Broadway. Cole Escola, a comedian, and also now a writer and a wonderful actor, they created a play about Mary Todd Lincoln trying to resuscitate her cabaret career. Because she’s internationally famous for her short legs and lengthy medleys. It’s an 85-minute show. It’s side-splitting, and he’s gone on record saying “I did no research.” So I have to see that again before it closes.

On his appearance.

This is my real hair.

James Magruder will discuss The Play’s the Thing at Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop on Sept. 26 at 6 p.m. He’ll be joined in conversation by playwright, poet, and actor David Yezzi.

Editor’s note: The introduction to this piece has been edited to correct the name of Lloyd Richards, the second director of the Yale Repertory.

Combining the adorableness of “Finding Nemo” with a message crystalline in its clarity — “Every plastic thing you have ever used is still… somewhere, and will be for a very, very, very long time” — Bridget Parlato’s debut picture book, Plastic Land: A True Trash Tale About Plastics, is likely to be a powerful experience for both the 6-11 year olds in its target audience and the adults who read it to them or with them. We caught up with the author over Zoom to learn a little more about her and about the origins of the book, which the multi-talented Parlato singlehandedly wrote, illustrated, financed and published.

Are you a native Baltimorean?

I’ve been here for 28 years now, but I grew up on a farm in upstate New York. I had a lot of exposure to nature through my mom, who was also a visual artist. After I finished my MFA in sculpture at the University of Miami, I relocated to Baltimore to join my husband. 

What’s your day job? 

I started in events, then worked as a designer in the architecture field. I’m currently working with The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a non-profit where I landed after a decade of work as a freelancer focusing on environmental and cause-related design. I’m also a jewelry designer.

What drew you to focus on ecology?

I was sick of all the trash in southeast Baltimore, where I live, so I started an anti-trash initiative, Baltimore Trash Talk (BTT). After spending a lot of time trying to get people to pick up trash, I realized the problem required a multi-faceted approach. You had to educate from bottom up and legislate from top down, while also trying to get people to come in from the sides and reduce their footprints. 

Through BTT, I started a school presentation program, educating children about recycling, reuse and litter. I held two bottle return events in Patterson Park during which members of the public brought their bottles and cans and received five cents per piece. The returns were turned into huge rivers of recyclables at the park’s southwest entrance. These events helped gather data in support of a Maryland Bottle Bill. I created two other similar rivers: one at Artscape as part of an exhibition curated by Laure Drogoul and one on the Johns Hopkins University campus as part of a group exhibition with MICA curatorial grad, Chris Beer. 

So how did you end up writing and illustrating this adorable, if somewhat terrifying, children’s book?

Laure Drogoul had an event at Light City Baltimore, and invited me to be part of it. I decided to write a poem and recite it. Everybody loved it and was asking for copies and telling me, you know, you should do a book. So I did. I have been writing for myself for years with intent to do something with it, someday. And I sing and rhyme at home pretty much non-stop. Many a song has been “adapted” to suit my purposes and I kept joking that I should figure out a way to make money off of such a silly gift – who knows, maybe this book is the kick-off! When I was about 7, I carved “Someday, I am going to write a book” in the desk in the corner of my bedroom. Well, here’s the book!

Is some of that original poem still in the book?

Absolutely. But to appeal to a young audience, I added the animal characters. And since it wasn’t originally intended only for kids, I did simplify some words and concepts.

I’ve been thinking about how to adapt the illustrations so that it doesn’t read solely as a children’s book as I don’t really want to limit the audience.

I think it will reach adults. It reached me! The image you created of all that plastic trash permanently floating into eternity was really chilling. But aren’t children the most important audience for this message? They’re the ones who are gonna have to live with this mess. And actually, any time a little kid reads this book, there’s going to be an adult involved. Which is why it’s great that you included a whole section of teacher/parent information and activities.

How did you finance it?

I had a partial grant from Baltimore City to help with some of the illustration costs, but mostly it’s been a labor of love, paid for out of pocket, and printed on demand. I thought it also might appeal to people as a teaching tool if it included educational info that helped expand on the concepts in the book. 

What I really want is for kids to start to do material identification, start to recognize what it is that’s passing through their hands and think about where it goes. You use it for five minutes or five years, it’s still going to be around long after you are gone. 

For a recent book reading with Waterfront Partnership at Rash Field, I created an upcycled outfit with a crown out of pens and pencils and paintbrushes that belonged to my mom. She passed away a number of years ago, but her things are still around. We don’t keep all the things we start with, but those things are still somewhere, likely sitting in a dump. 

The best solutions to the overuse of plastics? Don’t buy them. And when you do buy goods, buy quality (it lasts longer), fix what can be fixed, opt for natural, non-plastic items, and really think about how long you will use and item and whether you (or someone else) can get more use out of it. It may seem easy to “throw things away,” but away is somewhere.  

*

Plastic Land is available at Bookshop.org, Amazon, and other online retailers. Contact Bridget directly to plan an event for your school or organization.

bparlato@fullcircuitstudio.com 

www.fullcircuitstudio.com 

Antje Rauwerda is a writer and professor who lives in Baltimore’s Radnor-Winston neighborhood, part of the Govans area in which most of her novel, Slow Time, takes place. She had a peripatetic childhood, living in Canada, Singapore, North Wales, Texas and Ghana before coming to Baltimore in 2004 for a job teaching at Goucher College. Twenty years later, she is still at Goucher, teaching international fiction. In addition to Slow Time, Antje also published a nonfiction book, The Writer and the Overseas Childhood, about writing by Third Culture Kids (TCKs)—people who were raised in a culture other than their parents’ or the culture of their country of nationality, and who lived in a different environment during a significant part of their childhood. Her first novel, Slow Time, came out on March 1 with Spuyten Duyvil Press. 

Recently, we met over lunch to discuss her novel, how her Baltimore neighborhood inspired it, and how writing can feel a bit like acting; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Baltimore Fishbowl: Your novel is beautifully written and I’m so happy to be able to talk to you about it! The first thing that struck me was that the book’s opening is from the point of view of a wise and mystical character—the earth, nature…what would you call it?

Antje Rauwerda: Yes, both! In the early stages of the book I was teaching Benang, a novel by Australian writer Kim Scott, in which perspective is often from above. As I was working on the story of these two fictional people living in my real neighborhood and the mechanics of what brings them together, I began to see that it came from below, that the place has agency and is its own character, that character and place became one. Also, as someone not from Baltimore I was interested in what place can mean to someone who belongs.

BFB: I was captivated by the lyrical and poetic voice of this character. Those chapters read like prose poems. How did you write them? Do you also write poetry? 

AR: I’ve dabbled in poetry, but never published any. I have taught other people’s poems for a long time. [laughs]. Writing those passages were a bit like going into a dream. Breaking rules and using portmanteau words that don’t exist. It was a bit like acting, I suppose, immersing myself and trying not to be self-conscious or embarrassed at this outrageous thing I was doing by making my neighborhood speak. If place had a voice, what would she say?

BFB: The heart of the book is the dynamic that develops between Danny, a 50-something Black man who works as an accountant, and his neighbor Em, a White woman in her late 40s who teaches yoga. Both are haunted by childhood trauma, and the place character wants to bring them together so they can help each other heal. At a literal level, the story was gripping, but it also felt like a metaphor for the healing effects of nature and place. Was that your intention from the beginning or a byproduct of the story you wanted to write?

AR: I was interested in Danny to start off with: he sits on his porch on a busy street and knows all the neighbors. He is friendly, but a bit of an enigma. I wanted to write about his friendship with Em, and how, through experience, they become almost kin. I especially wanted to frustrate some stereotypes in how I conceived those two people and their interactions. Em is not a white savior (except in saving dogs). Danny is not a black drug dealer. The healing part came later, as the place’s voice and agency developed. There’s a lot in popular media these days about nature being healing. I guess I wound up spinning that so that it was quite literal: the place, nature, is trying to heal its residents. Govans is the kind of neighborhood in which vacant lots are overrun with weeds and miscellaneous volunteer trees. I think that wild disorder is beautiful. I wanted to position even that rough and scrubby wildness as a source of well-being.

BFB: Danny’s character has a father who is in the Air Force and brings his young son to the Philippines, Japan and Germany. How much did your own upbringing in different countries inform your understanding of his character?

AR: I didn’t live on any American military bases as a child, but one of the chapters in my book about TCKs is about what is sometimes referred to as “military brats.” In my research, I learned that while American education stateside is fraught with racism, at bases what matters is rank, so black kids get a better education than if they attend school in the U.S. Danny having that schooling set the stage for him defying stereotypes.­­­­­

BFB: Likewise, Em’s life has parallels to yours. She spends a year in Ghana, where you lived at one point; she regularly walks her two dogs, and you have— 

AR: Two.

BFB: Ah, the same number, then. How does the character of Em resonate for you?

AR: Sometimes I walk the same path as Em does with her dogs, so I’m describing the same landscape. Also, one of her dogs, Girlfriend, is a dog she rescued from an abusive situation—that’s an actual dog that I regret not taking. But Em is also very different from me. For instance, she grew up in Baltimore and goes away but comes back. It reminds me of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, set in China, where the farmer is bonded with the land. As a TCK, I never had that, so writing about it was a bit like playing out a fantasy: what is it like to live in a place that claims you?  

BFB: And yet you’ve lived here for twenty years! And there are so many references to places and things in Baltimore—like Sherwood Gardens, Atwater’s and arabbers—that you’ve come to know it well. There are also historical references to local figures such as Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. How much of this is knowledge did you have from years you’ve lived here and how much required research? 

