First Sunday Prose Fall-Spring Season Begins

Yes, it seems like it’s still summer, but fall school terms start in August too, at least around here.  But next month there won’t be a First Sunday reading, it being pre-empted by Labor Day weekend which brings the Bloomington Arts Festival with its Bloomington Writers Guild’s Spoken Word Stage.  And, yes, I’ll read there too, tentatively one of the story-chapters from my upcoming novel-in-stories, TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH.  And then in October First Sunday Prose will be back again, this time with me as a featured reader, tentatively anyway, with most likely another story from TOMBS.  Thus begins the “new season.”

So this Sunday, yesterday, brought the first “First Sunday Prose Reading & Open Mic” (see May 1, et al.) for 2016-17, co-sponsored by the Bloomington Writers Guild and Boxcar Books.  Featured readers were Cole Hardman with, as he put it, a church story and a graveyard poem, the latter also a 2015 second prize winner of Indiana State University’s Max Ehrmann Poetry Contest; Shayne Laughter (who we’ve met before, cf. January 3, et al.) with a short story inspired by a family legend, “Into Kansas”; and Patsy Rahn (who we’ve met before also, see April 24, et al.), though primarily a poet, with a series of seven short essays, six of them written this summer.  Then for the open readings, I came in as fourth out of six with flash story “The Cyclops” (see June 28, 10 2013, et al.).  Originally published in DARK MOON DIGEST YOUNG ADULT HORROR, June 2013, it’s the tale of a younger than young-adult person with feelings of alienation, as well as a very good reason for having them.