Evenings and Griot and Grey Owl Recap

What a week it's been. On Wednesday, I taught my three classes. My students are preparing to switch from workshop to presentations. It's been a full month and half of reading their narrative essays and critiquing them—training them to be analysts of their own written work and careful stewards of one another's experiences. After I got off work on Wednesday, I came home and printed out the eight page opening to my new novel RAPTURE READY. I wrote this novel in two months this summer. Initially, I started out the summer by writing a piece that kind of bluntly criticized the current political administration. But it was missing something. We can get our pitchforks out of the shed and light our torches all we want, but as writers, it's also important to remember that we're here to entertain. That's what I was trying to do when I decided to switch gears and write a new manuscript titled RAPTURE READY. I wanted to show characters in their fullest selves, experiencing this unfair world we live in and dealing with the cards it has dealt them. For me, this summer, doing this involved taking mental journeys to new worlds and new ways of thinking about my place in the world and the places of those around me. It was a pleasure to share the fruits of my labor at Evenings and Griot and Grey Owl with musical and other collaborators.

I got to Evenings with Elisha and noticed that Keenan and Dylan's cousin Olivia and her guitarist Austin Roepel were already there along with Dylan, the organizer of Evenings. I ping ponged back and forth between Redstart Foods next door to Perfect Lovers and Perfect Lovers, splitting my time between having an enjoyable dinner with my fiancee and doing a sound check with Keenan aka XOXOK. When we got our food and had eaten, I came back and began to read my piece with Keenan's accompaniment. He's a guitarist and vocalist who I met at Oak House after noticing him reading a copy of Best American Short Stories. I told him that I'd been published in a similar anthology (Best Debut Short Stories 2021) and he bought a copy and messaged me on Instagram telling me he enjoyed it. Keenan's work is great. Listen to Jesus Piece if you haven't already! After seeing a few Evenings events, I asked Dylan if I could perform at the next one and he agreed. Keenan and I practiced our collaboration at his house. Over the course of two rehearsal sessions, Keenan introduced a backing drumbeat and some ethereal sounds which were influenced by The Veldt and James Blake and Lil' Yachty's collaborative album Bad Cameo. The second rehearsal involved us figuring out the timing and introducing more musical breaks with coincided with breaks in the opening of the novel. Before I could finish sound checking the entire piece, attendees began to come into the space. We cut the rehearsal short and figured out what the lineup was going to be.

More people arrived. The first were John and Kelly who Elisha and I met out in Carrboro a few weeks ago. My parents and sibling also came to show their support. Cortland Gilliam showed up soon afterward. Coworkers Lakela Atkinson and Calista Malone also attended after I told them about the reading in the hallways of NCCU. A girl and non-binary gang of Elisha and I's mutual friends also showed up after she invited them. It was great to see all of them. I've read in New York, San Antonio, and all over different parts of North Carolina. But, even after writing and performing readings for nearly a decade, I had never performed in my home town of Durham, NC before. It was a different experience just being in the room with so many different people who I knew from different parts of my life and a few who I was encountering for the first time. We talk about audience when we teach and analyze writing. But for the first time, I felt like I had found mine. Destiny Hemphill read first. She infused her emotional and evocative poetry with a soundscape that she'd created. From before she even began to read, it was obvious that we were all in the presence of a personable and talented storyteller. Destiny spoke to the crowd and made us laugh and feel at ease before diving into poems that made us feel. Olivia went next and performed two covers and two original songs. My favorites were the originals and I'm excited to see her career develop. It feels like I got an early listen to something that might be on the airwaves or charts soon.

