Creative Nonfiction, Fiction Rule 1st Sunday Prose

After a two-month summer hiatus, the “Bloomington Writers Guild’s First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (cf. May 7, et al.) re-opened for August to a healthy crowd in the back conference area at local Morgenstern Books. Leading off was former Indiana State Museum Fine Arts Curator and author of numerous books about Indiana visual artists, Rachel Perry, now turning her attention to “creative non-fiction” with an example of the latter, “The Life of a Painting,” stemming from an early experience as a model for an at-the-time artist-boyfriend. She was followed by actor and author Greta Lind, with past appearances in ALL MY CHILDREN and RUDY as well as more local co-facilitating Young Women Writing for (a) Change and acting in two audio drama series, WFIU’s THE ERNIE PYLE EXPERIMENT! and Starrynight Productions’ THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, reading from the beginning of her 2021 debut novel, SPLIT OPEN.

After the break, the festivities resumed with about eight readers for “Open Mic,” of which I came third. Explaining it as a early October 31 reading of sorts, it having recently been accepted as a reprint for THE SIRENS CALL’s upcoming Halloween edition (see July 14), I chose the tale “Death and the Vampire,” originally published in WEIRDBOOK, about an encounter between “casket girl” Aimée and a black-robed figure that called itself Death, and may have known more than it should about who was or was not a vampire.

And then one more note from MC Joan Hawkins, there won’t be a First Sunday Prose for September, but it should be back again as scheduled for October.