Book Review: What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, by Michele Filgate

May 10, 2019 Book Review TCR Daily
By Nathania Seales Oh

 

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About goes beyond the catchy title and delivers a visceral account of maternal relationships that span from childhood memory to adult reckoning. Michele Filgate curates a touching anthology with authors who are not only authentic but often unforgiving as they examine the role their mothers play or have played in their lives. They dissect the mother-and-child dynamic as it currently exists or as expired, while searching for the truth. Stories range from hysterical to heartbreaking, all the while transcending social, cultural, and economic boundaries. Each essay is both unique and universal in detailing the writers’ desire to be loved and understood, just as they also yearn to understand their mothers. They resolve to see their moms as real people—flawed and beautiful, hated and loved.

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The Promised Land

May 7, 2019 Nonfiction TCR Daily
by: Scotte Burns

Sunshine changes the world under your nose. There’s one kind of smell from pavement right after it rains, and a slightly different one when the sun heats it to a muggy steam afterward. Freshly mowed grass becomes muskier under the sun’s blanket, pine forests sharper in its embrace. On a motorcycle, immersion in the land’s constantly changing hues, from roadside to horizon, is inevitably chased by these shifting aromas, the speed of light being a bit faster than the speed of smell. And so, as we dove and crested blue-line highways through the pillowy hills of Iowa farmland between Council Bluffs and Des Moines, clouds burned away from the face of the sun, encouraging freshly tilled fields, wildflowers, and sheep farms to vie for dominance in color and scent.

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Schrödinger’s Gun

May 3, 2019 Plays TCR Daily
By Greg A. Smith

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Roland – Male, Caucasian, Twenties
Freeman – Male, African-American, 50+
Griggs – Female, African-American, 25-40

SETTING
A small, bare room. Modern day.

Production History:
Staged Reading – Itinerant Theatre, LA; 2017
Staged Reading – City Theatre, FL; 2018

Awards:
City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting – 2018 Finalist

 

A small, bare room. A metal table in the center, a beaten-up briefcase laid flat on it. Two men sit either side – ROLAND (Caucasian) and FREEMAN (African-American). Both wear civilian clothes, FREEMAN open-carries a gun in a holster. ROLAND appears a little nervous, antsy.

A moment’s uneasy silence.

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Book Review: Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

May 1, 2019 Book Review TCR Daily
By Lindsay Jamieson

New York Times best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson departs from her beloved YA fiction with Shout, her brilliant new memoir written in verse.

Shout, published in March, 2019, marks the twentieth anniversary of Anderson’s groundbreaking novel, Speak, which told the story of Melinda, a 13-year-old who stops speaking after she’s raped. With Shout, Anderson opens a window into the personal experiences that gave her the insight, empathy, and emotion to conjure Melinda, a protagonist who, as she reveals in Shout, has become a hero (and a moniker) for survivors—men and women—of sexual assault. Anderson, like Melinda, was also raped at 13, and she is an ardent believer that words—spoken, shouted, and written—offer a “bridge to escape” the shame. As the last line of the introduction states: “This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.”

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Shaking Coco – A Short Screenplay

April 27, 2019 Screenwriting TCR Daily
By Kevin Kautzman & Abbie Lucas

INT. RITZ GENEVA LOBBY – DUSK

JENNIFER (F 50), a flustered Texan “of a certain age,” enters a bustling hotel lobby. Her flats SLAP against the checkered floor. She checks in with a passport and gold credit card. Très fabu.

Behind her, a polished but anachronistic flapper type FIGURE (F 30) appears and positions herself at the concierge desk. You know her but you don’t. Jennifer DARTS a glance toward the Figure. A faceless hand SWIPES the gold card.

JUMP CUT TO:

INT. THE SUITE – DUSK

The door SHUTS and Jennifer faces Lake Geneva at magic hour: golden, stunning, a heck of a long way from Texas. She reveals and FLICKS a business card: “Thomas Egger Ph.D., Université de Genève.” She places the card onto a surface and takes a toiletry bag from her luggage.

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TCR Talks with Elaine Grogan Luttrull

April 22, 2019 Interview TCR Daily
By Anjali Becker

Elaine Grogan Luttrull is not your average CPA. Through her company, Minerva Financial Arts, Luttrull works to build financial literacy in creative professionals and creative arts organizations, helping people figure out how to make the business side of their creative ventures a financial reality.

Luttrull is also the author of the book Arts & Numbers: A Financial Guide for Artists, Writers, Performers, and Other Members of the Creative Class, a resource for writers (and creative professionals of all stripes) who intellectually understand that financial literacy is important but may not be entirely clear on where to begin.

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Book Review: The Condition of Secrecy by Inger Christensen (translated by Susanna Nied)

April 10, 2019 Book Review TCR Daily
BY: A.M. Larks

“For as human beings, we can’t avoid being part of the artistic process, where source, creation, and effect are inextricably bound together. Here in our necessity,” Inger Christensen writes in her collection of selected essays, The Condition of Secrecy, which contain, in part, her thoughts on writing and its fundamental role in human existence.

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