Against Forgetting: War, Love, and After War – Denise David
The year 2020 marks seventy-five years since the end of World War II; Denise David’s Against Forgetting: War, Love, and After Waris a poetry collection about people living the war—a legacy of first-hand memories preserved by a researcher scholar, the daughter of a war bride.
What is your literary background and education?
I am a teacher and a writer. I taught writing and literature for over twenty-five years at a community college in upstate New York. As meaning-making creatures, our stories help us understand who we are and allow us to make sense of the world. My formal education includes earning a Ph.D., but I have never stopped learning from my students and from my own writing.…
Roland Barksdale-Hall is an award winning essayist, a community activist, and the co-founder past and president of Jah Kente International Inc., Washington, DC, which includes African artifacts, a youth exchange, a roots program, and a youth theater program for DC high risk youth. He’s also the founder and first president of the Pittsburgh Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS); a former executive board member on the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA); the former managing editor of QBR the Black Book Review, AAHGS Journal, and BCALA News; an author of leadership, children’s character development, and history books; and a member of Pennsylvania’s Mercer County Mentoring Board. He’s launched a street storytelling theater, book festivals, and a life-empowerment workshop for at-risk communities.…
New Yorker Jen Epstein is a writer, activist, and worker bee raised by two mental health professionals. She holds a BA in communication arts and an MA in media studies. She currently works as a Media Logistics Operations Project Manager for Discovery Communications, and her new book, Don’t Get Too Excited: It’s Just About a Pair of Shoes and Other Laments from My Life, finds her using self-deprecating humor to expose her inner demons with stories that are sometimes heartbreaking and always deeply personal.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Epstein about her new book, using humor to rationalize and normalize mental illness, racism in America, COVID-19, and much more!
Thin Places: Essays from the In Between by Jordan Kisner
On the edge, where Columbus and Chicago Avenues meet in Minneapolis, a familiar sign is plunged past concrete, into layers of soil. The background is a deep red, like blood. The letters on the sign are white and centered. Stop, it said, and cars and bikes and pedestrians did. When I came near the sign, I noticed it was different. Stop, it said. Yet, underneath this word a sheet of white typing paper was attached at its edges with electric tape. On the paper were the words, …killing us. A block over from where I stood, George Floyd was murdered by a policeman just days before. The officer’s knee rested on George’s neck, even as George cried, “I can’t breathe,” and the crowd pleaded with the office to stop, to no avail.…
For the past few days, I took a lot of time thinking about my legacy. Thinking about what I will leave on this earth, in this city, that will outlive me. For many people they find this in their children, in families, and those they leave behind. As much as I dream of having children, I fear my reality and lifestyle is pushing that dream farther and farther away. I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or not, but I am sure of one thing. I do not want the burden of telling my story to fall on the shoulders of my family. For those who have to create the narrative for their dead loved one. To my wife, who would prefer family time over the idea of a legacy, for this to all fall on her lap would be the cruelest gift my death could leave her.…
Valentino Juarez, who works with The Ice Colony, a story based podcast that seeks to support and represent people from all walks of life who struggle with borders both physical and metaphorical. Their missions statement clarifies: “While our primary focus is on the migrant life, this podcast is here to ensure that we tell the stories of people seeking refuge in any form, and inspire humanity, generosity, and knowledge.”
In this episode of ‘Cover to Cover with . . .,’ Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Juarez about his altruistic goals, the state of injustice in America, the power of fiction to convey a message, and more!
The City of Hate, the city that titles Timothy S. Miller’s forthcoming novel, is Dallas. It’s a relatively modern version. Dealey Plaza buzzes with tourists come to see the Sixth Floor Museum and relive the events of President Kennedy’s assassination, but this Dallas still has answering machines, printed glossy photographs, and storefront bookstores as (mostly) viable business models. More striking, though, is the emptiness within this busy, thriving city. It’s not the buzzing, numb kind of empty, but an emptiness that writhes and howls and demands to be filled.
We walk the streets of Dallas in the shoes of Hal Scott, a cynical, triggered alcoholic clinging to sobriety by his fingernails. Hal, himself empty, fills up his inner monologue with paranoid speculations of other people’s lives.…
