LUCIE WINBORNE

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May 25, 2020 By Lucie Winborne Leave a Comment

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: HOLLY MANDELKERN

Being a “word doctor” involves more than just finding and correcting typos, grammatical errors, and structural flaws. For me, and I feel sure most other proofreaders and editors, it carries a privilege—not just of being entrusted with something very precious to the writer that likely involved years of work, research, hope, uncertainty, and even rejection, but of peeking through a window into an author’s life and heart. Some of the books I’ve worked on have surprised me. Others have taught me. A few have rather bored me. (Just keeping it real here. Not every book is for every reader—or editor.)

Proofreading poetry collections is a rarity for me, but since I write poems myself on occasion and have enjoyed the collections of diverse voices, I was flattered to be asked to be “the final eye” on Holly Mandelkern’s Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry. I didn’t know Holly well, as we only crossed paths in a monthly poetry workshop administered by a mutual friend, which I didn’t even attend on a regular basis. But that title certainly caught my eye. And piqued my curiosity.

Perhaps rather naively, I expected the usual collection of just poems. I was surprised and pleased to embark on a journey through a part of history I knew relatively little about, meeting new heroes, heroines, and “just plain folks” like you and me of varying religious faiths and nationalities, spanning youth to old age, who were caught in a net of horrific madness. Holly, along with illustrator Byron Marshall, brought them to life again not just through words, but drawings, maps, and some of Holly’s own travel and family memories.

Beneath White Stars is a book that a proofreader doesn’t forget.

To date I’ve served in that capacity for nearly a hundred books. I’d like to do a hundred more. And I’ve intended for a good while to feature in this blog some of those titles and authors that made a particular impression on me. Because sometimes you just want to get to know—and share—something of the heart behind the pen.

So now let’s hear from teacher, lecturer, and poet Holly Mandelkern.

* * * * *

LW: Was Beneath White Stars your first poetry collection?

HM: Yes, it is my first poetry collection. A sober start! Then again, I recently came across my report card from kindergarten. The teacher stated, “Works quietly, purposefully, and with industry. Sings well with obvious enjoyment. Expresses ideas thoughtfully and soberly.” Insightful, wasn’t she? (I love music but am not a singer.)  

Holly Mandelkern

LW: What prompted your choice of subject—and in poetic form, for that matter?

HM: I had traveled to Poland and Israel in the 1990s with other teachers to study the Holocaust. After that trip I started teaching at our local Holocaust museum for summer workshops for teachers. There was never enough time to cover topics in the allotted time. So I decided that I would start writing on the subject, not knowing where this would lead. About this time I was returning to poetry, and I found that the distillation required for poetry corresponded to the limitations of what could be conveyed on this topic for various reasons. 

LW: You take us on quite the history lesson. What did your research process look like?

HM: The process started with the story of my father, who had been a lead bombardier and American POW at Stalag Luft III deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Hearing his story made me want to know more about the reason that he had enlisted in the Army Air Corps and if his situation as a POW was especially precarious because he was a Jew. The next step was this teachers’ trip to Poland and Israel, where we visited historic sites in Poland and studied with wonderful historians and survivors in Israel. When I  started putting pen to paper, I began with my notes from this trip, conversations with survivors, extensive survivor testimonies, and websites such as that of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, and numerous other extensive sources. But the more I learned, the more I realized what I didn’t and couldn’t know.     

LW: Were there any historical figures who particularly stood out or “spoke” to you?

HM: Norbert Wollheim, a young man from Berlin who was noted for his constancy in doing good for the community before, during, and after the war. I met this elegant gentleman on our teachers’ trip.

Vladka Meed served as a courier for the underground in Warsaw, smuggling information, maps, and dynamite to the Jewish resistance. To preserve the story of resisters, she established a program to train hundreds of American teachers to be able to teach this history. She led our teachers’ trip.

Petr Ginz was a child prodigy in  many fields. From Prague, he had already written several books and a Czech-Esperanto dictionary by the age of fourteen. When he was taken to Theresienstadt, he recorded his rigorous studies there: his academic and artistic work and his starting and editing a journal of work by his peers. His own reading list is sweeping in scope.

Petr Ginz, gassed to death at Auschwitz when he was just 16.

Abraham Sutzkever was a young poet, partisan, preserver of life and culture from Vilna, Lithuania. He survived, moved to Israel, and became one of the most noted Yiddish poets of his time—or any time.

Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum applied his skills as a historian and community organizer to establish a historical archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest source of information on what happened there. It was also a repository of prewar Jewish culture in case all Jews were destroyed.

The  altruistic rescuers: Chiune Sugihara (yes, Japanese!) in Kovno, Lithuania; Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, Hungary; and Catholic priest Father Bruno Reynders in Belgium.

LW: Tell us about your writing process. Did you have a set schedule, a certain time or number of hours you wrote each day? Any “writing rituals” you observed?

HM: My writing, researching, and thinking overlapped. So I was diligent in doing some of each on most days for about five years, taking breaks to write some lighter poetry to stay balanced.

LW: How did you find an illustrator and editor?

