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Lukens Steel, Coatesville, Pennsylvania

Runner Up: 2020 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

kylecarrozzaphoto_poetry

            And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
The steel mill that sprawled across the city
reached toward the sky with the roofs of each wing.
Even on Sundays, the men in torn
khakis and faded t-shirts filed into the mill.

My father was one of them. In Sunday School,
I imagined him standing around, shooting the shit
about recession or politics, waiting for his shift
to begin. Punching in is a ritual of Wonder
Bread and pocket change.
            The body of Christ, given for you.

He made huge sheets of steel, long,
pure, and absolutely silver until
outsourcing turned emblem into epitaph—
Bethlehem Steel’s takeover could not save the place.
Still, the mill stands, decaying, hollow
monument to itself, the rituals abandoned.

The Lord loves the gates of Zion
            more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

Almost no steel is produced anymore;
instead, the silver pours out onto the faded
streets, the concrete walls of the city’s banks,
into the hair of old men.

Kyle Carrozza is a teacher and soccer coach who lives and breathes Coatesville, PA. His journalism has been published in The Coatesville Times, Scarecrow Grin, and The Korean Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in The City Key.

Feeding My Father Pudding While Watching Bonanza

Runner Up: 2020 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

Chad Frame_poetry

All any relationship boils down to
is are you willing to do this for me
or aren’t you? Hoss and tapioca

and what remains of your life all balanced
precariously on a plastic spoon.
Every week, the grown Cartwright boys learn

another life lesson from their father
who has seen some things in his day, who knows
better. And maybe all death really is

is gradual unlearning, the pudding
crusting in your beard like infant spit-up.
I have driven two hundred miles each day

for two weeks to be here to watch old shows,
nurses prodding, your chest rising, falling,
but these are the distances that matter—

spoon to mouth, screen to face, son to father,
father to grave. Your thousand-yard stare’s fixed
vaguely on the wall-arm television

where Michael Landon is falling in love
with Bonnie Bedelia, and we know
(half-century old spoiler) that Hoss dies

offscreen because Dan Blocker dies offscreen
from botched surgery. But it is enough
to know the twangy theme is still playing,

galloping into and out of the room,
even when the spoon scrapes an empty cup,
even when we pull the sheets all the way up.

Chad Frame’s work appears in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, and other journals and anthologies, as well as on iTunes from the Library of Congress. He is the Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo: New Italian-American Writing, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry improv performance troupe, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat.

Milk Sickness: A Mother Worries as Her Children Sleep

Winner of the 2020 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

Kari_Ann_Ebert_poetry

sometimes I see snakes in a milk pail
noisy tumbles of coils & scales
I lie awake steeled vigilant
absorb the discord of writhing
bodies in my opaque world

I wonder if they know they swim in sacrifice

maybe they think it’s water edged by meadow
maybe they dream the spinning of their skins
will loose them to catch the scent
of mouse or egg
in a dreamscape of venom & froth

or is it panic
black thick rich like cream
panic that weighs them down
roiling blind only to find they’re trapped
and soused in humors

maybe the milk’s a mirror
a mother-of-pearl shine that splashes
the black snake hole in my eye
if I stare at the waves the sloshes of nacre
maybe my tongue will smell a way out
lift me with a swell as the vipers sink
like weighted calcite beneath the tide
black pearls lost at sea
maybe then stillness will claim me
a silence only I can taste like stolen butter

Kari Ann Ebert is a poet & writer living in Dover, Delaware. She was recently awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the Delaware Division of the Arts (2020). Winner of the 2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, her work has appeared in Mojave River Review, Philadelphia Stories, The Broadkill Review, and Gargoyle, as well as several anthologies. She was selected to attend the BOAAT Press Writer’s Retreat (2020) with Shane McCrae, awarded a fellowship by Brooklyn Poets (2019), and selected to attend the Delaware Division of the Arts Seashore Writers Retreat (2016). She also enjoys making up-cycled art and collaborating with local artists, musicians, and writers.

Letter from the Poetry Editor

Letter from the Poetry Editor: Courtney BambrickCourtney Bambrick

Each year, Philadelphia Stories celebrates the memory of poet Sandy Crimmins whose poem “Spring” appeared in our first issue. Sandy served on the Philadelphia Stories poetry board until 2007, and her influence on the magazine has been felt ever since. We use the prize named for her to celebrate risk and innovation in poetry. This year’s Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry was judged by poet Iain Haley Pollock, author of Ghost, like a Place and Spit Back a Boy. Many of the poems we sent him raise important questions and give voice to unsettled feelings. Pollock says that, “[W]e live in an exciting, efflorescent time in the history of American poetry.” We can see that flowering in the poems listed below. Pollock continues:

These poems explore diverse subjects—the lonely offices of grief, the deterioration of our public discourse, the cruel legacies of our national history, the triumphant possibilities of migration, the wistful complications of eros, and the sustaining inheritances of family.  But no matter the subject the unflinching clarity of each poet’s vision and the precision of each poet’s images tap into a deep well of emotion.  The pleasures of these poems are not easy but lie in knowing that out there other humans wrestle to make sense of the intractable world around them and perhaps even find within it cause for hard-won celebration. 

