By Cassie Osvatics  After a 35 year career as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Shaileen Backman is entering a new chapter as a writer. Her story Old Girls Tap discusses her experience of getting back into tap dancing when she was 49. Old Girls Tap is witty, comical, and above all, honest. Backman doesn’t hold back in admitting her own faults. “I saw myself as being judgmental. Then I overcame it as we all bonded in this joyful ending,” Backman stated during our interview.
In her semi-retirement, Backman is putting her experience as an LCSW into writing a book about grief after recognizing a serious need for literature about the topic. Her contribution to the upcoming Grace and Gravity is her first published work, an accomplishment she is ecstatic about. At 62, Shaileen Backman is proving that it’s never too late to follow your dreams.
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By Georgia Lin Monique Hayes’ short story Contralto appears in Furious Gravity, Vol. IX of the Grace and Gravity series featuring works by women writers in the D.C. region. “Contralto” refers to Marian Anderson, a renowned African-American opera singer who possessed an exceptionally low vocal range – a contralto – and whose performing experiences in the 1930s marked pivotal historical moments for racial integration in the United States. In 1939, Anderson was barred from performing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., then controlled by the white-majority group Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), because of her race. In response, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership in the DAR and arranged for Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday to an audience of 75,000 people (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Marian Anderson”). Monique’s powerful story of Amelia, a young outspoken African-American pianist who witnessed the racial discrimination against Anderson, resonated with me as a woman of color in the classical music industry. I am a trained mezzo-soprano singer who decided against attending opera school (and now studies social equity and critical race theory) precisely because of the inherent racism and inequities in the industry that most impacts multiply marginalized communities. In Contralto, Amelia is reprimanded for speaking out about racial injustice in a room of white peers, exemplifying a choice people of color are often forced to make: ardently defend your beliefs and risk the consequences, or stay silent in your anger to preserve your social and economic status among the white elite? I interviewed Monique about her writing process for Contralto, prejudice in classical music, and the power of female anger as a catalyst for social change.
by elizabeth edwards Whether volunteering with the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, living in Mozambique on a Fulbright grant, or working for USAID in war-torn Iraq, Jamy Bond has gone through life all over the world. It is evident in both her fiction and nonfiction that experience is what inspires her. Jamy’s writing is shaped by experiences both unforeseen, such as losing her younger sister to a car accident, and chosen, like dodging bombs as a daily part of work in Iraq. Both aid her in creating work that refracts those personal experiences into a fragment of collective human experience.
As I read Jamy’s piece, “Learning to Fly,” I felt a heaviness of familiarity and fear. The piece anchored me with an emotional weight that only the best writing can place on a reader. Her story intertwines violence and vulnerability, desire and innocence, and fear and calm into connecting threads between the characters. As a writer, and a reader, I have found that those life experiences and emotions that expose our malleability, and train us to resist it, are those that best infuse a story with the same ability to affect people. Jamy draws out those emotions and builds from those experiences, mooring readers so deeply in the story and then finally setting us free as the story releases its grip, teaching us to fly along with the characters. Jamy explores the darker side of the human experience with equal parts grace and gravity, making her a fitting contributor to this anthology. By Ellis Carrington Caroline Bock is a lecturer for the Marymount University English department, and a participating author with the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program in the Washington D.C. area. She is the author of titles Before My Eyes, Lie, and her award winning short fiction collection, Carry Her Home. She leads creative writing workshops at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. and at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
Bock’s piece, MINIM, is a meaningful narrative that inspires its narrator, as well as its readers, to choose life even when death seems to be right around the corner. I have had the immense pleasure to interview her about this piece below: By Morgan Bluma Pamela Huber’s first professional published piece, “The Jubilee,” offers beautifully written detail and emotion with a haunting tale that will have any reader on the edge of their seat. Her flash fiction offers a look into the jubilee or celebration of crab hunting where the reader is immersed into the setting, to the point where you feel like you are right alongside the characters. Rather than following one character’s journey, Pamela includes many different perspectives from the characters. I do not want to spoil the intense storyline of this piece so I will not reveal more. It is a piece that needs to be experienced through reading that cannot be recreated through a summary.
Growing up in Delaware, Pamela was able to spend a lot of time outdoors and near the water that translates into her writing. Pamela’s been writing since the fourth grade and has been able to pursue her love of reading and writing in her professional life, currently working as the Director of Product Support for a nonprofit for children’s literacy in DC, CommonLit, a free online reading program. I had the opportunity to speak with Pamela about her inspirations and experience as an aspiring and rising writer. By Jessica Sullivan The emotional ups and downs in a novel are arguably what make novels great. For Carrie Callaghan, the emotional rollercoaster is almost always tied to relationships. Lithub describes Callaghan’s debut novel, A Light of Her Own, as a novel that “catches the reader in a web of intrigue, art, and ambition and does not let go until the final page.”
