Dogwood Dream, Charlottesville and Statues

 

Should the Confederate statues go? That’s an easy one for me. I visited Northern Alabama in 1964 when still a teen and learned a great many things. Among them was the fact that the Civil War had not ended when I thought it did. It still hasn’t. Dogwood Dream  is fiction, but its facts are true.

http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/short-story-dogwood-dream

Alabama Apples wins Writers’ Drawer Prize

My short story Alabama Apples was just awarded first place in the 2016 Writers’ Drawer short story competition. I thank editor Beryl Belsky for offering international writers both her forum and this specific contest.  I spent considerable time in Birmingham when I was a kid and Harper Lee still makes me poke around in my memories for stories that only got whispered in 1956. I put a few of them together – including one from my grandmother’s turn of the 20th Century childhood – to offer a glimpse of life in the Jim Crow South.

Dogwood Dream finds a new venue

 My very short story “Dogwood Dream” was just republished on the Quail Bell site.  I’ve put a link below, though many of you have read it before.  It’s based on my childhood experiences in Alabama and on stories told by my Grandmother Carrie Martin.  This story is very special to me.  I don’t think I can write any better and I’m grateful to have it on a new venue.

http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/2/post/2013/12/short-story-dogwood-dream.html