The winner of this year’s Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry winds itself in the conflicting but complementary threads of care and fear. Vigilance is exhausting but necessary, “Milk Sickness: A Mother Worries as Her Children Sleep” by Kari Ann Ebert seems to tell us. About the winning poem, Pollock writes:

We become “milk sick” when we drink milk from a cow that has grazed on poisonous plants.  In “Milk Sickness: A Mother Worries as Her Children Sleep,” Kari Ann Ebert makes this condition a metaphor for maternal apprehension.  The poison here is ophidian as snakes menace a pail of milk, “swim in sacrifice,” in that part of the body a mother gives up that her children might live.  As with many parents, having children has expanded the speaker’s capacity for love and also her capacity for fear.  As the speaker’s dread deepens, Ebert overlays a deft sonic network, heightening the poem’s emotions. In the end, the snakes’ movement and attendant noise become, as does fear, so encompassing that relief from them seems manufactured or illicit—“like stolen butter.”  All in all, with an expert command of sound and image, Ebert captures how fear, especially maternal fear, acts on us and threatens to overwhelm us in the “opaque” hours of our lives.

Philadelphia Stories thanks Joe Sullivan for his support of this contest and his enduring friendship with Philadelphia Stories. We also thank Nicole Mancuso, contest coordinator and assistant poetry editor for her solid and consistent energy. We thank  Yalonda Rice, managing editor, for her flexibility and patience. Mostly, we thank the poets who generously share their work with us and we encourage local writers to continue to do so throughout the year.

 

WINNER OF THE 2020 SANDY CRIMMINS NATIONAL PRIZE IN POETRY ($1000)

“Milk Sickness: A Mother Worries as Her Children Sleep,” Kari Ann Ebert (Dover, DE)

 

RUNNERS UP ($250 each)

“Feeding My Father Pudding While Watching Bonanza,”Chad Frame (Lansdale, PA)

“Lukens Steel, Coatesville, Pennsylvania,” Kyle Carrozza (Coatesville, PA)

“How to Ride a Train in the Andes,” Lupita Eyde-Tucker (Palm Bay, FL)

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

“On Wassily Kandinsky’s Painting, ‘Little Painting in Yellow,’” Kathleen Shaw (Schwenksville, PA)

“Mother Explains,” Jane Miller (Wilmington, DE)

“Matthew,” Chad Frame (Lansdale, PA)

 

EDITOR’S CHOICES (Please view at PhiladelphiaStories.org)

“Lightbearers,” Tyler Dunstan (New York, NY)

“On the Solitary Death of Uncle Mike,” Sean Webb (Philadelphia, PA)

 

FINALISTS

“Inventory,” Cindy Ok (Iowa City, IA)

“The Others,” Ginny Pina (Wayne, PA)

“Darlings,” Dana Jaye Cadman (Mineola, NY)

“Heirloom,” Michelle Flores (Jacksonville, FL)

“What a Mother Lays on Her Son,” Jane Miller (Wilmington, DE)

“CDG,” Tyler Dunstan (New York, NY)

“Smoking Shelter,” Chad Frame (Lansdale, PA)

“That Long Haul,” Mary Finnegan (Philadelphia, PA)

“Ode to la Conquista” Lupita Eyde-Tucker (Palm Bay, FL)

“A Herringbone Pattern of Tiny Iowas,” Sean Webb (Philadelphia, PA)

 

Rescheduled: LitLife 2020

 

logo-2020.cdr

Rescheduled: LitLife 2020

WHEN: April 4, 2020, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm
WHERE: Sharon Latchaw Hirsh Community Center, Rosemont College, 1400 Montgomery Ave, Rosemont, PA 19010 (click here for campus map)

We hope that you will remain connected to Philadelphia Stories via social media [@philastories at Twitter] and our website, philadelphiastories.org. We are currently looking for poetry for the summer issue and we hope to see lots of poets submit their social distancing poems!

Look for LitLife programming during Push to Publish, October 10 at Rosemont College.

Please consider looking up our 2020 scheduled panelists and workshop leaders and supporting them! We asked them to join us originally because we thought you’d love their work and appreciate their insight. We still believe that. If you are currently spending time in isolation, consider ordering a book from one of these poets!