AR: I did a lot of  research. I read books about Govans and its history, and obsessed over various old maps, particularly ones that showed who owned what parcels of land. The Walters family and Enoch Pratt both owned “summer retreat” farmland in the Govans area, which is bizarre to think of as you drive past all the tire repair shops these days. I talked to people who have lived in Govans since the 1960s, getting some anecdotal history that way. I used the Maryland Historical Society’s sources a lot. They had a great exhibit up on the Bonapartes as I was writing. It was really fun to include some of that material. I also did a shocking amount of Googling. You can find images of Hanh Air Base in the 1970s, for example, showing basic housing of that era. I used various print and digital sources for the Indigenous American history of this region. However, in the years since I drafted this novel, many many more resources have come available. Were I to write those parts of my novel again, I would like to be more pointed in including land acknowledgements. A key feature of the Govans neighborhood now and through history is York Road, which has an amazing past. It was a major Indigenous American footpath. It eventually became a path down which the British rolled tobacco barrels to the harbor, and then an important trolley route. It’s been a significant thoroughfare for a very long time.

BFB: All that research and writing—while you’re teaching full-time. How did you find time to write this book?

AR: Early mornings and weekends. Stealing time from other things and procrastinating over what I should be doing, like writing academic articles and grading papers. 

BFB: Do you have another novel in the works?

AR: I do. It seems like a total departure from everything I do academically (which is very contemporary and international) in that it’s about New Netherland (New York) in the 1600s. However, it’s really fairly on-brand for me, because it’s all about the displacement of a young Dutch boy (Hendrick Wiltsee—he may have been a real person, depending on your sources) through Indigenous, French and Dutch cultures. It’s concerned with the international diaspora created by the Dutch West Indies company, and, like Slow Time, about how you find a place, and a family, for yourself. 

Antje Rauwerda will discuss and sign copies of her book, Slow Time, at the Ivy Bookshop on Thursday, May 9 at 7 p.m.

When I hear the words Musk, Bezos, Buffet, and Gates, dollar signs flash in my mind like slot machines at the Horseshoe Casino. Like most people, I don’t think of myself as having much in common with billionaires. In this case, however, it turns out I was wrong. 

Robert Ralph Parsons, better known to the world as Bob, is a 73-year-old Baltimore native whose memoir, Fire in the Hole: The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success, invites readers to join him on a journey from his humble childhood in Highlandtown, through the thick mud of Vietnam rice paddies, into parenthood, failed marriages, and on to the momentous success of his many business ventures, including GoDaddy and Parsons Xtreme Golf, just to name a few. With stark honesty and the occasional crassness befitting a Vietnam-era Marine, Fire in the Hole! feels as straightforward as the man himself. 

If the answer to the question “When should I write a book?” is “when you have enough stories to fill one,” then Parsons’s decision to pursue this project was wise—the man has stories. The first chapter features a family history steeped in injustice and lawlessness, which provides a perfect rough-around-the-edges framework for the picture of the Parsons family that follows.

Bob was born in 1950 to parents Elsie and Ralph, the first of three children in what we learn was a loveless home. “Mom was a stunningly beautiful woman who had all the love beaten out of her as a child. As a result, she didn’t know how to give love.” His father, a failed businessman and a gambler, was often absent, though Bob credits both parents with “doing the best they could.” Given his less-than-ideal start in life, it makes sense that Bob struggled at school. In fact, he failed the fifth grade (though he managed to avoid repeating it—learn how he pulled that off in “’Fair’ is What You Pay When You Get on a Bus”) and credits his enlistment into the Marine Corps as his only way out of high school. As he puts it, “Had I not joined, I don’t believe there was a shot in hell I would’ve gotten my diploma.” 

Chapter seven, titled “Tell Your Mama to Sell the Toilet, ‘Cause Your Ass Is Ours!”, begins Bob’s journey into the sacred brotherhood of the United States Marine Corps. An Army vet myself, I felt immediately at home amidst the chaos and camaraderie that comprised his basic training experience (though the version I experienced in 2012 probably was a cakewalk compared to his in ‘68). There is something sacred about shared suffering that bonds you to your fellow servicemembers. With the Marines, Bob discovered himself, developing self-respect and a sense of belonging, a feeling that has stuck with him throughout his life. Once a Marine, always a Marine.

Throughout the next several chapters, Bob recounts his time in Vietnam. Some of the lighter-hearted moments include errant snake shooting and failed attempts at grenades, as well as pilfering a “rubber lady” (and no, that doesn’t mean what you think). Mostly, though, Parsons tells of loss—lost sleep, lost innocence, lost Corpsmen. An injury led to his removal from the jungle, though he tried hard to return. Eventually, his enlistment ended, but his gratitude to the men and women who fought alongside him stands strong to this day. In fact, the book is dedicated to them.

After his time in service, Bob settles down and starts a family. Like me, he used his G.I. Bill to attend the University of Baltimore while working full-time to support his family. During that time, he found himself battling symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), though he didn’t understand its implications fully until much later in life. Later, he acknowledges untreated PTSD from his time at war and his difficult childhood had a significant impact on his marriages and his children. His pursuit of treatment decades later and his advocacy for veterans are indicative of his willingness to do hard things. From a generation of men who were taught to swallow their pain until they drowned, I found Parsons’s pursuit of healing to be as refreshing as it is inspiring. 

There is more in the book about his business ventures that skyrocketed his family from barely making it to living the high life—stories worth reading and perhaps taking note of if you’re an entrepreneur. But I found the parts about his childhood, time in service, and his relationships with friends and family to be the most compelling. That’s probably because, unlike the billion-dollar ideas, I find the other bits more relatable. Overall, I found Bob Parsons to be relatable, which surprised the hell out of me. Bob Parsons—the billionaire I’d have a beer with (though, to be sure, he’s buying).

***

Baltimore Launch Event
Monday May 6, 4 p.m.
Book talk and Q&A with Bob Parsons, moderated by Kurt Schmoke
University of Baltimore Wright Theater, 21 W. Mt. Royal, 5th floor
Followed by signing and reception.

Send your R.S.V.P. for this event.

In 2019, readers of this column met Judith Krummeck, who was just then publishing her hybrid biography/memoir, Old New Worlds, which entwined the story of her great-great-grandmother’s immigration from England to South Africa with her own, from Africa to here. Many probably felt like they already knew her, as she has been the voice of evening drive-time for Baltimore’s classical radio station, WBJC 91.5 FM, for over 20 years. An alum of the University of Baltimore MFA program, Krummeck had also drawn on her immigration experience for her thesis book, Beyond the Baobab.

Now Krummeck turns to fiction, following a path blazed by the trustiest of storytellers — William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is perhaps the most riffed-on writer in the English language, with retellings and spin-offs ranging from novels to teen rom-coms to musicals. Centuries after he originally penned his plays, Shakespeare’s portrayals of human nature still ring true. With Twelfth Night as its inspiration, The Deceived Ones tells a timely tale of Ukrainian refugees who find themselves in Baltimore. With themes relating to identity, belonging, creativity, and love, The Deceived Ones raises vital questions and engages the reader in a fast-paced and delightful narrative. It was a pleasure to chat with Krummeck about her debut novel.

Baltimore Fishbowl: What led you to write a novel? How was the process different from the composition of your previous two books?

Judith Krummeck: My transition from nonfiction to fiction came about by degrees. I was nervous about fiction (and, even more so, poetry!) but I took an inspiring elective with Professor Jane Delury during my MFA, and she helped me realize that it wasn’t as daunting to write fiction as I’d imagined. Because my concentration was creative nonfiction, which uses many of the tools of fiction like narrative arc, scene building, and dialog, the process of composition was not so very different.

In my biographical memoir, Old New Worlds, I had sparse factual information about my subject and needed to reimagine—to fictionalize—many aspects of her life based on my research. Having had a taste of it, I was keen to see if I could write a complete novel. 

BFB: The Deceived Ones includes many characters who are not originally from America, but who have found their way to Baltimore, and because you write the story from multiple points of view—including the perspective of a xenophobe—we see a range of experiences and attitudes about what it means to be a foreigner. What do you hope your readers will learn from the novel about the experience of immigrants and refugees?

JK: This is such a fraught subject. The gift of birthright is just that: a gift. In America it’s bestowed on people who, for the most part, have forebears who migrated here somewhere along the line. It’s as the former Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, once said, “Of course we couldn’t all come over on the Mayflower… But I got here as soon as I could…”

It’s disconcerting when new immigrants to the States are either lumped together in a dehumanizing mass or singled out as an anomaly. In writing about the diverse trajectories of each of my migrant characters, I wanted to humanize the experience. It’s both a struggle and a privilege for every immigrant who gets here. We want to make that count by giving our adopted country our best shot—as the construction workers on the Frances Scott Key Bridge were trying to do.

BFB: Music is a vital part of the story, and the viol de gamba is a key element in the plot. Do you have a musical background? Why did you choose to have Vira play a historical instrument? Does the idea of music and the power of creating music as a group have metaphorical meaning here?

JK: I have somewhat of a musical background. I studied music history and I was a singer back in the day. Nowadays, being a classical music DJ helps me to feel steeped in it. Having Vira play viola da gamba was a nod to Shakespeare’s Elizabethan era. I wanted to thread elements through the book that would link us to that time, even though the setting is contemporary. I needed to have a way for Vira and Orson’s paths to cross, and her playing a rarified instrument seemed to present interesting possibilities.

Your question about metaphorical meaning is so interesting! You mentioned earlier that I’ve written the novel from multiple points of view. My reason for doing so was again a nod to Shakespeare in that, when we go to hear a play, we experience the whole through the performance of each individual actor. Similarly, making music together as a group relies on each musician to create the performance of a piece. If there’s a metaphorical idea here, perhaps it relates back to your question about the experience of migrants. It’s about the power of music to pick up where words end, and the idea that, rather than being “us and them,” we are all contributing to this melting pot of a country. 

BFB: The plot is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a work that is also the subject of the opera the character Orson is writing. Could you talk a bit about why this play interests you and why it works so well (and I think it does!) for a modern story?

