News/Events
2024 Is a Wrap
It was—shall we say—an interesting year? Began with the January launch of my author/visual artist website. Yea! Did lots of good writing and work with ongoing workshops and writer groups. Then a spate of medical issues in April and early May. I never knew what a TIA was until I suffered it. Mini-stroke. A bit of a wake-up call but with the right meds, I am on the mend.
Also in May, I travelled to the Schoodic Institute on the rugged coast of Maine to participate in the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA) Black Fly Retreat. My workshop leader, Phuc Tran, was outstanding. At open mike, I read from The Ballet, my essay on domestic abuse in When Home is Not Safe (available here) and received many kind and positive remarks.
In late June, I flew to France for an author’s residency at Studio Faire in Nérac, France. I’m still processing how magical the experience was. I may need to return!
Photo by Colin Usher
My Resident Bio
A poet, essayist, and environmental scientist, Susan Rose April, has now published over 25 poems and essays, one of which ‘Chain Pickerel’ was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize after being published in the online journal Collateral. In Studio Faire, Susan was seeking a place that ‘feels like home but is also 6,184 km away’, where she could re-examine and order her past works in solitude, in order to bring them together into a united manuscript.
Written by Julia Douglas for Studio Faire
My Testimonial From the Experience
If there exists a more perfect artist residency than Studio Faire with Colin and Julia in Nérac, I don’t know where that is. Nérac itself is a magical place. One of the best Saturday farmer’s markets in France. Watch—or better still—ride one of riverboats along the picturesque River Baïse that flows oddly green, but is in fact super healthy (due to phytoplankton), through the center of town. Walk. Stroll. Think. Write. Create art. Share pizza. Talk about everything. Or about nothing. Commune with fellow residents. Laugh. Cry. Admire the love and hard work that Julia and Colin have put into their home to make it so welcoming and fruitful to the arts. Even if it rains, you do not mind. It’s a healthy kind of rain. Cleansing. I am grateful to Studio Faire for two very special weeks I will never forget. Now stateside, I challenge myself weekly to find a decent bottle of French wine in rural Maryland (a real challenge) and drink a toast in the general direction of Nérac, to Julia and Colin, to their beloved fur-children, and to the me who wrote at first timidly, then more boldly, in a garden under the stairs.
Also, this summer, my essay, Dancing at Holy Ghost Park, came out in the fourth installment of The Lowell Review. Hey, page one! A last name starting with the letter A comes in handy at times. The Lowell Review here. Lots of great contributors. A beautiful book.
Autumn was laid back. Visit from my West Coast son, stone wall repairs, birding trip to Cape May NJ. Two of my visual poems came out in Issue XII of The Closed Eye Open literary journal. Sand was honored to be a Featured Selection. The other was Kerouac at the Brook. That shows a sliver of beer bottle glass I actually collected at Jack Kerouac’s last home in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Winter brought two acceptances: a series of poems to appear in Elk River Writers Workshop 10th Anniversary Anthology in Spring 2025; and a sort of flash essay about starlings, catalpa trees, and the death of my grandfather David while Marlin fishing in Florida, that has come out in the first Frederick County Nature Council Anthology. I read from it yesterday at the C. Burr Artz Library in Frederick and surprised myself. Realized that I write a lot about fishing. I’ve got a rowboat of memories. Denise, my sister, the one about floating treasure and red-and-white bobbers is gestating now. Peace.
Website Launch
I have Dean Lunt, editor and publisher/founder of Islandport Press to thank for seeding the idea of this website. We met on a bleak Saturday afternoon in Portland. I was at a Maine Publishers and Writers Alliance Pitch-an-Agent-or-Publisher event. Dean and I had all of seven minutes together. He seemed interested. Asked if I had a website. I shook my head no. Then the door flew open—my cue to exit. All I remember is Dean shaking his pocket notebook, “I like you. But it’s not much to go on.”
So, today, I launch my author-and-artist website. If it succeeds at being “much to go on,” that’s due to friends and colleagues. To Amanda Godlove of Lux Photography, with thanks for her patience, sense of humor, and being the best Gator Utility Vehicle partner around. To Jeananne and O. Colin Stine of Elmwood Fields, for hosting us at their beautiful and historic farm in Shepherdstown, WV. Never tasted such an amazing cranberry cobbler. And those Red Angus heifers: darlings. Last but not least, to my web designer, Gerry Nelson, a special person. I’ve felt like Lieutenant Colombo at times, “Just one more thing.” Gerry has been so understanding.