Bios for LitLife Panelists and Workshop Leaders

Ashley Davis a black Queer androfemme (they/she) performance artist, writer, human who works to center the intergenerational black femme and build spaces for rest and inner children to play. Ashley blends theater and poetics, publishing their work in journals such as Apiary (2020), and anthologies centering black joy, as well as performing with theatrical ensembles. 2016 Ashley performed at the National Poetry Slam where their team took 3rd place. Ashley plays with magic, fantasy, Afro-futurism & surrealism to deal with themes of surviving childhood sexual abuse (CSA), navigating mental health, examining patterns of intergenerational trauma, and building systems of collective care rooted in transformative justice and reconciliation.

Kirwyn Sutherland is a Clinical Research Professional and poet who makes poems centering the black experience in America. He is a Watering Hole fellow and has attended workshops/residencies at Cave Canem, Winter Tangerine, Poets House, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, and Pearlstein Art Gallery at Drexel University. Kirwyn was a member of the 2015 Philadelphia Pigeon Slam Team that made Semi-Finals at the National Poetry Slam and also was a member of  the 2016 Philadelphia Fuze Poetry Slam Team. Kirwyn’s work has been published in American Poetry Review, Blueshift Journal, APIARY Magazine, FOLDER, The Wanderer and elsewhere. Kirwyn has served as Editor of Lists/Book Reviewer for WusGood magazine and poetry editor for APIARY Magazine. Kirwyn is currently teaching Spoken Word/Poetry Performance at the University of the Arts. Kirwyn’s chapbook Jump Ship was released in December 2019 by Thread Makes Blanket Press and distributed by AK Press.

Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) and the co-editor of Peace is a Haiku Song (Philadelphia Mural Arts, 2013). Wisher was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, she was a Writer in Residence at Hedgebrook and Aspen Words and a CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A former high school English teacher, she has been active in Philadelphia’s artistic and cultural sphere for two decades. Wisher founded and directed a Germantown neighborhood poetry festival, worked as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts, and has spearheaded numerous community-driven programs with partners such as The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, Historic Germantown, and the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. Wisher currently works as the Curator of Spoken Word at Philadelphia Contemporary and regularly performs a unique blend of poetry and song with her band The Afroeaters. In collaboration with Philly literary organization Blue Stoop, Wisher recently launched the School of Guerrilla Poetics, a training ground for folks interested in nurturing and mobilizing communities through poetry. Wisher lives in Germantown. You can find more about her work and projects at yolandawisher.com, and you can listen to her podcast Love Jawns: A Mixtape here.

Liz Chang was 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate in Pennsylvania. Her 2018 chapbook Animal Nocturne is available from Moonstone Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Verse Daily, Origins Journal, Breakwater Review and Stoneboat Literary Journal, among others. She is an Associate Professor of English at Delaware County Community College.

Grant Clauser is the author of four books, most recently The Magician’s Handbook and Reckless Constellations. His awards include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize and the Montgomery County Poet Laureate. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, The Journal, The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, and others. He’s a contributing editor to the online publication Cleaver and works as a senior editor for Wirecutter at the New York Times.

Gabriel Cleveland is the Managing Editor at CavanKerry Press. A poet and fiction writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Pine Manor College, he is an avid video gamer and music lover as well as a mental health advocate, often working online to raise awareness, visibility, and money for psychological and psychosocial issues. Gabriel has spent several years in the field of caregiving for people with increased physical and/or mental needs and wants you to know that you’re not alone.

Shanna Compton’s most recent book is Creature Sounds Fade, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2020. Her poetry and essays are widely published, appearing in Best American Poetry, the Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the founder of Bloof Books, and works for several other small presses as a freelance book designer. She lives in Lambertville, NJ. For more, see shannacompton.com.

Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color, winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize for Poetry and of the Robert Creeley Prize from Marsh Hawk Press; and The Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians, winner of the Moonstone (Press) Chapbook Contest. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals, including American Poetry Review, African American Review, Atlanta Review, and Mezzo Cammin. Hall holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College and serves on the poetry review board of Philadelphia Stories.

Poet/Playwright, Maria James-Thiaw is CEO and founder of Reclaim Artist Collective (RAC), a nonprofit focused on arts programming for and about individuals in marginalized communities. She developed the American Griot Project, a program in which she teaches students to use research and oral history to develop choreopoems. She was inspired to start RAC after her first choreopoem, Reclaiming My Time, sold out 6 shows in 2018. The show was based on oral history research and featured poetic translations of women’s memories of the Civil Rights era. In 2018 works from Reclaiming My Time won the Art of Protest Poetry Prize from the Center of American Literary Studies at Penn State University. Maria is a spoken word artist and the author of three poetry books. After 16 years as a professor at Central Penn College, she enthusiastically took charge of the Creative Writing program at the Capital Area School for the Arts in Harrisburg, PA. She lives in the Harrisburg area with her husband and two little boys who are a constant source of both exhaustion and inspiration

Keith Kopka is the author of Count Four (University of Tampa Press, 2020). His poetry and criticism have recently appeared in Best New Poets, Mid-American Review, New Ohio Review, Berfrois, Ninth Letter, The International Journal of The Book, and many others. He is also the author of the critical text, Asking a Shadow to Dance: An Introduction to the Practice of Poetry and the recipient of the 2017 International Award for Excellence from the Books, Publishing, & Libraries Research Network. Kopka is a Senior Editor at Narrative Magazine and the co-founder and the Director of Operations for Writers Resist.