JK: Again, it goes back to immigration for me. Yes, Twelfth Night is a play about mistaken identity and unrequited love, but I’m also keenly aware that Viola and Sebastian arrive in the strange country of Illyria and must try to find their way as outsiders. This displacement that migrants feel, something I’ve experienced in my own life, is still very real today. Also, the cross-dressing, or what we might think of now as androgynous or nonbinary, is fundamental to the plotline. It’s thought-provoking to consider this in terms of sexual and gender orientation issues which, like immigration, are often contentious today. Then, the Malvolio character in my book is not only annoyingly fastidious but also, as you pointed out, xenophobic as well as racist. This sets up a conflict in his infatuation with the Olivia character, whom I’ve written as bi-racial. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on that aspect of “them and us,” which is unfortunately still rife in contemporary society.

BFB: In your acknowledgements, you note that Baltimore provided the right backdrop for the novel because it reflects “both light and shade.” Could you say more about why Baltimore is the ideal setting for this story? 

JK: Last year, it was cause for celebration when the Baltimore homicide rate was “only” 262. What’s wrong with this picture? The city is linked to grim and gritty aspects of The Wire, and that finds its way into my novel. Yet, we also have world class art institutions, a renowned music conservatoire, a major U.S. symphony orchestra, a hospital so prestigious that that one need only say Johns Hopkins for it to be internationally understood, and the same is true for the university of that name.

Baltimore is famously full of quirky individuals like the characters who people my book, it has a vibrant and supportive writing community, and it’s culturally and ethnically diverse. This last was especially apposite in terms of the Ukrainian community in southeast Baltimore, given that my twins are refugees from Ukraine. I’d actually started out writing about an unnamed East Coast city. But Baltimore has grown on me, and I’ve now lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere. I wanted to honor that in some way and write about a place that I know intimately. The more I did so, the more it seemed to make sense for this story.

Events
Midday with Tom Hall, WYPR 88.1 FM Baltimore
• Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 12:00 PM

Ivy Bookshop launch
• Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 6:00 PM

Reading and conversation at the Pratt Central Library
• Saturday, May 25, 2024, 2:00 PM
• With Lesley Malin of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.

Reading at Manor Mill, Monkton, MD
• Saturday, June 15, 2024, 5:00 PM
• With music from cellist Molly Aronson.

Reading and music at Evergreen Museum & Library
• Saturday, September 14, 2024, 12:00 PM  

Danielle Ariano’s debut memoir, The Requirement of Grief, is powerful not just because of the wrenching account of losing her her sister to suicide, but also because of the honest depiction of the years of tumult leading up to Alexis’s death. Ariano captures the cycle of hope and disappointment, forgiveness and anger, healing and self-destruction that will be familiar to those who have cared for someone who suffers from mental illness or addiction. Candid in her descriptions of her difficult relationship with her sister, Ariano reveals a frustration that can only be born of love, allowing readers into her process of grieving this terrible loss.

Near the end of the book, Ariano muses, “As time passes, I learn that grief’s only requirement is that it must be carried.” Indeed, Ariano carries her grief with grace, allowing us to see both her pain and her resilience, acknowledging that grief may someday exist beside “the throes of the deepest joy.”

We were fortunate to talk with her about the process of writing this book.

Baltimore Fishbowl: Could you start by sharing how this book came to be? You mention the early stages of writing about your sister’s death while at Soaring Gardens, a writer’s retreat center in Pennsylvania. At what point did you know you were writing a book? Could you talk a bit about what your process was like?

Danielle Ariano: It was at Soaring Gardens in 2016, shortly after my sister died, that I first I allowed myself to believe I was writing a book. While I was there, I started revising the pieces I’d written over the years and I also wrote down all the details about the events surrounding Alexis’ death – things I knew I would forget later, like the trip to the undertakers and the meeting with the salesman who sold us the plot in the cemetery. I also started trying to figure out a structure for the book, but that was completely premature because so many of the of the more reflective chapters of the book hadn’t even been written at that point, and I was so fresh in my grief. 

Whenever I do anything creative—cook, make cabinets, or write—it’s a messy process. I have to let myself dive into the unknown with some element of trust that something worthwhile will come out of it. Creating anything is an act of faith, and you have to have an ability to withstand uncertainty, but I’ll be honest, this book tested me. I had to live in the mess for much longer than I was comfortable with. My writing partner, Judith Krummeck, helped me immensely in this regard because she believed that this story absolutely needed to be told. When I had my doubts, her belief buoyed me. 

BFB: Writing the book is one thing, but publishing it is a whole other animal. What was the publication process like? How do you feel knowing your story and your sister’s story will be out in the world? 

DA: It’s a weird process to write a book, especially a memoir. For me, I have to block out everything in the beginning. I can’t think about the people who might read it, I just need to get it all on the page. Then, at a certain point there is an absolute shift and the people who I hope will read the book become the focus and I start balancing the art of writing with what an audience will want and need from a book. 

Initially, for example, I did not write a suicide scene, but Marion Winik, my professor in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore, pointed out that my audience would need some explanation of how my sister died. Ultimately, the scene was something I wrote after considering the reader and I’m glad to have written it because it expanded both me and the book.  

As far as how I’m feeling…having this book out in the world feels like I’m wearing my insides on the outside. 

BFB:  Many of the chapters are quite short, all of them titled, and at times I felt almost like I was reading prose poems. (In the most wonderful way!) Why did you choose to name each chapter? Did you intentionally keep many of the chapters brief?

DA: I never considered not naming the chapters. It was sort of an unconscious decision. As far as the chapter length, I wrote what I felt needed to be written and sometimes that was long, sometimes short, so I wound up with a lot of shorties, which kind of worked out because the subject matter is very heavy, and I find that short chapters can be a relief, a chance for the reader to exhale and reset a bit. When it came time to arrange the book, I found myself thinking about chapter length as well as narrative continuity.

BFB: What do you hope readers will learn from reading your story? Is there anything related to mental health you wish more people understood?

DA: I think this book shows the ripple effects that one family member’s illness can have on all the other people in the family, as well as the difficulties that the person with the illness experiences. I hope that it’s not an either/or perspective, but a both/and.

For me, the feelings of anger and frustration that I carried toward Alexis brought me so much pain and shame. I felt like I should’ve been a better person, more compassionate, more loving, more understanding, but at the same time, I saw and felt the repercussions that Alexis’ actions sometimes had. The emotions around loving someone through their illness are very complicated. Sometimes, I couldn’t stand my sister. Sometimes I wanted to rush in and fix everything. Sometimes I retreated into my anger. 

I guess I hope that anyone who relates to this complex tangle of emotion will feel seen as they read, and they perhaps will be able to forgive themselves more easily when they run up against some of the uglier emotions.  

BFB:  Did writing this help give you any clarity about your relationship with Alexis? Or if not clarity, do you feel more at peace with it?

DA: More at peace is a good way to phrase it. When Alexis died, we were mostly estranged. I think that if you had asked her in the weeks before she died, whether she thought I loved her, her answer would have been no. Her death suspended our relationship there. There will never be another chance to heal us, but through the process of writing, especially the chapters that I wrote from my sister’s imagined point of view, I allowed myself to see the world through her eyes in a way that I think I was too afraid to do when she was alive, and this has brought me better understanding and I feel more at peace with everything. 

BFB: What are you working on these days? How has parenting changed your writing life? 

DA: Parenting has placed a time constraint on my writing life in a pretty major way. The only way that I’ve found to write is in stolen time and that stolen time always comes with a tablespoon of guilt. If I want to write, it typically means I sleep less/I write in shorter spans. I might get 30 minutes and I have to take what I can get. On the plus side, being a mom has given me so much material to write about because in considering how I want to raise a child, I have to also reflect on how I was raised. Do I want to teach lessons the way my parents taught me? What will I do differently and why? Even seemingly minor things like how much autonomy Lindsay and I give to Cooper over what he wears, is a rich topic that could easily comprise an entire essay/chapter. 

All this to say, I’m working on my next book which will be centered around motherhood in a same-sex relationship, which I imagine is both different and the same from motherhood in a heterosexual relationship. There will definitely be an essay about why my parents wouldn’t let me wear my Dan Marino jersey every day and why they forced me to wear pink. 

Events

April 21: Launch, in conversation with Judith Krummeck; Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Rd., 4 pm

May 3: Reading and Discussion, Writing About Mental Illness, with Jeannie Vanasco and Ashley Elizabeth, moderated by Marion Winik; Red Emma’s, 3128 Greenmount Ave., 7 pm

May 15: Panel, “Knowing When The Writing is Done;” Kramer’s Books, 1517 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington DC, 7 pm

June 17: Reading, Manor Mill, 2029 Monkton Rd., Monkton, MD, 7 pm

“Dudes of a certain age,” Michael B. Tager says, “weren’t necessarily taught how to socialize in real and meaningful ways.” Instead, such dudes bonded over pop culture: bands and sports and movies and TV and video games. And by pop culture, Tager means everything from The Fast and the Furious to David Attenborough nature shows. “Everything that is culture,” he says, “is pop culture.”

In his new book, Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection (Akinoga Press), most of the pop culture figures are the ones who shaped Tager, himself a Dude of a Certain Age (43; Gen X). Herein are poems featuring actor and singer David Hasselhoff, the Golden Girls (all four), hip-hop luminaries Tupac and DMX, and Whoopie Goldberg, among the brightest stars in Tager’s celebrity empyrean.

In these playful poems, Tager explores figures who he allowed to shape him but whom he never knew, whose lives and performances gave him a contemporary mythology to use in the formation of himself. As he writes in a poem featuring Icelandic performer Björk, “I believe nothing / if idols don’t tell me.”

It’s been two years since a Q&A with Tager appeared in this publication. Then, he answered questions as managing editor of Mason Jar Press and editor of its literary journal. Our conversation, excerpted below and edited for brevity, covers other things, like Justin Bieber and unlearning bad writing habits and jury duty.

BFB: How did you come to write this book?

Tager: I feel like it came about really organically and by accident, which I feel like is how a lot of cool art happens.

