Mixed Forms Rule at October 1st Sunday Prose

Due to sharing a day with the city’s Fourth Street Arts Festival, there was no September “Bloomington Writers Guild’s First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (cf. August 6, May 7, et al.). And today’s, for October, had to compete with a lovely, warm day, drenched in Sun. — perhaps the final weekend this year to have summer-like weather.

That said, two Guild notables were featured this time in the back conference area at Morgenstern’s Books, though only drawing a middling crowd of about a dozen. Sunny days do that. First was an old friend to this column, Writers Guild founding member and student of Women Writing for Change, Tonia Matthew, with two essays, the shortish “Chasing Supermoons” followed by a longer “Traveling With Stanley,” the latter about a trip to Greece when she was 18, still living in England, and just out of high school. Then second, “3rd Sunday Write” facilitator Shana Ritter offered “three very different pieces”: a short short story, “The Invitation,” a personal essay, “Blindsided,” and an excerpt from her 2019 historical novel, IN THE TIME OF LEAVING, on the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

After the break it was “Open Mic” time with, aided by some confusion on the sign-up list, me first of five with a tongue-in-cheek early Halloween story, “Smashing Pumpkins,” explaining (among other things) the last-few-years fear of clowns seen in the woods, and why it’s important to vote the week after.