LindoYes is a spoken word artist, actor, and emcee born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. His work takes the beat of the city streets and transforms it from a sunrise to a starry throne. Paying homage to the wordsmiths that surround and inspire him daily, he embodies their character and champions their unique stories to audiences of all varieties. Seeking to create larger conversations with his art, LindoYes addresses the constructs of love, gender identity, and social injustice. LindoYes’ talents have allowed him to travel across the east coast featuring at various colleges such as Bucknell University, Haverford College, Ursinus College, Drexel University, Lincoln Unversity, Community College of Philadelphia and Cheney University of Pennsylvania. He has been a featured performer at venues such as BusBoys and Poets and SpitDat in DC and Virginia, The Drunken Retort in Michigan, and Urban Grind, Apache Cafe and Do You Lyrics Lounge in Atlanta. When LindoYes is not performing he operates on the organizational team for local Philadelphia open mic; Breedlove and the Freedom Party. He also works as a teaching artist helping youth express themselves through the mediums of creative writing, visual art and performing art linked to activism. They have taught at the following organizations ArtWell, EducationWorks, and Congreso. He has also done advocacy work with SoulsShot, Refuse Fascism Philly, Sunrise Movement Philly, and Moms Demand Action PA. LINDOYES! Creates images with words, taking audiences beyond their immediate experiences, he makes the world his canvas.

Pattie McCarthy is the author of six books, most recently Quiet Book from Apogee Press. Her previous books include Nulls (2014, Horse Less Press), Marybones (Apogee, 2012), Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (Apogee, 2010), Verso (2004), and Bk of H(r)s (Apogee, 2001). She has also written several chapbooks, most recently scenes from the lives of my parents (Bloof, 2013) and x y z && (Ahsahta, 2015). A former Pew Fellow in the Arts, she teaches at Temple University. Pattie’s chapbook mercy, a midden is forthcoming from Bloof in 2020.

Risa Pappas is a poet, filmmaker, writer, editor, audiobook narrator, and public speaker. She has most recently been published in the River Heron Review, Inklette Magazine, and bluntly magazine and is a senior editor at Tolsun Books. Risa received her MFA in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She currently resides near Philadelphia.

Hayden Saunier is the author of four poetry collections: How to Wear This Body, Say Luck, Tips for Domestic Travel, and a chapbook, Field Trip to the Underworld. Her work has been widely published and awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Gell Poetry Award and Keystone Chapbook Prize. She is an actor with 30 years of theatre credits and appearances in The Sixth Sense, Mindhunter, House of Cards, Philadelphia Diary, and as the voice of a broken-down stove for Ikea. She is the founder/director of the poetry + improvisation performance group, No River Twice. (www.haydensaunier.com)

Fred Shaw is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University. A book reviewer and Poetry Editor for Pittsburgh Quarterly, his poem, “Argot,” was featured in the 2018 full-length documentary, Eating & Working & Eating & Working. The film focuses on the lives of local service-industry workers. His poem “Scraping Away” was selected for the PA Public Poetry Project in 2017 and his first full length collection, Scraping Away will be released by CavanKerry Press in April 2020. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dog.

J.C. Todd’s recent work explores the traumatic effects of war on women, both civilians and combatants. She is author of Beyond Repair, forthcoming in 2020 from Able Muse Press, What Space This Body, The Damages of Morning, a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award finalist, and a manuscript in-process responding to the life and work of Kåthe Kollwitz. In collaboration with visual artist MaryAnn L. Miller, she has published FUBAR (Lucia Press, 2016) and On Foot / By Hand (Lucia Press, 2018); both are in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. JC is the winner of the 2016 Rita Dove Prize in Poetry and holds fellowships in poetry from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Bemis Center and others. Her work has been published in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, THRUSH, The Paris Review, and Fifty Over Fifty.

Cleveland Wall is a poet, editor, and teaching artist. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Möbius, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and beyond. She is a founding member of the poetry improv group No River Twice and cohost of Tuesday Muse, a monthly performance series at Bethlehem’s Ice House. She also performs with poetry/classical guitar combo The Starry Eyes. Her first poetry collection, Let X=X, was published by Kelsay Books, fall 2019.