Victoria Bouloubasis and Dylan introduced me. Loan, the third part of their organizing trio, couldn't be there, but I appreciated the sentiments he passed along through Dylan and Victoria. The excerpt I read involved the main character jumping out of a passenger airplane without a parachute. It's the beginning of the novel and, it's written with humor and reflection. But I wondered how it would land. I've been in moments where I've felt the gravity of difficult situations weighing down on me as all of us have. I haven't always been able to respond in ways that were constructive. And this excerpt involved a character going through something similar. I hoped it wouldn't bum everybody out is what I'm trying to say. Even though he lives through the experience, in his own otherworldly way, I was still a little worried that it might set off alarm bells or get a quiet response from a distanced audience who wanted to compartmentalize Amante Wilcox's pain away from their own. But that's not what happened. They got it. They laughed at the parts that were meant to be funny. They groaned at parts that were emotional or difficult. They listened and they empathized and afterward, they came up to me and expressed their desires to read more. I never thought of myself as a speculative writer. And I never thought of speculative fiction as the kind of thing that would get people to connect with the most difficult kinds of things a person can go through. But that's what happened. They understood what I was trying to express. They saw what my character was going through. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

This past weekend, a few days after Evenings, I got the chance to share my work and experiences again through the Griot and Grey Owl Conference. I reached out to the festival's organizer, Khalisa, after seeing her post on social media that she was looking for storytellers. She responded and invited me to participate. I was able to attend Griot and Grey Owl and participate as a panelist in their All Access Publishing Roundtable and as a featured story teller in their Legacy of Black Storytelling brunch. The weekend started out with an opening ceremony where Crystal Wilkinson, Nnenna Freelon, Pierce Freelon, and Alexis McKenney performed stories that honored the tradition of the griot in powerful ways. I made my way to a rooftop celebration at the Durham Hotel and met more storytellers and creatives. The trend continued the next day when I participated in the All Access Publishing Roundtable. From Halle Hill to Cedric Tillman, the panel was packed with a variety of publishing experiences. I shared a little bit about my TOKEN submission story and my background with various fellowships and as a professor. In the breakout sessions, where audience members could ask questions to individual panelists, I shared all I knew about things like submitting to journals and finding an agent. The people I spoke with seemed grateful to hear what I had to say. I look forward to keeping in touch with them through social media and other channels. The rest of the day was enjoyable from an informative panel on writing strong women characters to a dinner where I got to meet and reconnect with poets and writers like J. Rycheal, Marlanda Dekine, and Neesha Powell. After an amazing poetry slam, I called it a night early, because I knew I was going to be given the chance to share my work the next day.

The brunch (which was today) was tastefully decorated and curated. I got to talk to more storytellers from around the region and, after we'd had some really good chicken and waffles, I was given the chance to share an excerpt of RAPTURE READY with a crowd of other writers and creatives. Elisha joined me and at our table were an eclectic group of women ranging from Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery, who I'd meet over dinner at Neomonde the night before, and Heather, a librarian from Duke. J. brought the house down with a rousing opening poem and Nnenna read a heart-wrenching excerpt from her new work Beneath the Skin of Sorrow: Improvisations on Loss that juxtaposed grief against the works of John Coltrane. I was introduced by J. and passed the mic by Willa Brigham and Mitch Capel. And I dove into an abridged excerpt, which gave a sense of how Amante is feeling at the beginning of the novel and the chance he's presented with to do something about it. Mitch performed the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Willia performed an original folklore piece. I felt honored to be in the presence of such accomplished and talented performers. The brunch was meant to be a conversation with the elders. As Khalisa explained, I'm not quite an elder yet, even if the grey hairs make it look that way from certain angles. But I felt like the excerpt I read was about connecting with elders. Amante is spurred to make the choice he makes by the sight of his grandmother who passed away five years prior to the present moment of the story. I did my best to speak where I felt like I could contribute to the conversation during our Q and A. I also learned a lot about the different ways that storytelling can embody and move through us as vessels—whether it spurs us to bring an ancestor's pants on stage, as Mitch did during the panel, or to sing as we speak as J. did during the opening poem. "Heavy Duty," Willa said to me, after I'd finished reading my excerpt. It meant a lot after seeing her perform. All of it does, the storytellers I met and reconnected with this week, the way they reacted to and encouraged my words, and the potential for writing to continue to guide my life as I've allowed it to do for so long. 

Thanks Dylan, Victoria, Loan, Khalisa, and Eric for the opportunity to be a part of these commemorations of written life this week. And thanks to everyone I met and conversed with over the course of these events for pouring into me the kind of encouragement and community that makes the choice of a writing life seem obvious. As Andre 3000 said today at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, "Big things start in small rooms." But here's the thing y'all, the rooms are starting to get bigger.