I wrote a poem, and it was fun, and it got good reception, and I was trying to write more weird shit to kind of undo the MFA voice after graduating. Trying to get back to the more raw quality of my earlier writing. To unlearn all that, I had to play a lot. And I played with poetry. I never really wrote poetry. I never took a poetry class, anything like that. It was fun. It got good receptions, so I just kept on writing it and kept on writing it, and I had more inspiration than I thought. And then one thing led to another, and then someone asked if they could publish the book. And I was like, oh, that sounds exciting. I’m into it!

I was never intentionally writing for a book–except for the Justin Bieber poems, because there are a lot of Justin Bieber poems, and I envisioned them as a chapbook. There’s actually like twenty Justin Bieber poems. Maybe I’ll take the ones that are not published in this book and try to make them a chapbook at some point. That was just a really boring day on a jury trial. I wrote a lot of Bieber poems. 

BFB: Did you get called?

Tager: I was on a jury. Yeah. The last song I heard was a Justin Bieber song. I don’t actually remember which one it was. But he was in my head. And lawyers really drone on. They really, really, really drone on. And there are so many breaks when the judge is like, can I speak to you lawyers now? I just got bored. I was thinking, man, I wonder if Justin Bieber would ever be a good lawyer? And then wrote a poem about that. Because inspiration strikes in weird places, and you’ve just gotta write.

BFB: Did the jury convict?

Tager: It was a medical malpractice. And it was so ridiculously cut and dried. We gave the guy three million dollars.

BFB:  Celebrities–many of the ones you write about–create personas. What persona did you inhabit as the poet who writes about people who inhabit personas?

Tager: I was talking about this with a friend. I’m actually attracted to celebrities where they’re either really, really good at putting on the persona or they give the appearance that their celebrity persona is them. They seem like authentic humans.

Justin Bieber always seemed pretty authentically him. He was an excited kid who got famous. Then he was a deeply fucked-up teenager. Now he seems to be just who he is.

So, I was trying to be my most authentic self when doing this. Trying to really be the me writing these poems. The authentic me persona–trying to tap into that. Because sometimes that can be hard.

BFB: In the opening poem, “Requiem for the Only Idol I’ve Ever Truly, Deeply Loved,” featuring Jan Brady, the middle daughter from The Brady Bunch, you write

            but I’m never joking
         “I say I’m always being funny
            It’s how I disguise the truth”

That’s a good definition of irony. Why disguise that authenticity with irony?

Tager: I’m sure there’s places where there’s irony. I don’t view (the book) as ironic. I’m being pretty truthful about how much I adore these things. I was more trying to say, “Don’t read too much irony into this.” I’m trying to make you laugh–or trying to make myself laugh. But I’m being pretty serious throughout. I don’t think there’s that much irony.

BFB: Jan is an awfully sincere figure.

Tager: And I am being sincere most of the time. I might just be saying it with a smile.

BFB: For those without your pop culture knowledge, a quick Google search can reveal the significance of almost everyone you write about. But not Mandy May. What can you tell us about Mandy May?

Tager: Oh. She was a friend of mine, a really wonderful poet. She was a year behind me in MFA. She died recently. Thanksgiving of ’22. … I was having a conversation with my publisher about writing more poems, and it was right around when she died, so she was very much right in the forefront of my head. And one of the poems anyway, even before that–“Can’t Talk. On Drugs,” one of the Lucy Liu poems–she was a part of that. Not that she was on drugs with me. But. It’s more of a complicated anecdote than is necessary for this. She was just a really good friend of mine who passed. Then I decided to write those poems, it was right around then, and they wound up being about the moon. And she was about the moon. Yeah.

BFB: The bulk of your creative literary output has been in prose. How are you different as a poet?

Tager: I don’t think I had any bad habits to unlearn. And it works for my short attention span. I’ve decided I’m not going to–I have no interest in writing a novel. I just don’t have an interest. I can’t fathom sticking with an 80,000-word book. It’s not in my wheelhouse.

Anyway. Part of it is the attention span. Part of it is I didn’t have the bad habits to unlearn. I came to poetry late. And I didn’t even consider myself a poet for a long time. But I had read a whole lot. And I had gone through the MFA program and had been writing for a while, so I have the good habits of just being a good, experienced writer. But not the bad habits that you can pick up in workshop or class when you’re trying to please everyone. So I feel like with poems I can get into the rawness a little bit easier and get into the play that makes art so much fun. They were and are by and large written for me. And when I’m writing prose I think about my audience–maybe too much? I’m not discounting the audience with poetry by any stretch of the imagination. But, like I said earlier with humor, I’m trying to make myself laugh, and I’m trying to make poetry that I want to see. Then hopefully the audience will come along. 

Launch Event
Friday, April 5, 6:30 pm at Ottobar
Free
Celebrating Tager’s book and featuring more than a dozen poets and writers

Baltimore’s Black churches have held a prominent place in the community for decades, and the intersection of these houses of worship, their leaders and local politicians have shaped the course of Maryland history.

Kevin Slayton, a Maryland public affairs professional and ordained minister, explores the importance of these connections in his new book, Politically Preaching, a self-published work that casts a critical eye on the role of today’s Black pastors and urges them to reclaim their role as sounders of trumpets for justice.

Politically Preaching is informed by Slayton’s educational and life experiences. Through his book, we are reminded that Baltimore has long produced Black leaders who have turned their experience in the pulpit and in leading their communities into political platforms. Hiram R. Revels was a pastor at an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore at the outset of the Civil War, before moving to Mississippi to become the first Black person elected to the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction. A century and a half later, Rafael Warnock was preaching at Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore before being tapped to lead historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and then going on to become a Georgia Senator.

In between, generations of pastors spoke out on issues of the day and lent their support to politicians seeking office.

“The preacher was expected to negotiate the landscape of politics in the local community,” Slayton writes. “The preacher was to speak cogently to the powers that be without fear or intimidation…The preacher possessed the power to influence his congregation in matters related to issues of public policy. And yes, the preacher held a certain level of influence on the local political scene.”

Slayton explains how Black churches are a vehicle for both pastors and politicians to reach thousands. But he also shows that they are not all-powerful. In Baltimore, he posits, community organizations are the most influential local groups and the first stop for politicians and candidates. But churches come second.

Additionally, pastors aren’t always as involved and as activist as they once were, he said, and the communities around Black churches don’t exemplify the benefits of the social programs that the politicians who visit them often extol.

Slayton comes from the world of social justice, working as public policy director for the Public Justice Center, as a program officer with Associated Black Charities and now with the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. He has guided politicians such as Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume.

Along the way, he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Howard University in Washington, DC and a doctorate from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. Slayton offers critiques of Black churches and the politicians who visit them, but also sees great value in the relationships. He wrote Politically Preaching, he said, because he wants to continue to be a guide to that world.

David Nitkin: Let’s talk about the evolution and status of the Black church in politics.

Kevin A. Slayton Sr.: There has historically been – from post-Reconstruction, and moving through to the late 60s to present time – this intimate relationship between the African American church and electoral politics.

In the preface of the book, I introduced the reader to the Sunday morning, two weeks after the shooting of the nine people at Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina… And the idea that there’s a white guy in this worship service, and the white guy is Joe Biden. Obama doesn’t go; he sends Joe Biden. And you know how news changes so fast. What we saw here and in Baltimore and around the world of that worship experience, which was very emotional, was about 15 to 30 seconds of film, just a snippet, for a day or maybe two.

But citizens and residents of the state of South Carolina, they saw those loops for possibly an entire month. And so politically speaking, you fast forward: Who loses New Hampshire and Iowa and the Democratic primary and keeps moving forward? Most folks would have bowed out. But I think Biden knew, ‘If I could just get to the church in South Carolina, they may very well save my political career.’ And how it evolves is we hear Jim Clyburn sort of testify to this: “Joe knows South Carolina. But South Carolina knows Joe.”

And that is sort of like the entry I want folks to get. There has been this salvific space for the Black church, uniquely positioned for electoral politics. You have these cyclical visits by political leaders that don’t occur in mosques, temples or synagogues. But they routinely happen throughout Protestant African American congregations.

DN: Much of your focus is on Baltimore, but you talk about how this Black church influence extends into the White House.

KS: John DiLulio is the first person to serve, as we know, in this capacity as a sort of a faith-based liaison for a political office. And he does that for George H.W, Bush. In 1988, he is the first person to serve in that role. And moving forward, you have a number of politicians who recognize the influence of the Black church, and of voter turnout, etc. But there is still this desire to have what I would call ‘the nod’ from local leadership. The way I sort of approach it there is I argue that there’s no way you get to a President Barack Obama without the influence of the local black preacher, who is Jeremiah Wright.

Politics is local, and no one comes from the outside, into east or west Baltimore, certainly not the southside of Chicago, unless someone validates them on the inside. And we can watch this engagement, this dance, as politicians will enter those sacred spaces. And the pastor, recognizing the laws that prevent them from endorsing will say something like this: ‘I can’t tell you who to vote for. But this is who I’m voting for.’ And that signals to the congregation that this is our person.

And so many politicians go there seeking that. But what we’ve seen in Maryland, over the years, there have been different clergy-led groups who would make official endorsements, and folks will wait to see who they’re endorsing.

DN: This can’t come naturally to all politicians.

KS: I left the Rawlings-Blake administration because I wanted to go into ministry after lobbying. I spent years in Annapolis lobbying, and trying to merge the two worlds. So I worked with different politicians. And one of the first I worked with was Peter Franchot around the Stop Slots campaign. Peter is Catholic, and entering this atmosphere was uniquely different for him. So there were some conversations we had to have about how do you engage this space? How do you make yourself look authentically present in that moment? I think more so now, regardless of race, they have to sort of do that work and do that calculation.

DN: But Baltimore is at the heart of it all for you.