An Incandescent Coming of Age

 

Erin Eileen Almond headshot

Erin Eileen Almond

 

— Former Philadelphia Stories Nonfiction Editor, Julia MacDonnell talks with Lanternfish Press author Erin Eileen Almond.

 

Erin Eileen Almond’s debut novel Witches’ Dance, just out from Philadelphia’s Lanternfish Press, is as riveting and intricate as the Paganini violin solo for which it is named. It’s one of those ‘curl up in a chair’ with tea or wine kind of books, the type the author herself, in a recent interview with Philadelphia Stories, said she loves to read.  Thanks to its trio of main characters, Witches’ Dance is rich and edgy, and interwoven with enough suspense and sex to keep the pages turning.

Hilda Greer is an incandescent teen-age violin prodigy, as passionate as she is confused, torn between her love of classical music and her desire to become a rock star via the heavy metal band Devil’s Advocate.

Her beautiful, narcissistic mother Claire is a dance teacher whose career as a ballerina was cut short by early motherhood.  Claire, who subsists on cigarettes, merlot, and a string of lovers, has raised Hilda alone after her jazz guitarist husband departed for the West Coast with one of his own young students.

Finally, there is Philip Manns, a virtuoso whose career as an internationally acclaimed violinist was ended by madness, in particular by an episode during which he believed that he’d become Paganini himself, the 19th century Italian virtuoso. Eventually Manns, reduced to teaching at the fictional Cambridge Conservatory, becomes Hilda’s teacher and mentor, with the alluring and troubled Claire forever hovering nearby.

In lustrous prose, and alternating among the points of view of Hilda, Claire, and Philip, Witches’ Dance ponders artistry and madness, and the tenacious if evanescent connections between creativity and insanity.  Its publication is the culmination of 10 years of hard work for Almond, a decade during which she not only rewrote the novel ‘from scratch at least three times,’ but also gave birth to her three children, the youngest now in first grade.  Not surprisingly, she put the novel down for ‘long stretches of time.’

“A more reasonable person might have just moved on to a different project at that point,” she says, “but I couldn’t seem to shake these characters and this story. I needed to write this book.”

Witches’ Dance reflects Almond’s own intense artistic journey, and her transformation from musician to writer.  She began playing violin in elementary school, switched as a teenager to heavy metal guitar, but, ever ‘obsessed with virtuosity’, returned to violin, eventually matriculating in violin at the Hartford Conservatory, planning a career as a performer and teacher.

“That experience was very eye-opening for me,” she said, “and essentially confirmed what I’d long suspected – that I just didn’t have the talent, or maybe even the confidence, to really go for it as a professional musician.” Hence, her creation of the unforgettable Hilda, whose labile emotions find their truest expression in the music she plays.

“The story really began with Hilda, my teenage prodigy…” who, Almond speculates, represents “my own grief at realizing that I would never be a professional violinist.”

Christine Neulieb, editorial director at Lanternfish Press said, “I was captivated by the character Hilda: the conflict between her fierce desire to be a rock star and her prodigious talent at classical violin; her strained relationship with her immature mother; the bewildering vortex of inspiration and insanity she encounters in her violin teacher. In the midst of all this she has to sort out where to pin her self-worth as she finally comes into her own. I was rooting for Hilda from page one.”

Almond recently answered some questions about her writing life, about her marriage to another writer, and about publication by a small independent house, Philadelphia’s Lanternfish Press.

 

JM: If Witches’ Dance is an indication, your knowledge and love of music is a major force in your life. When or how did you realize that writing, not music, would be the focus of your creative life?

EA: Music has definitely been a big part of my life for a long time! I started playing the violin in elementary school … and I studied it pretty seriously until I got to high school and gave it up for heavy metal guitar. (My parents were duly horrified.) But, even as a terrible lead guitarist for bands with names like The Virgin Saints, I was obsessed with virtuosity. And eventually that obsession led me back to the violin, because violinists – especially Paganini who was obviously a big inspiration for Witches’ Dance – were the original rock stars.

After I dropped out of the conservatory, I enrolled in classes at my local community college. And that experience was eye-opening for me in a different way, because although I’d always known that I wanted to write a novel, no one had told me that you could go to college to study fiction writing.

JM: When or how did you know that novel writing would be the best expression of your creativity – assuming, from the quality of Witches’ Dance, that it is? 

EA: Well, unless you count the terrible poetry that I was filling up notebooks with for most of my teen years, the novel was the first literary form that I ever tried to write. (I wish I could find and thank Donna Garden, my high school English teacher, who so sweetly read the chapters of my first novel attempt, ripped out of a spiral bound notebook, and encouraged me to keep going!) I adore short stories and poems and memoirs and essays, but I’m at my happiest as a reader when I’m engrossed in a long, complicated, and well-written novel. So, I always knew that, if I were trying to write the kind of book that I would most want to read, it would be a novel.

