Will this Maine winter ever end? I've given up asking and have surrendered to the ever-present and ever-growing banks of white that surround and envelope our yard, stream from an upstairs balcony outside our bedroom and provides a white "lawn" on our deck where birds too big for the feeder land and peck at the seed I throw out.
This Saturday, February 28th, I will take part in a reading series I helped co-found over two years ago with Portland writer E.J. Fechenda. LIT: Readings & Libations allows emerging writers, meaning those who may or may not yet be published, read aloud for fifteen minutes from a piece of fiction.
E.J. and I found each other on the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA) Facebook page. This happy coincidence -- E.J. queried the MWPA crowd about whether anyone wanted to start such a reading series at the same time I was itching to do just that -- has given me and other writers the great gift of hearing our characters speak aloud, not just to the four walls of our writing rooms when we might practice, but in a venue where people show up to hear us read.
The practice we get at public speaking is minor compared to the rich experience, for me, of hearing my four Irish characters speak in their brogues. I don't even study Irish language, and even as I'm reading I'm thinking I'm botching it. But as the minutes tick by, I forget myself and my inner editor and keep reading, and hearing.
When I leave the dais, I can barely recall what piece I read. I only know that Brother Joe, Maggie, Orla and Eamon are alive, they get angry, hungry and cold. They plot their escape and ponder their future. For fifteen minutes, I give birth. Then I join the crowd of listeners and order a beer and witness the other writers doing the same.
LIT is a free and open to the public event, so I encourage you to come to Bull Feeney's pub on Fore Street in Portland at 4 p.m. on February 28th to help us celebrate the art of writing...and reading.