KS: In the book, I talk about how Baltimore sort of uniquely created this relationship. You go back to 1968 and the election of Judge Joe Howard [a former federal judge who became the first Black judge elected to what is now the Circuit Court of Baltimore.] What I found most fascinating about it was [law professor and political advisor] Larry Gibson, who is just an amazing individual, and he was maybe 26 or 27 at the time. And Larry still has in his possession the hand cards they gave out for that campaign. And what they did was they put them in every single African-American church on the east and the west side, with a bull’s eye on it. And they told them to single shot [or vote for just one person out of a group.] So Judge Joe Howard comes out at the top of the voting list. And there’s a guy sitting at the table with these clergy who are doing this by the name of Parren Mitchell. And Parren says, ‘Well, hell, you did it so well for him do it for me next year.’ [Mitchell was then elected to Congress in 1970]. And ever since they have run that same playbook, that that level of influence on electoral politics, I think it’s still evident. And it’s evident in the fact that, as we see in this cycle, candidates will still flock to Black congregations.

DN: How does the concept of the separation of church and state come into play here?

I propose in my book that post-Reconstruction is the first time we hear the language of separation of church and state, not so much as a legal term, but as literally one of the first dog whistles. And it basically says preachers need to stay in their lane….

During the Clinton administration, language was created, known as charitable choice. And the goal, in a nutshell, was to sort of unblur the line of what we know as separation of church and state. A lot of faith communities were afraid of violating or crossing that line. What charitable choice language basically said was that you can now engage with government agencies and reap financial benefit through grants, as long as you are willing to not do two things: proselytize and try to recruit folks to your faith, or to discriminate about how the resources were used.

But charitable choice created this unintended competition: the church down the street gets a grant to do that type of work. And so it sort of silences, that prophetic voice within that faith community.

DN: In the book you talk about preaching as an art form. Can you talk more about that?

KS: There is no other place where we tend to get our information for politics. For our community in particular, it has been the way information was disseminated. So for the Black preacher, who emerges through slavery, who’s been provided this theology, they have to find a way to take these stories and make them useful for their audience. So you’ve got to find a way to tell the Exodus story in a way that folks see themselves. One of my professors, Joseph Evans, always said that the Black preacher preaching is either blues, or jazz.

And what the Black preacher has been able to do is to take the blues, which was the reality of segregation, oppression, etc, and then somehow make its way through the blues, in order to get to a place where it will be reflected in what we know as jazz. Jazz was nothing more than improvisation. So we took what was handed us, and then we were able to improvise in a way that each person recognized they had to get a piece and do their own piece, you know, to make it better. But in the end, they had to come together.

So preaching had to do every week, it had to be a place to sort of lift the spirits of people who had who had been feeling the blues all week. It did beyond just the preaching; it also did it in the gathering, because for many of those folks, outside of that space, they were ‘boy,’ or ‘girl’ or disrespected in other ways. But when they came into that place, they had position and authority. They were chair of the deacon board, they were president of the choir. They became somebody in those spaces.

And so preaching had to embody the scriptures in a way that allowed folks to see themselves in the text. And the best ones at it, they’re able to do it and to make folks for at least a brief moment escape their realities and sort of see a place where there was justice, there was fairness, the crooked places were made straight. They saw a better day through through effective preaching.

[Editor’s Note: In this special musical edition of Baltimore Writers Club, Baltimore native and indie artist Jupie (Julius Unger Bowditch) is interviewed by his friend and colleague Infinity Knives (Tariq Ravelomanana). Jupie is celebrating the November 28 release of his new single and music video, “Circle Falls.” The short animated work is a collaboration between Jupie and artist Peggy Fussell, mother of one of Jupie’s best friends since preschool, Grace. In fact, Tariq and Jupie met at a wrap party Jupie attended with Grace for a film Tariq’s roommate produced. And Fishbowl literary editor Marion Winik (me) worked with Peggy Fussell on a regional travel story back at the turn of the century. Friendships and alliances between local creative artists are what the Baltimore Writers Club series is all about.]

Tariq Ravelomana: How did you get started in making music? What were your initial passions and influences? 

Julius Bowditch: I come from a family of music people. My parents are super cool badass rock musicians and I lived in a van with them until I was two. I grew up around a ton of great music ranging from Nirvana to OutKast to Gorillaz to Neutral Milk Hotel to Devo. Really all over the place, but all awesome.

I started writing music in high school but the first time I wrote a song that I felt was ‘good’ was in my sophomore year of college. I was always into vocals and harmonies and started playing bass in seventh grade, but writing hadn’t come as naturally to me. In college I became friends with all these talented musicians and started figuring out what I wanted to do as a writer.

I began producing my own music the year after I graduated college. I was playing bass in a band as my main thing and when it disbanded I started demoing out all these songs and sent them to the producer that band had worked with. I ended up recording an EP with him and through that process realized that I didn’t want crisp studio sound that builds on the exclusion of sounds around the music — I wanted what I was making in my bedroom. 

I’m sure plenty of good producers would roll their eyes at the setup I had (and frankly still have). But I felt like the rawness of the bedroom sound and the inclusion of external sounds was the best format for the songs I was writing. Ever since, I’ve been figuring out production as I go and working with talented mixers and masterers like Gabe Goodman, Tommy Ordway, Allen Tate, and Justin Pizzerferato to get my songs where I want them to be.

TR: Tell us how you came to find your unique voice.

JB: I have always been interested in music’s ability to capture and express emotion in ways that words alone can’t. You can listen to Bach and feel the sadness without a word being said. I also love when a lyricist can write something personal and intimate but do it in a way that so many other people can relate to and make their own. The relationship between artist and listener is so fascinating.

A huge part of my journey was moving to New York for college and meeting a ton of music people. I emulated a lot of musicians I admired in the indie rock world as I tried to find my own voice. My first record was deeply inspired by Lomelda, Porches, ARTHUR, Girlpool, etc. As I’ve progressed I have found inspiration in different projects, including bands I played in. I played bass for Sipper for a few years and was hugely inspired by Joey’s songwriting and production.

TR: What challenges have you faced in composition and production?

JB: Lack of experience, lack of gear, and stubbornness. I wanted to do it all myself but didn’t let anyone teach me how to do it. When I started recording my first EP “Deep in the Seat” I didn’t even own an interface. I have songs on that EP that I recorded with a Yeti USB mic. The bass and electric guitar were all acoustic run through Garageband plugins. To record the drums, I had a friend hold my computer and mic in the corner of the room while I quietly played. Luckily, my friend Gabe who mixed it got the rawness to sound more intentional, but it was definitely a steep learning curve. 

TR: Talk about the creative process for your new record, Brick Hill, due out in January, and “Circle Falls,” the single that premieres today.

JB: For my new record, I was inspired by moving back to my childhood home in Baltimore from Chicago during the fall of 2020 with my little sister. I felt really stuck but also really grateful. I hadn’t lived in Baltimore since I was 11. Over the course of the following months I wrote and recorded the majority of Brick Hill and then spent the following year tweaking the recordings. I worked with my close friend Tommy Ordway, who co-produced and mixed Brick Hill, to get the production where I wanted it to be and made a record I’m really proud of. Justin Pizzoferrato did an amazing job mastering as well. In the background, you can hear the sounds of Druid Hill Park and 83 and the light rail, which makes it feel uniquely Baltimore.

The first release from the album is the “Circle Falls” video, animated and directed by the remarkably talented graphic artist Peggy Fussell. I actually went to preschool with Peggy’s daughter, Grace, and we’ve been close friends ever since. When I finished my new record, I sent it to Peggy and asked if she would have any interest in making a music video for me. I told her she could pick whatever song she wanted and she chose “Circle Falls.” When she sent me her first cut of the video I was floored. She made such a deeply Baltimore video that fit the song like a glove. I am so grateful to have such a  beautiful piece of art connected with a song that is really special to me. 

TR: Are you performing anytime soon here in Baltimore?

JB: I am! I will be celebrating my record release on January 12 at Metro Gallery! I have a lineup of amazing local musicians who will be playing and it will be a great time. Everyone should come, please!

Watch Circle Falls here.
Find Jupie online here.
Jupie’s Spotify here.

As BmoreArt founder Cara Ober explains in the introduction to the organization’s latest publication, “City of Artists, Baltimore” (218 pp., $60), this distinctive project grew out of her friendship with former Ivy Bookshop owner Ed Berlin. Combining their connections to and knowledge of the art and literary communities of the city, the pair set an ambitious course. “Our goal is nothing short of elevating the reputation of Baltimore as a model for other cities where art and culture form the legacy of place through the combination of many of the greatest minds that exist there,” Ober writes.

So, yes, it’s a booster project — but one with an exciting, diverse, and enormously talented cast. (See below for a complete list of artists and writers involved.) You may recognize some of the artists — John Waters at least, and Derrick Adams, who has the cover — but even if it’s largely news to you, as it was to me, it’s a stunning collection, with several works by each artist. 

I discovered so much to love. Se Jong Cho’s color-block steamroom and spa ladies. Jerrell Gibbs’ narrative paintings about Black family life. The psychedelic installations of Phaan Howng. Voodoo-adjacent assemblages and objects by Oletha Devane and Joyce Scott. With so much of the work in bold, luscious color, the black-and-white photorealist charcoal drawings of Erin Fostel and photography of J.M. Giordano seem all the more sensuous. I’m only stopping with those few because I could go on too long.  

As I learned from my interview with the team behind the book, the essays were assembled first, then an artist was chosen to match each one. Figuring out the connections between the pairs is a fun parlor game. The first piece in the book, Laura Lippman’s “I Cover the Waterfront,” talks about how during the pandemic she developed the habit of jump-starting her creative day by walking and photographing in her neighborhood in Locust Point. She is paired with René Treviño’s “Axial Progressions,” below. Those things look like mandalas to me — and since mandalas are a way of focusing and meditating, maybe that’s the connection? 