JM: When you first set out to write a novel, what did you think becoming a novelist would be like?  What do you think about it now that you have been published? Does the reality match the fantasy?

EA: Back in my earliest days of fantasizing about being a published novelist, I had a very old-fashioned sense of what it would mean to be putting books in the world. I assumed that it was the perfect profession for an introvert because I could just write the books and not worry about having to go out in the world and promote them. That would be someone else’s job. (You can stop laughing now.) But I realized that wasn’t the case long before I published Witches’ Dance.  Even though I’m still more comfortable alone in a room with my characters, than I am with public speaking, I’ve grown to love that part of it, too.

JM: How did you find the experience of submitting it to agents and publishers?  What can you tell us about Lanternfish Press?

EA: I was lucky in that I connected with my agent, Danielle Bukowski, of Sterling Lord Literistic pretty quickly. I found her online and submitted to her because she listed Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke as one of her favorite novels and it’s also one of my very favorites. Danielle really understood what I was up to in Witches’ Dance and was able to suggest some very smart revisions before she submitted it to editors at major publishing houses. But, even though it found a couple of editors who really loved it, those editors weren’t able to sell it to the marketing teams at their big houses.

At that point, since I had already started my second novel, Danielle and I talked about whether I was going to put Witches’ Dance on hold and maybe try to sell it as a second novel or submit to smaller independent publishers. And I’m so glad that I decided to search for an indie press because Lanternfish Press has been such a great home for Witches’ Dance. They’re interested in literary works that also includes elements of speculative or sci-fi fiction, and they’re not interested in playing it safe or mimicking the trends of the big presses. I’ve been super impressed with all of the books they put out and am so grateful that Witches’ Dance is in such good company.

JM: Can you tell us a little about your writing process – like, when do you write?  All on computer or some handwriting?  Do you share your drafts with other writers?  Who first gets to read your work in progress? 

EA: Well, I can give you my ideal process and then I can tell you what it’s really like on the ground… ideally, I would write every day, first thing in the morning, before my mind gets distracted by all the mundane logistical tasks that I have to deal with as a parent and homeowner. But, of course, before I can even sit down at my desk, there are three kids to get off to school and there are definitely days when, despite my best intentions, a kid stays home sick, or there’s a doctor’s appointment, or the car breaks down… But that’s the struggle for everyone, I think, even writers who aren’t parents have to figure out how to fit in their creative work in between the work that pays the bills and taking care of their loved ones. My guiding principal is to get to my fiction writing as early in the day as I can because by the time the kids go to bed at night I need to fill the well, and I’m only good for reading, not writing.

I do a lot of handwriting in journals when I’m developing an idea – that feels more conducive to the kind of loose, dreamy thought that works for me at that point in the process – but then I’ll move to my laptop when I’m ready to start composing scenes. I definitely outline before I begin, although that outline constantly morphs when I’m working on a first draft.

After Witches’ Dance, I swore that I wouldn’t show a novel draft to anyone until I had a first draft done, but then I almost immediately went back on that promise to myself early on in the process for my next novel. It’s just so hard to know that you’re on the right track once you get deep into a new project, and I’m really lucky to have a handful of writer friends whose opinions I trust and respect. Sometimes all you need is a little encouragement – yes, this is a viable project – and sometimes it helps to have someone point out an obvious flaw, early on, before you’ve spent four hundred pages writing yourself into a corner.

JM: Your husband Steve Almond, the original Dear Sugar, is a well-known writer of fiction and journalism.  What’s it like to live with another writer?

EA: Ha – how much time do you have? It’s amazing to be married to another writer because no one understands the struggle like someone else who’s in it, too. But it’s also difficult because we’ve often had to negotiate – this was especially the case when our older kids were babies – who gets to write and who has to be the support person holding down the fort with the house and the kids. And because Steve was (and still is) the more established writer, as well as the writer whose work actually pays our bills, I’ve often felt guilty about prioritizing my own, mostly unpaid, work. That’s changed a bit in the past couple of years – putting out my first novel, definitely helps, but I’ve also started taking on manuscript consulting and publishing non-fiction pieces, and so now I’m learning how to balance creative work with what Steve calls “money-work,” too.

We’ve also had to learn how to be good readers for each other – we’re constantly sharing and discussing our work – and that was harder for me in the early days because I had a much thinner skin. I’ve learned that, for me, it’s better to show Steve work when I’m pretty sure that it’s done, whereas he’s more comfortable letting me see his prose much earlier. But the overall dynamic between us is extremely supportive – we’re definitely each other’s biggest fans. And I know that when I’ve written something that Steve really likes that it’s got to be good, because he’s a tough critic, and he’s always given me his honest opinion.