Salt the Snow, Callaghan’s stunning second novel, is based on the life of one of the first American female war correspondents, Milly Bennett. In 1930, Milly Bennet and her husband are living in Russia when her husband is arrested by the secret police. As Milly tries to get her husband released, secrets about both her marriage and the Soviet state that she served come to light. Her piece in Furious Gravity, The Tea Ceremony, examines friendships and the moment they form. I had the pleasure to discuss novels, writing, and other topics with Carrie Callaghan. by Gabrielle bremer “No matter. When She visited, I was doomed. Melancholy, I used to call her when I did not know what it was. That meant, that when She came, I was more creative, locking myself in a corner, writing poetry, and tearing up a little.” -Keida Kostreci, The Visits
Growing up in a time and place where mental health wasn’t talked about, Keida Kostreci, a native Albanian, didn’t have a word for her depression. The author navigated through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood with frequent episodes, unable to understand why she felt this way. She had different names for her visitor, like “The Bitch,” “She,” or “Melancholy.” Kostreci describes her as someone who comes when she pleases and never knocks at the door. She is powerful, sneaky, and very attractive. In her adolescence, Kostreci delved into learning. She wanted to be the best student. The author tackled Remarque, Kafka, Tolstoy, and Freud, and would engross herself in music, arts, and writing. Being the high achieving first born wanting to set an example for her two younger sisters, added to the pressure. “The Bitch’s” visits would intertwine with Kostreci’s adolescent insecurities. Today, Kostreci is a journalist for Voice of America, where she writes about a wide variety of topics, including politics in the Balkans and the U.S., gender equality and culture, and radical extremism. While “She” still visits the author periodically, Kostreci has become better at anticipating her arrival. She spends a little more time with her friends, husband, and children, and works a little harder to meet deadlines. Even though the visits are challenging, they are not debilitating. In fact, some things in Kostreci’s life have been better because of “The Bitch.” The Grace and Gravity series is honored to be the first literary publication to showcase Kostreci’s work. A Conversation with kay drew by Brenna E. Raffe
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious.” – Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness If starting over late in life is something you’re afraid of, look no further than Kay Drew and her inspiring story to quell your fears. After retiring from her thirty-four-year medical career as a neonatal pediatrician, Kay decided to take up writing. Though, unlike Marina Keegan suggests in her quote above, this isn’t Kay’s first love affair with writing. Kay Drew has kept a journal her whole life, documenting all the things that help her make sense of life. As a kid, she moved all over; from Indiana to Rhode Island to Maryland and eventually to Massachusetts for college, where she got her BA in biology. After pursuing an MD from the UMD Medical School, and completing her residency there, she ended up here with us in DC, where she completed a neonatal/perinatal fellowship at Georgetown. Throughout this journey, Kay’s journal provided her with a space to figure things out, and to find and celebrate meaning. After her retirement in 2011, she decided to channel her love of reading and her knack for writing about her life into a hobby of writing creative non-fiction. Now, that hobby has paid off. The featured essay in Grace in Darkness, “Baptism by Fire,” is her first publication. I had the pleasure of getting to chat with Kay about her life and her story below: Contributor Spotlight - Miranda K. Pennington Miranda K. Pennington’s office at American University is located behind the Bender Sports Arena. I didn’t know this - and the several other people I spoke to didn’t know, either. The building, which appears as “SCAN” on the AU Map, is home to many of AU’s professors that teach in the College Writing program. I took a winding path around an eagle statue and a set of greening steps before I managed to find it, but find it I did. The building reminds me of the “portable” classrooms we used to have in elementary school, just, perhaps, bigger. White walls, tile floors. It seems a bleak, sterile place to put the offices of writers. Especially a writer as vibrant as Miranda.
This piece is the first Miranda has published since her book A Girl Walks Into A Book: What the Bronte’s Taught Me About Life, Love, and Women’s Work came out in May 2017. Miranda connected with Melissa Scholes Young on Twitter, and saw this as an opportunity to begin publishing essays again. One of the first stories she wrote while attending Columbia University’s MFA program, the essay, according to the author, is totally true. It was different than the work she had been producing up to that point. Miranda noted to me in an e-mail that “I went in writing a lot of lighter, comedic essays, and this was one of my first attempts to dig deeper and tell a story that only I could tell, rather than a relationship essay or pop culture commentary, which a lot of people do so well.” A Conversation with Kate lemery by Thaer Husien
A Washington D.C. transplant from Iowa, Kate Lemery worked for the Smithsonian Institution and National Gallery of Art for a combined fifteen years before moving on to raise her three children and focus on her literary pursuits. She has since written for the Washington Post, Fiction Writers Review, and Peacock Journal, to name a few. Lemery’s story, “Drawing Lessons” is a cousin of her novel-in-progress, An Artless Girl, in that she uses art in each to inform the narrative. In each chapter of An Artless Girl, the heroine recalls a different masterpiece of Western art, and the themes they invoke help the heroine better understand her experiences. Lemery’s goal is to finish a good draft of her first novel to send to literary agents later this year. |
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