In accordance with the goal of the book, the prompt the writers were given was “What is it about Baltimore that inspires you? What is it about this city, that has given you a certain viewpoint or sensitivity that makes you a better writer?” It’s a bit of a leading question, as well as a potential setup for “me-me-me,” so I enjoyed seeing the ways the essayists opened it up and took it in different directions. Like my former student D Watkins, who chips in a story about a girlfriend who only hated one thing more than she hated the city of Baltimore: the author’s then-nascent writing career. Anyway, I have lots of friends in this book! Good work, friends. 

Just in time for Christmas, the team behind BmoreArt has created a really gorgeous artifact of our city’s culture. Here’s my interview, conducted virtually, with four of the main players.

BFB:  City of Artists tells a story through images and text – not with the images as illustrations of the text, or with the text as explanations of the images, but as separate and equal components. Tell us about the why and how of that decision, and how it is expressed in the design and structure of the book.

Raquel Castedo: The approach to designing this publication centered on discovering the most effective way to translate and elevate the overall editorial concept of the book. When Cara, Ed, and I began discussing design strategies, they had nearly all the essays completed, and the title was already decided. The notion of presenting Baltimore as a city of artists excited me a lot.

The project was ambitious: to develop a book design strategy that would effectively accommodate texts and images from 32 contributors, uplifting each of them. Bringing a book to life is always a collaborative process, and we had the best team in place to make it happen. Having Chelsea Lemon-Fetzer join the book team as contributing editor and Inés Sanchez de Lozada as project coordinator was crucial. 

The materiality of the book aligns with the main editorial project goal: bringing together Baltimore’s vibrant contemporary art and literature communities and contributing to the city’s visual culture repertoire. Each writer was paired with a visual artist based on their narrative similarities, sharing a section. The openings for each section present the essays and works of art in a similar hierarchy to make it clear that images are not there to illustrate the text but to engage in a visual conversation. 

BFB: How did that idea of a “visual conversation” play out in the graphic treatment and production of the book?

RC: We employed an elegant type treatment and a bold color palette, applying color codes to each section. The various shades were also integrated into the binding process. This edition is a Smith-sewn book, with thread exposed in the spine. It is Swiss-bound with a soft cover featuring large flaps, all printed on high-quality paper to create a collectible object.

BFB: What about the cover?

RC: There were many ideas around what would go on the cover. After seeing the options we had, I was pulled to the image we ended up picking for the cover immediately. I was not familiar with Derrick Adams’ work at that point, but felt that it had all the elements we needed for a great book cover. 

Cara Ober: On the cover, not only does the subject of this portrait make eye contact with the viewer, the streets and three dimensional cars reference a cityscape. The colors, orange and purpley blue, are subtle but specifically reference Baltimore’s hometown teams. This image, graphic and bold, and depicting a possible artist or writer from Baltimore, felt right to the team, and Adams was quick to agree.

BFB: And what would you say is the story the book tells?

Chelsea Lemon-Fetzer: “City of Artists” doesn’t tell one story; that’s my favorite thing about it. Like Baltimore itself, it is a mosaic. The personal essays offer a panorama of Baltimore landscapes. All of the contributing writers are rooted in this city, yet we each have a different frame, perspective, and story: a first date, a messy break up, fixing an old rowhouse, following the Jones Falls to its headwaters, starting a career as a restaurateur, serving as Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art– that’s a glimpse of only a few. 

Now the art–paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, installations, and hybrid works by many of Baltimore’s current premier artists–is the book’s visual panorama. The works are immersive, stunningly well printed and designed, and invite the reader to step into a different way of experiencing and imagining.

CO: It was essential for our team that this book tell a story about Baltimore that is authentic, but that also highlights the high level of artistic quality that so many people–even long-term Baltimore residents–don’t realize exists. We have so many globally respected writers and visual artists, but since Baltimore lacks much of the infrastructure (galleries, publishing houses, pr/marketing, publications) to promote them, individually and collectively, our city does not have the reputation for creative excellence that it deserves.

For me, the title of the book, City of Artists, was an interesting conundrum to unpack. Baltimore is full of artists, all kinds and all shapes and sizes. Why does our city attract so many artists? And what impact does Baltimore have on the quality and integrity of the art produced here? This book makes the argument that the conditions in this city, while not perfect, offer a unique substrate and context for art to tackle the “great” issues of our time. It’s real to us, the history is palpable, the social inequities and resilience of the human condition is all here, and this imbues all the art made here, from music to literature to performance to visual art, with a social conscience and an integrity that what we are doing matters.

BFB: How were the visual artists chosen, and who selected the individual works for inclusion?

CO: From the beginning we had decided to work with Baltimore-based artists whose professional success matched those of the collective group of writers. This means their careers are based here, but they have exhibited work across the country, are included in national museum collections, and are building a national following. There are many artists based in Baltimore who fit this criteria, so from a list of about sixty artists who met our criteria, we then selected based on the story their work tells, looking for specific alignment and a shared aesthetic with individual essays.

CLF: The visual artists were chosen after we had received and read the essays. Cara, Raquel, Inés, Ed, and I came together as a team, very much guided by the writers, to talk about themes, emotion, and details coming through in the prose. We exchanged ideas on what visual work might echo or be in conversation with that. As you said, we didn’t want the visual work to serve as illustrations; it was important to us that the art be given equal gravity in all its stories. We liked the idea that a reader would draw their own connections between the prose and art, maybe even beyond the ideas we had. 

BFB: Were the pairings obvious?

CO: Yes and no. When we set out to do this, I realized that there are no other books or models for us to follow. I wondered if the idea of pairing the art and text was crazy and no one would ‘get’ what we were trying to do… That said, some of the pairings were obvious and others were more abstract. It was also really important to us that the selections matched the rich diversity that exists in Baltimore’s arts ecosystem, and that we include our most well-known artists like Joyce J. Scott, John Waters, and Derrick Adams, as well as artists that may not be as widely known, but will be soon. 

CLF: Our pairings list went through a lot of revisions, a lot! The connective threads continuously shifted in our minds. Bringing the artists into the conversation to choose individual works–sometimes arranging studio visits, home visits, communicating with representing galleries–was a major part of that process. When we landed on the final layout there was a unanimous sense of, Yes. That’s it!

BFB: How were the writers chosen?

Ed Berlin: I met dozens of talented writers during my tenure as owner of The Ivy Bookshop. I approached many of my favorites and am gratified that most agreed to contribute an original essay to the book. What I asked them was to write a piece that reflected their feelings about Baltimore. To write about a specific experience or place. What we got was an amazing array of everyday moments, some intimate, some hilarious and a few poignant. Taken together, these pieces provide a fresh take on our hometown, and combined with the art portfolios, they remind us of why we choose to live here.

BFB: Does the book have an online presence as well?

CO: We have an online shop, but that’s as far as an online presence goes. This book’s meaning is embedded in its design as a physical object. It is a beautiful, limited edition, work of art in itself and releasing it online would diminish its power and quality. For an initial printing, we did 1000 copies because it was the most we could handle as a small team, and now we are almost sold out of them! We are now considering a second print run because so many people seem to value this object and want it, and we want them to have it. So we are now actively seeking out the funding to do this.

*****

Writers: Rafael Alvarez, Madison Smartt Bell, Doreen Bolger, Sheri Booker, celeste doaks, E. Doyle-Gillespie, Michael Anthony Farley, Kondwani Fidel, Lane Harlan, Lori Johnson, Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, Laura Lippman, Stanley Mazaroff, Scott Shane, Ron Tanner, D. Watkins

Visual Artists: Derrick Adams, Schroeder Cherry, Se Jong Cho, Alyssa Dennis, Oletha DeVane, Erin Fostel, Jerrell Gibbs, JM Giordano, Phaan Howng, Jeffrey Kent, Jackie Milad, Edgar Reyes, Joyce J. Scott, Jordan Tierney, René Treviño, John Waters

*****

Launch celebration for “Baltimore: City of Artists” at the Pratt Library
December 5, 7 pm, details here
Cara Ober hosts contributors Madison Smartt Bell, Lane Harlan and Sheri Booker

It is a tragic and seemingly inevitable truth that war is a part of human existence. It is also apparent, as the daily news reminds us with far too great a frequency, that war does not make exceptions for innocent civilians. In particular, children are the unwitting victims of war, and what they experience shapes who they are and how they interact with the world. Pantea Amin Tofangchi’s debut poetry collection, Glazed with War, recounts her own experience growing up in Iran during the war with Iraq. 

Each poem in the collection comes from the perspective of her young self as she moves through her daily routine of school and life with her parents and siblings against the backdrop of destruction. The bombs that explode nearby, the tragedies that accumulate among her classmates, the trauma she internalizes living in constant fear for the violence that could befall her – these are all elements Tofangchi captures in the simple, innocent voice of a child.  

Read on to learn more about Pantea’s process and inspiration for this fine collection. 

Baltimore Fishbowl: This collection is written from your perspective as a child. What led you to the decision to write from this point of view? What does this voice allow you to communicate?

Pantea Amin Tofangchi: Years before I started this manuscript, as an assignment for a poetry class I had to write a poem about a memory from my childhood. I remember when I was reviewing this specific memory in my head, I could easily picture it, I could see it like a movie. When I started writing my first draft of that poem, I liked how first-person voice got rid of a lot of unnecessary extra explanation that I wanted to show in my poem. But more importantly, it allowed me to relive those emotions again. Later when the idea of writing a lot of those memories was shaping, I decided to keep the child’s POV because first it stopped me from forcing my grown-up language, belief and emotion and perhaps even censoring myself, but it also let me keep the language very simple yet real. 

BFB: Have you written other poems about the war from an adult’s point of view? If so, how are these poems different? 

PAT: I have written a few poems specifically about war as an adult. I do believe the voice of the child was better received by the audience. But I do know being a war-child is part of who I am, and it comes out even when I am writing about another subject. I do notice that being an immigrant has the same effect on me and my writing.

BFB: Did the process of writing these poems help you understand your experience in new ways? If so, could you talk a bit about how? Are there things you know now that you wish you could tell your child self?