JM: How do you manage all those amazing characters in your imagination with all those actual characters – a husband and three kids!! – in your home? Any tips on how to shut off the creative flow and transition from writing fiction into being a mom?

Well, I would say that, for me, the difficulty is the other way around – it’s much harder to shut off the mom-brain and focus on my characters and my creative work! I mean, the kids’ needs (and sometimes the husband’s – ha!) are so immediate and tangible, whereas the characters, well, let’s just say that no one’s going to starve if I don’t make it to my writing desk on any given day. That’s another reason why I really try to prioritize doing my creative work as early in the day as possible, because once I’m ticking through items on my to-do list, it’s really hard to shut that off and connect to those dear people who exist only in my imagination.

But there are practical reasons to prioritize creative work, too – because I’m much more pleasant to be around when I’m working on my fiction. That is a real, tangible need, for me, at least, to feel creatively alive and effective in that way. And when I feel that I’m neglecting that part of myself I can become irritable and short-tempered and just, in general, unpleasant to be around. So, in a way, making sure I have time to do the creative work that feeds my soul also makes me a better parent and partner.

JM: What do you hope readers will take away from reading Witches’ Dance?

EA: I hope that readers will come away from the book curious about classical music – if they don’t love that music already! – and also of course, the violin, which is one of the reasons why I included a list of recommended recordings at the end for all of the major pieces mentioned in the book. I also hope readers appreciate the complexity of what all my main characters are up against: Hilda, in her quest to establish her own artistic identity, Phillip, in his struggle with the double burden of virtuosity and madness, and Claire with her maternal ambivalence and broken dreams.

JM: What do you love (are most proud of; most satisfied with) about your debut novel Witches’ Dance?

EA: The best part of the whole experience of putting Witches’ Dance into the world has been to connect with readers. There were many moments when I doubted it would ever see the light of day as a published book. Not because I didn’t think it was worthy of being published, but because I have enough writer friends to know how subjective the gatekeepers often are, and how difficult the publishing process can be. It’s very, very satisfying now to hear from readers who’ve enjoyed Witches’ Dance and who connect to the characters and their struggles.

Witches Dance Cover image

 

Excerpt From Witches’ Dance by Erin Eileen Almond

Paganini. What do you think when you hear that name? If you know classical music, if you’re lucky enough to be a fan of the violin, you might think of the Italian virtuoso Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840), widely recognized as the father of modern violin technique. You might know that Paganini was the first instrumentalist to tour widely as a solo act. You might have heard the legends about how he sold his soul to the devil. Or how, mischievously fueling those rumors, Paganini arrived for his concerts in funeral carriages, dressed all in black. None other than Goethe saw Paganini perform in Hamburg in 1828 and swore he saw a little man standing in the shadows to the left of the violinist, directing his fingers and bow. But because you belong to the modern age, an age in which devils have become passé, or at least predictable, it’s possible you prefer a scientific explanation for Paganini’s ability to play three octaves across four strings in a single hand span. Well. There’s always Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that often afflicts its sufferers with long fingers and extreme flexibility.

But say you are none of these things. Not a twenty-first-century reader, not a casual admirer of the violin. Say, instead, that you are Phillip Manns, a twenty-three-year-old savant about to solo with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Say you are at the end of a long tour, run-down, ready to return to New York with your manager, Anna Zedzevsky, for a well-earned rest. Say you hate the guest conductor, Georg Domini, an arrogant prig who interprets according to whim and who wears entirely too much product in his hair. Say that tonight’s program is Paganini’s Concerto no. 1 in D Major, and you are considered the world’s greatest interpreter of Paganini.

In that case, the year must be 1984. And although your given name is Phillip Manns, you must believe, despite how crazy it sounds, that you are Niccolò Paganini, or at least his reincarnation. It is your greatest pride, and your greatest secret—you’ve told only your manager, and she’s warned you not to tell another soul.

 

 

Community & Tradition in There, There

There There image

The annual collaboration between Philadelphia Stories and One Book, One Philadelphia celebrates the symbiotic relationship between reading and creating. When we read we gain grist for the mill that produces new work. We find connections between our experiences and those of another.

This issue of PS holds iterations of the themes of community and tradition found in Tommy Orange’s novel, There There, the 2020 One Book, One Philadelphia featured selection. One Book is a Free Library program that fosters citywide civic dialogue by encouraging everyone in Philadelphia to read the same novel—you can find a copy of There There at any neighborhood library, and from January to March, attend one of dozens of discussions and programs diving into the book. Talk about why it knocked you down, talk about what surprised you, talk about what you found difficult—just talk about it. And listen about it.

A Cheyenne-Arapaho novelist, Tommy Orange writes polyphonically in the voices of 12 Native characters living in present day Oakland, California. Their communities in many ways are fractured, split open by the U.S. government’s historical violence against Indigenous peoples. The modern impacts of the campaign to erase the original inhabitants of this land, including choking resources and attempting to ban religious and cultural traditions, echo throughout the characters’ lives.

