Mark your calendars! Our
chapter’s SinC 30th Anniversary Party is June 10. With this in mind,
our president Sally Handley started off our monthly meeting with a list of
“volunteer opportunities” we can all sink our teeth into. Thanks to all who
stepped up to the plate to make sure the celebration is a success. But we’re
still looking for folks to help serve refreshments on the big day. Contact
Sally if you’re ready, willing and able.
After our standard, but never
boring, round of introductions (18 members and guests attended this month’s
meeting), Sally introduced our guest speaker, the highly entertaining Dr.
Warren Moore. When he’s not at Newbury College doing the English professor
thing, Warren writes noir fiction. He regaled us with anecdotes about his
personal writer’s journey, and about what’s happening in the Newbury College
English Department.
Highlights of Warren’s talk
included his explanation of how he came to write short stories, and how he came
to know Lawrence Block. Put the two together, and sure enough, Warren’s stories
have appeared in several anthologies edited by Block. Not too shabby for a guy
who says he feels “Pinocchio moments” whenever he labels himself a “real”
writer!
Warren also talked about a new
scholarly journal to be published annually by Newbury College, Studies in Crime Writing. Look for the
the first issue this fall. It will be free on-line and include only articles which
have been subject to a rigorous peer review process.
Warren, who clearly knows fiction
from the academic perspective, the writer’s perspective, and the reader’s
perspective, left us with this encouraging fact—genre fiction lasts. For
example, people are still reading and enjoying Zane Grey, Agatha Christie, and
Dashell Hammet.
Intrigued? Check out Warren’s
noir novel, Broken Glass Waltzes, and
his short stories in those anthologies edited by Lawrence Block, Dark City Lights and In Sunlight or Shadow. And don’t forget
our party in June!
Respectfully Submitted,
Cindy Blackburn,Chapter Secretary
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