PAT: Such a great question. I do believe writing this collection changed my way of thinking quite a bit. I wrote this collection with a very restrictive ritual, I am actually very impressed that I was able to stick to the rules I put for myself. The day I decided to write this manuscript, I promised myself that every morning I will read William Stafford for one hour and then I will write for one hour. And I did that for two months without missing a day. By the end of two months, I had a little over 60 poems. What was fascinating to me was that memories started to come to the surface, memories that I consciously and subconsciously had buried, to the point I didn’t think I had those memories. It took me about a week of reading different poems from different poets that I decided I should read William Stafford. 

To answer the last part of your question, sigh, things I know now are much too dark. Back then I only knew of one war. I still believed in good guys and bad guys and that the good guys will win! I did not know that wars are the way of making money for some countries. Perhaps I would tell my child-self not to grow up!

BFB: Why William Stafford?

PAT: I would say mainly him being an active pacifist has always affected me. But I collected a few books during the week I was deciding who I want to read: William Stafford, Robert Bly, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Cummings and I think a few others. I collected the books and sat down and read a few random poems from each for several days, and William Stafford spoke to me more than the others, especially in terms of the subject I was about to write. Especially the poem “History Display.” The idea of escaping history haunted me! Reading and rereading  . . .  it was just the right voice I needed in my head every morning! 

BFB: Could you talk about the title? What does it mean to you?

PAT: That was literally a hands-on experience! I used to take pottery class; I was glazing one of my pieces. I was looking at my imperfect bowl that I was very proud of, dipping it in a barrel of teal glaze, I thought to myself I wish I could glaze me! I would have come out heat-proof, dishwasher, and microwave safe, all shiny and teal! The metaphor lingered in my mind. A few days later, as I was driving to my pottery class, it was very clear that in fact I have been glazed with war. I am tough; I went through a lot in my life aside from war, and I went through everything strong, dishwasher safe. Glazed with war.

BFB: According to your bio, you write poetry in English, but prose and plays primarily in Persian. Why does English seem like the right language for your poems?

PAT: Poetry has always been part of my life, or I should say the lives of Iranians in general. I never thought of writing a poem, though, until I took a poetry class. And I immediately felt the connection, especially writing in English. I had to say quite a lot with so few words, a lot of pauses and all my emotions. I came to realize that language is just a tool and I loved how my love for literature in general overpowered my imperfections in writing in English! 

BFB: The collection includes drawings throughout. Did you always intend to include art with the poems? What led you to do this? Do the poems come first and then the drawings?

PAT: Not at all. I didn’t. I am a graphic designer by profession, which is just like poetry, where you have to say a lot in such a limited space with so few words and lots of white space. I knew I wanted to have pauses in my book. I wanted for the reader to pause and take moment to see a child in the most vulnerable situation. When my husband read the manuscript for the first time, I remember asking him if he could do drawings for them. I loved how he drew and saw the “child”: her frustrations, her fragility and her innocence and how those simple drawings created that pause.  

Launch Event
in conversation with Judith Krummeck
Saturday November 11, 7 pm at Red Emmas
more info and RSVP here

For those of us who were old enough to follow the news in 2001, the events of September 11 are a dark milestone. As with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. or the explosion of the Challenger, the 9/11 attacks are terrible collective markers in time; we remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. We cannot forget the terrible footage we watched of planes exploding into the towers and victims leaping from fiery windows. Few can fathom why anyone would commit such a crime.

In her new novel, “When We Were Twins,” Danuta Hinc explores this very question: what drives a person to commit an atrocious act of violence against innocent people?

The story tells of a young Egyptian boy, Taher, and his twin sister, Aisha. Through vivid scenes of Taher’s childhood and adolescence, we begin to understand the ways in which his love and loyalty were corrupted by war and radicalized into weapons. 

Hinc, born in Poland under the communist regime, originally used this material in a novel called “To Kill the Other.” As she told the Baltimore Sun at the time of its publication in 2011, “I realized that I needed to know what leads people to make such extreme choices,” says Hinc, who teaches literature and writing classes at the University of Maryland College Park. “And the next question I asked was: Am I capable of killing someone?”

In an unexpected plot twist, Tate Publishing closed its doors shortly after the book was released and it quickly went out of print. Frustrated, Hinc eventually decided to re-imagine the storyline and seek another publisher. “Unfortunately,” she told the Fishbowl, “the subject of radicalization and terrorism, including domestic terrorism, is more relevant today than when I did my research for the original book.”

She elaborated further on the ideas behind this troubling novel in an email interview.

Baltimore Fishbowl: “When We Were Twins” explores the motivations behind someone who is involved in an appalling act of violence against innocent people. Why was it important to you to show the events from the point of view of one of the perpetrators? 

Danuta Hinc: I wanted to explore the question of humanity. What does it really mean? How far can we go? What is empathy, really? Is it possible to see humanity in a person who commits an unspeakable act of terror? It was difficult for me to say yes, and that was my challenge, to construct a character that makes us see his humanity despite his actions. I was hoping that by doing this I would be able to discover the missing link, the moment in life that turns someone into an extremist, a radicalized person, who stops seeing others as fellow humans and starts seeing them as someone who needs to be judged and further, as someone who needs to be punished, and even killed. The romantic in me is hoping to change the world. The realist in me wants to understand the process of radicalization. 

I am hoping that “When We Were Twins” inspires readers to learn about the world, to be curious. I am hoping that they would feel compelled to learn about other cultures, other customs, other religions, other countries, and people who are different from themselves. One of my literary idols, Toni Morrison, said this: “When I taught creative writing at Princeton, [my students] had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, ‘Don’t pay any attention to that.’ First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Imagine it, create it.” 

Writing from the point of view of one of the perpetrators was the best way to see the inner workings of someone who undergoes the slow and gradual change from a studious, kind, and carrying boy to someone who commits acts of violence. I wanted my readers to be in his head, and say, “I hate what he did, of course I do, but I understand why he did it.” I wanted to present a character who shows that radicalization is possible even for someone who was the perfect child, the perfect friend, the perfect son, the perfect grandson, and most importantly, the perfect twin brother. I believe that this is an extreme kind of empathy. 

BFB: As a white woman, you have taken a risk by exploring the point of view of a character who is not only male, but also from a background that seems very different from your own. Why did you feel it was important to proceed with it, even in a climate that is quick to criticize authors for appropriation?  

DH: The question of appropriation is one of the most important and urgent questions of our time and needs to be explored and discussed until the need for it disappears. 

But this concern goes too far when critics demand from novelist to write “what they know,” limiting fiction to autobiographical exercise. What would happen to readers of “Harry Potter,” “The Handmaid’s Tales,” “The Shining,” or “Blindness” to name just a few? 

BFB: The novel takes place in several locations quite far from Maryland. The central characters are born in Turkey, and later Taher moves to Afghanistan. Could you describe the research you did to write this novel?

DH: I visited Istanbul for the first time in June this year, and it was an exceptional experience. I felt like I was visiting an old dear friend. All the places I researched – the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, the Istanbul Cistern – turned out to be even more magical than what I imagined while researching the city for the novel. 

While working on the novel, I relied on research and interviews. I learned about the Middle East from books. I studied the Torah and the Quran. I read online magazines and newspapers from the Middle East. But most importantly, I interviewed people from Egypt, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan and Iran, and this novel would have been impossible without their help. They opened their homes to me and invited me to sit at their tables. They shared their experiences and taught me about their cultures, customs, and religions. This was the best part of my research, and I am lucky to still count them among my friends today.  

BFB: Twins and the motif of duality appear throughout the novel. Could you talk a bit about the idea of twins and how this symbol informs the themes of the novel? 

DH: In exploring the theme of duality, I constructed a world in which everyone is connected to everyone on a deep spiritual, even mystical level, like twins in a womb, but only some (especially women, unearthly creatures of flesh and soul) can see the connection. Women, the one giving life in the novel, are entangled in the world of men at war, trying to save—throughout history—anything they can. 

Launch at Bethesda Writers Center
Saturday, September 23, 6:30-8:30
registration required
more information here

The stories in “Tea Leaves,” a collection by Jacob Budenz — better known as Jake Bee to fans of Moth Broth, makers of “strange but not unfamiliar” music, led by Jake’s honeyed ethereal slippy-slidey vocals that appear to have all the octaves possessed by legendary Yma Sumac — contain fairies, witches, sorcerers, druids, magicians and healers. But these characters who possess or are witness to extraordinary powers beyond the veil, are rooted in the everyday and psychological realism. A powerful witch running a dingy convenience store. Two guys hooking up to discuss the fantastic fairies they are both privy to seeing all around them. A swamp tour guide’s faithfulness to his partner being tested by an elixir that transforms his body into various young hunks.

I am normally a reader of hardboiled miserablism, speculative sci-fi exquisitely mapping our impending doom & absurdist farce, but I was drawn into these genre bending “fantasies” that are more like realistical magicism, immediately. There is a refreshing brain oxygen within them, lively propulsive energy. 

The vast and mixed array of well-drawn characters is impressive. Budenz’s style is a continuous thread throughout, but their voice is never intrusive. They expanded upon these and other matters in an exclusive interview for the Baltimore Fishbowl.

Baltimore Fishbowl: Good spirit, you have your usual glow that reminds me of the jukebox lights in bars in sunken Atlantis. I love that your book is both queer, as in LGBTQIA2S+ celebratory and queer in the aspect of literature dealing with the eldritch, arcane arts of magic & other realms. In the book’s first story, “Seen,” the protagonist doesn’t have a true sexual awakening until they awaken to fairy life visible all around them. When did you yourself have a spirit realm awakening and did it coincide with a sexual awakening?

Jake Budenz: Whew, skip this one, Mom, we’re getting right down to it! In a word, yes. I’ve always been “spiritual” in the sense that from a very young age, I was very into crystals and astrology and the unseen world. At the same time, I grew up in a deeply religious environment—part of the process of learning to read and to train my brain included rote memorizing Bible verses, for example. 