And yet the message of Tommy Orange’s novel is crystalline. His characters say: we are still here. Across the gentrified city of Oakland, they find one another. They tell their stories. They drop deep, deep into themselves to find the traditions that have been passed down to them, and they live. They live in ways that are new and complex and digital and ancient and together.

This book evokes big questions about community and tradition: how do they stay alive in the face of violence? How do they evolve over time, and how are they perceived by others? How are legacy and inheritance—learning about one’s own community traditions—a privilege? How do history and the present interact?

I imagine those questions are different for each person, depending on who their community is and what its traditions are. I’m excited for the responses that unfold through the pages of this magazine, with each writer and artist contributing their own sense of belonging and of what has been passed on to them, what they want to pass on.

Brittanie Sterner
Director of Programming, One Book, One Philadelphia
The Free Library of Philadelphia

Philadelphia Stories Winter Issue Launch: Community & Traditions
Monday, February 24, 5:30 p.m. exhibition opens, 6:00 p.m. reading
Walnut Street West Library, 201 S. 40th St., 215-685-7671

Celebrate the launch of the One Book–themed issue of Philadelphia Stories magazine with readings by local writers and a pop-up show of visual works featured in the issue.

Willa on North Broad Street*

Yvonne final headshot 2

from The School of Clara Ward

 

Who made beauty, I ask you. God or the devil?

When I first touched a piano, the keys twinkled

Like heavenly stars. All over me they sprinkled

Some kind of thrill. Just a child, I was no rebel.

But Mother got down on her knees and swept

The stardust up—from every corner, every bed—

Pulled me out of school—Fearing what filth I read?

She stuffed her pockets with stardust and wept.

Mine is an old humble house with good solid bones.

Such weeping and laughing! The still of nights and dawns!

I chose my own voice and wore my own gowns.

They threw me out the church! For teen love songs.

I sing. Beauty! God made, but the devil stole it.

Mother vowed to get it all back. Every little bit.

 

*Aretha Franklin’s mentor, Clara Ward spawned innovations in singing, composing, and arranging for decades in Gospel music while her sister Willarene sang backup for Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, Frankie Avalon, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Dion, Fabian, and her protégé Dee Dee Sharp.

First poetry editor of pioneer feminist magazines, Aphra and Ms., Yvonne has received several awards including NEAs for poetry (1974, 1984) and a Leeway (2003) for fiction (as Yvonne Chism-Peace). Recent print publications include: From the Farther Shore (Bass River Press), Home: An Anthology (Flexible), Quiet Diamonds 2019/2018 (Orchard Street).

 

Momma House*

Yvonne final headshot 2

from Rosetta on the Bus

 

Touring is a kind of homelessness,

The price the body pays as the soul takes wing.

Fans brought to their feet, the faithful to their knees!

Yet meals on a tray in her lap left its sting.

Under the spinning stars on a midnight bus

Sleep came and washed away the heaviness

Of the heart. Sleep and the wisdom of dreams.

Miracle child with flowers in her voice

And in her fingertips unquenchable flames—

Did she ever have a choice?

Echoes awake and bend laggard legendary.

Momma, beloved Marie, a far galaxy.

The end of the line. Everybody’s got one.

Same old same old. For decades, no tombstone.

 

*In 2011 a marker at the corner of 11th and Master Streets in the Yorktown section of North Philadelphia was set to commemorate where Sister Rosetta Tharpe lived in a modest rowhouse from the mid-Sixties until her death in 1973. She is buried in Northwood Cemetery.

First poetry editor of pioneer feminist magazines, Aphra and Ms., Yvonne has received several awards including NEAs for poetry (1974, 1984) and a Leeway (2003) for fiction (as Yvonne Chism-Peace). Recent print publications include: From the Farther Shore (Bass River Press), Home: An Anthology (Flexible), Quiet Diamonds 2019/2018 (Orchard Street).

Impermanence Alight

Risa Pappas final headshot

The little church that is the morning

the stillness that allows (at least)

for breathing—we are to be alive

and Holy and pour forth into the day

of trials both as the fire punching

birds into the sky and as the water

to make of the world a cleansed

nest once more. Almost cruelty

each day in dawning a sermon

of hope cresting the trees and we

by breakfast cleft into apostle

and disciple. Even the doves

can only hold aloft for so long.

By sundown we roost into one again

united by the exhaustion of both

wings beating.

Risa Pappas is a poet, filmmaker, writer, editor, audiobook narrator, and public speaker. She has most recently been published in bluntly magazine and Black Fox Literary Magazine and is a senior editor at Tolsun Books. Risa received her MFA in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She currently resides near Philadelphia.