Last First Sunday Prose (for Spring) Brings Guest Emcee, Three Featured Readers

April’s having been displaced by a special reading by multi-prizewinning author Brian Leung, in Bloomington on an Indiana Authors Grant, and next month beginning the Guild’s annual summer hiatus, May’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose Reading and Open Mic” at Morgensterns Books (see March 6, et al.) boasted three featured readers as well as a special guest moderator, Guild member Hiromi Yoshida. First up was woodworker, furniture maker, and writer Nancy Hiller with a pair of essays on parrots and pet dogs, among other things, from her latest book, SHOP TAILS; followed by memoirist/novelist Claire Arbogast with a chapter from her 2016 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection winner LEAVE THE DOGS AT HOME (hmmmm); and, currently “bridging the gap between college and the real world,” new novelist Winnie Lyon with the beginning two chapters from THE CURSE OF THE KING, about a young woman who’s also a witch — and in fact a descendant of the trio who cursed Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play.

After the break, there were only four walk-ons, of which I was fourth. Noting that my last First Sunday offering had been a deconstruction of the fairy tale “Snow White,” I offered this time another, older, similar tale tackling “Cinderella,” originally published in RAPUNZEL’S DAUGHTER AND OTHER TALES (cf. July 3 2011, et al.) and titled “The Glass Shoe,” its moral of sorts being that everything these days is just public relations.