I was, in a sense, a true believer for a long time, even if I also held a witchy spiritual worldview that was incompatible with Christianity. I was also always aware, painfully so, of my sexuality and my discomfort with my assigned sex even though I lacked the vocabulary to understand the latter. In both spirituality and queerness, there were just lines I wouldn’t cross. Ouija boards and Tarot cards and even those coin operated fortunetellers were demonic, and I obviously kept my sexuality to myself and internalized the idea that if I could just resist it and not act on it, there might still be a place for me in heaven. 

I encountered and unfortunately subscribed to the school of thought that people born with “homosexual inclinations” could resist them and could even be more righteous in the eyes of God than so-called normal people because we had a harder battle to fight and so forth. Yikes – cheery stuff!

I’d say I started to experience the fullness of both my queerness and my spirituality around the time I walked away from the church, which took me an embarrassingly longer time than a lot of so-called smart people, but I’ve always been a little gullible. By my junior year of college, I hadn’t cut ties with all the religious people I’d first become friends with and even continued to sing with and be the music director for a Christian a capella group, if you can believe that, but by around that time I was also like, okay, this year, I am not going to lie to anyone about who I am or what I believe unless I literally feel I am in danger, even if I lose all my friends. 

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Although the narrator in “Seen” was already much more out and proud than I was before he starting seeing and accepting the fairies, like him I’d say that opening myself up to this way of seeing the world led to a lot of connection and opened me up to communities and people I wouldn’t have known existed otherwise. Being more liberated and confident encouraged me to audition for plays out in Baltimore, for example, and I wouldn’t be here talking to you specifically if I hadn’t made that choice!

BFB: The stories of “Tea Leaves” take place in many different areas — Seattle, Miami, New Orleans, just to name a few. The detail and descriptions of these places are nicely guidebook deep. I felt transported, which reading in swampy August & early September was much appreciated. What was your geographical Earthly emergence and blooming point? How long did you take root there? What other places have you lived for significant periods of time and how did they influence you?

JB: This one’s a little easier: I spent most of my childhood in Miami, but I was born right outside of Philly and spent a lot of my summers there. I wish I could say you can’t see the Miami influence in me, because I don’t identify very much with the ethos of the city, but I think people would be justified in saying that some of Miami’s tackiness and the general swampy chaos of Florida can be seen in the way I dress and the work I make. Baltimore has been home for about 13 years, with a brief detour to New Orleans for grad school. 

BFB: There is a wonderful energy to these stories and forward momentum. The focus is always on emotional attachments between people, but they are caught up in fabulist adventures filled with fairies, witches, sorcerers, Druids, healers and magicians. But the fantastic is rooted in the everyday like food trucks, convenience stores, bars and tourist attractions. What books/genres have influenced and inspired you? Are there some that you read for pure fun versus inspiration? 

JB: Thank you for saying that! In my free time, I consume a steady diet of speculative fiction of all kinds, from the more literary stuff like N.K. Jemisin and the magic realists to the trashiest, sexiest epic fantasies. I normally have a slight preference for the headier stuff, but I’ve found this year in particular that sometimes you just need a story where the hero beats the odds after wandering through the desert to reclaim their powers or whatever, you know? 

At the same time, I’m a child of the academic writing workshop, which presents a bit of a challenge with publishing sometimes. There’s a vibe in academia that still persists in publishing that psychological realism is inherently more worthy and literary than speculative work, and after going through undergrad and grad school I think I’m always subconsciously writing for an audience that might not like fantasy, but they’ll like this, dammit. And that’s fine. 

I think sometimes you expect that that’ll have crossover appeal in publishing, and it’s more like, okay, a lot of these literary journals or publishers will probably hit “decline” the moment they realize they’re reading a ghost story, whereas the average fantasy purist might prefer work that’s got a tighter plot and sparser prose than I like to write. 

I’m writing for the readers in between, and I think writers like Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado and to an extent Neil Gaiman prove those readers exist, but they’re not always easy to find. 

Launch Party for “Tea Leaves“

Join Jacob Budenz for a Big Queer Book Party on Sept. 20 at Current Space, 7 p.m., $10 suggested donation at the door. Readings by the author, Sylvia Jones and Tonee Moll. Special guests include DJ Amsies, Alex D’Agostino, Molesuit Choir, and Tarot by Soleil. Books and audiobooks will be on sale.

With a title taken from a book by physicist Alan Lightman that draws some rather existential conclusions about the nature of reality, Gerard Marconi’s debut collection The Accidental Universe asks big questions and finds some level of comfort with an absence of answers. In stories as large as the biblical creation myth and as small as childhood friends drifting apart, Marconi explores the wavering line between order and random chance, meaning and meaninglessness. 

Marconi came to fiction writing late in life, after a full career spent teaching theater and art history in colleges in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Accidental Universe—which includes both short fiction and one-act plays—draws on his clear passion for the arts, with loving nods to notable playwrights and painters woven into grounded stories about love, death and the flexibility of truth. Shakespeare and Beckett make appearances—not just via references to their work, but as characters in the No Exit-indebted one-act “Waiting for Will.” Cezanne, Warhol and Wyeth feature in their own stories, which showcase Marconi’s deep understanding of their work without overshadowing their core humanity.

A Catonsville native, Marconi also includes some familiar sights for Baltimore readers—Patterson Park, Green Mount Cemetery, and the Male/Female sculpture at Penn Station all make key appearances. In an era when Baltimore-centric media tends to focus on the city’s policing and crime, Marconi’s stories convey nostalgia for the Baltimore depicted in John Waters and Barry Levinson films—the place that still exists, if you look for it. 

On a hot summer day Gerard invited me into his home on Falls Road to discuss his journey into fiction writing, how he develops his stories, and whether Shakespeare actually wrote all those plays.

Baltimore Fishbowl: Let’s get this right—you got your master’s degree in theater, then taught it for about 20 years. Then you got a second master’s in art history, and taught that for five more. You didn’t start writing fiction until you retired from teaching, right? What drew you to fiction after all that time in other disciplines?

Gerard Marconi: I always wanted to write when I was directing, but there was no time, and I had to learn some of the basics of how to do it. I was still teaching online part time when I took a course from the Hopkins Writing Center. That got me interested. I ended up going out to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a summer session—it was a really good, intensive experience. After that I worked with the Bethesda Writer’s Center and met a lot of other writers there.

I started publishing short stories in different journals or literary magazines in the early 2010s. I had kept in touch with an author from the Writer’s Center over the years, and after her first book was published with Loyola University’s Apprentice House she urged me to submit a manuscript to them. It’s a student-run press that selects 20 or so books every February and spends the whole next year working on them.

BFB: Several pieces are written about or from the perspective of major artists—Cezanne, Wyeth, Warhol. What drew you to their stories?

GM: I wrote the one on Warhol because he did all this amazing stuff, but I looked into his life and wanted to bring out his personal side—to think about him as a regular, fragile person. And I had always liked the work of Cezanne, so I researched his life, and found all these things that fit into the same story. 

My art history teaching came out in the story about the Riace bronzes—I remember the first pictures of those two warriors in the art history textbook. When they were discovered nobody knew who they were, but now it’s thought that they’re the sons of Oedipus. 

Life is not what you think it is—that’s my feeling. Whenever I see anything that reminds me of that, I’m tempted to write about it. 

BFB: Which authors or works were particularly motivating as you began to write fiction? 

GM: Samuel Beckett. And I quoted Shakespeare a lot, so there’s a clear influence. There’s that line from Hamlet, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”—that’s so modern, to say the truth is relative. That really got me going.

I took the title from Alan Lightman, who was a physicist at M.I.T. He wrote a book in 2013 called The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, but long before that, he and his colleagues had concluded that there is no universal law that explains everything that’s happening in the universe. Right up until the 1980s, scientists believed they would find this universal law and then they stopped looking because there isn’t one. Lightman had some personal events in his life—his daughter had a serious illness, I think—and he wanted to believe the religious side of things. But he’s a scientist, which didn’t really measure up with that. So that’s why he wrote his book, and that got me started, too.

BFB: It makes sense, then, that the title story deals with three people who are all in the process of poking holes in the commonly-accepted narratives of their respective disciplines—history, religion, and Shakespeare.

GM: I’ll tell you a secret—I shouldn’t tell you this—I don’t believe in the authorship of Shakespeare. I’m an Oxfordian, I’ve been reading about this for years. When I was at Catholic U, I took graduate courses from the Folger Shakespeare Library, so I know all the traditional stories about Shakespeare, and I’ve come to reject a lot of them because we really don’t know much about his childhood or youth. So this book, “Shakespeare” by Another Name shows pretty damn convincingly that it was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who was the author—he was a writer, but that wasn’t acceptable in the nobility at the time. You couldn’t write plays. So that’s in the story. I don’t know if they’ll ever discover anything to prove it.

BFB: How do the stories come together? How much research do you end up doing?

GM: I like to focus on serious questions, which float around in the back of my head. And then I’ll read something and it gets me thinking about some experience I’ve had. You start doing a little bit of research and it’s amazing what you find, and if you can work it into a story it’s even better. I love doing the research, but it’s almost unending and you’ve got to start cutting things out—you have to ask what do I need to write the story?

BFB: You write fiction and plays simultaneously—do you approach them in different ways? How do you know whether an idea is a play or a short story?

GM: Most of the pieces in this book were conceived as short stories. I’m trying to translate a one-act play into a short story now and it’s terrible to do, for some reason. How do I describe what the characters are feeling? Because that’s what I do intensely in a short story, but not in a play. In a play, it all comes out in the dialogue, the action.

BFB: A few Baltimore landmarks show up in this book—including the Penn Station Male/Female sculpture. What do you think of it?

GM: I love it!

BFB: When I read that story I couldn’t quite figure out how you felt about it. It’s a very contentious statue. 

GM: Oh, I know. I’m fully aware of that. I have to admit that it does stick out like a sore thumb. I don’t know if I like it there, but it’s got to be somewhere.