HM: The illustrator attended a talk I gave on Petr Ginz and other resisters. Byron Marshall was captivated by Petr, and we met a month later. Byron had done a sketch of Petr, and I asked him if he would illustrate my book. “I’d be honored,” was his response. A neighbor insisted I meet her granddaughter, “a fabulous copy editor.” She was so right!! I also had a wonderful poetry editor, Al Rocheleau, and a great history editor, Mitchell Bloomer, resource teacher at our local Holocaust museum. Mitchell and I met on the teachers’ trip many years ago. I met you through poetry circles, and I knew I wanted you to proofread as the last very careful reader of my manuscript!   

LW: What has been the response to Beneath White Stars? Did it match or exceed your hopes?

HM: The response of readers and educators has been very positive. Church groups and book clubs are fascinated with individuals in the book. I’ve done several presentations for teachers and students, but I’d like to reach more teachers. Just this month, though, Dade County and the University of Miami included my book on a recommended reading list that included big names in the field. I wrote the book because I could and felt I needed to, and I really didn’t have expectations. One of my biggest joys was reconnecting after decades to my twelfth grade English teacher in Jacksonville who has read the book three times. She asked, “How did you ever write this book?” I was able to answer truthfully, “Because I had you for my teacher.”   

LW: Do you have any recommendations for authors just starting out, or those looking to publish their first book?    

HM: Persistence outranks inspiration. Know that what you are sharing will serve an important purpose.    

LW: Do you have any other books currently in the works, or planned for the future?

HM: Right now I’m working with musicians and composers who are setting some of the poems in Beneath White Stars to songs for an album. An Irish folksinger, Brendan Nolan, has done four beautiful songs. The cantor from my synagogue has done another, and I’m starting to work with an organization of women composers, too. Next up may be another historically based collection.       

* * * * *

For more about Holly and Beneath White Stars, visit http://hollymandelkern.com/. In the meantime, here’s a sample from the book.

HEARTBEATS

At Amsteltrust Park in Amsterdam Anne Frank
(in photograph dated June '38)
stands beneath trees with sunshine as spotlight,
light summer dress, wide-brimmed hat for shade.

Posed for a shutter, the shining eyes smile—
birthday or outing her parents had planned?
She cradles a dark rabbit close to her body,
feeling its heartbeat in her hand.

One palm supports the gentle young creature,
the other hand ready to touch its small face.
Guarded and gauging, the rabbit relaxes
its vigilant ears as it rests in its space.

Immured, though moving in stillness, Anne
with cruel sleight of hand is removed from her ground
where she stands—silent, captive in Amsterdam Annex,
betrayed to the hunters. I hear her heart pound.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Abraham Sutzkever, Anne Frank, Auschwitz, Beneath White Stars, Chiune Sugihara, Father Bruno Reynders, Holly Mandelkern, Holocaust, Norbert Wollheim, Petr Ginz, poetry, Raoul Wallenberg, Vladka Meed

January 1, 2020 By Lucie Winborne Leave a Comment

In Praise of the Big Honking Reading List, Or: The Real Reason Ponce de Léon Got it Wrong About the Fountain of Youth

On this first day of the new year, I’m indulging in one of my favorite activities—reading. Well, I don’t know that I should call it an indulgence when I’m getting paid to do it for a deadline, but fortunately I’m also enjoying Denise Weimer’s Spring Splash, a novel about competitive teen swimmers that was inspired by the author’s own daughters and will be published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. I’m also finishing up another forthcoming LPC title, Hope’s Gentle Touch by Laura Hodges Poole. Quite a different story, that one, featuring a young woman who escapes from a severely abusive marriage and slowly learns to love—and trust—again.

There’s no shortage of books awaiting my attention. Not proofreading assignments, but books in general. In fact, they now number in the hundreds, which was a rather alarming prospect, especially since the list just keeps growing, at a slow but steady pace. What can I say: People will keep writing books, and recommending books, with no sympathy whatsoever for my dilemma. I’ve even taken to deleting most emails from freebooksy.com, since I fear my vulnerability to the temptation of adding ever more titles to the pile. As I’ve wryly remarked a few times to various friends, I have so many books to read, I can never die.

Then I had a short chat with a friend and fellow reader with a TBR not dissimilar to mine, who joked that I had discovered the Fountain of Youth. And I thought . . .

Dang . . . she’s RIGHT!

Too many books? Who cares? Of course I will have time to read them all! Hear that, Ponce de Léon? You didn’t need to visit Florida all those years ago! You just needed a fifteen-page reading list going back over six years and more than four hundred titles in your laptop’s Kindle app!*

Juan Ponce de Léon

With that settled, it was time to think about how many of them I could, and really wanted to, get around to in 2020. I’m not like some folks who plow through dozens of books per year, gleefully surpassing even their own expectations. No siree, I figured that at my typical rate, along with my normal daily responsibilities (day job! Housework! Grocery shopping! Cooking! Exercise! Errands! Car maintenance! Playing with the cat!), the occasional outings with friends, and monthly proofreading assignments, I’d better err on the conservative side of one per month, with a healthy division between memoir, biography, self-help, the craft of writing, and fiction. In no particular order, the top twelve came down to:

  1. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. (A classic. Period. As one Amazon.com reviewer put it, “Most of the current speakers in the area of personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy and others owe a debt to Maxwell Maltz for the foundation of their material.” But even that seems like an understatement.)
  2. As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling by Anne Serling. (I’m a great fan of The Twilight Zone and have seen enough fellow afficionados recommend this to feel sure it was a must-read.)
  3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Millions of copies sold. Called a classic that should be on every writer’s bookshelf. Over 4,000 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. Plus—it’s Stephen King, peeps.)
  4. The 10 Commandments of Author Branding by Shayla Raquel. (I need to learn about self-marketing. From someone who freely admits she “used to suck rotten eggs at marketing” and clearly no longer does. After all, she makes a full-time living as an author/editor/marketing coach and is nearly three decades my junior to boot.)
  5. Writing the Cozy Mystery by Nancy J. Cohen. (Because I enjoy the light escapism of this genre and aspire to write my own first cozy in 2020. Which is a slightly daunting prospect as I’ve never attempted a mystery of any sort before.)
  6. Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante. (I’m a nearly lifelong fan of Louisa, and that was one hell of a family.)
  7. 30 Days to Understanding the Bible by Max Anders. (I see this as something of a precursor to one day actually reading through the entire Bible in one year, as I’ve tried and abandoned twice already—and getting more out of that than simply saying I read the entire Bible in one year.)
  8. Discover Your Writing Self by Andi Cumbo-Floyd. (Help me, Andi.)
  9. The Cracked Spine (A Scottish Bookshop Mystery) by Paige Shelton. (I love a good cozy mystery. I love bookshops. And I would love to someday visit Scotland. ‘Nuff said.)
  10. Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. (The definitive work to date on one seriously crazy story. Plus, I’m also planning to resume work on my second poetry collection, Riding With Bonnie and Clyde, and this is a vital resource to that end—along with book #11.)
  11. The Shape of Poetry: A Practical Guide to Writing and Reading Poems by Peter Meinke and Jeanne Clark Meinke. (See above.)
  12. Farming, Friends, and Fried Bologna Sandwiches by Renea Winchester. (Renea, I loved your debut novel, so now it’s time for me to check out your nonfiction. Thanks for the autographs!)

* * * * *

But that’s enough about me. I’ve got READING to do. How about you? Do you have a Big Honking Reading List that will allow you to live pretty much forever? How many titles are on it? How do you prioritize them? (Or do you even bother?) Tell me about it!

 

*Yes, I know old Ponce wasn’t really searching for a fabled “Fountain of Youth,” but it’s a good story.

 

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Andi Cumbo-Floyd, Biography, Bonnnie and Clyde, Eve LaPlante, Fiction, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, Louisa May Alcott, marketing, Maxwell Maltz, Memoir, Mysteries, Peter Meinke, poetry, Ponce de Leon, Psycho-Cybernetics, Reading, Renea Winchester, Shayla Raquel, Stephen King, The Twilight Zone, Writing

July 14, 2019 By Lucie Winborne Leave a Comment

IT’S LIKE YOU’RE JUST BEHIND A DOOR

Dear Lorraine,

It’s twenty years ago today that you left this earth, and I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.

About how can it actually be twenty years.

Lorraine Coleman Terrell
December 1997

About your laugh. And your strength. Our shared love of embroidery. Your strong legs walking beside me as we did a volksmarch for the Mid-Florida Milers club.

I’ve been thinking about you under a white sheet in a hospice bed in South Florida, gaunt and whispery with a mouth full of sores, ready, so ready, to leave your cancer-racked body behind.

I’ve been remembering how Susan was the only one of the group of your fellow stitchers who managed to hold it together on that last visit. Susan was a minister and a hospice chaplain and accustomed to dealing with the dying, and when she said to you, “Lorraine, if the Lord calls you today, are you ready to go?” you answered, faintly but truthfully, “Oh, yes.”

It was twenty years ago today and forty-eight hours after that last goodbye that you “slipped the surly bonds of earth.” I was thankful I’d made that car trip, though it was mighty hard to fight the tears threatening to break through my determination that your last view of me would not be of me crying. Mighty hard to keep my voice from cracking when I managed to say “I love you” for the first and last time.

Just a few more seconds, and you would have seen me crying.

I’ve been remembering how we met and how we walked and your old silver Mercedes; how, unlike me, you weren’t afraid of getting lost and astonished me with all your alternate routes to get us to our destinations.

I’ve been remembering how angry I was at God when I heard the awful news through that awful phone call at someone’s house (whose was it?) on a Thursday night where we were all stitching, that call from your new life in a new city, that I’d been happy for even though it took you away from us; the call in which you admonished us to not start planning your funeral yet. Oh, Lorraine, how like you that was!

Pancreatic cancer, you said.

About which I knew nothing.

But a little later, when I knew a little more, I couldn’t understand it. I’m sure you couldn’t either. Did you get mad at God like I did? Ask Him “why now,” when everything was going so damn well?

And I’ve been remembering another phone call—the last we had before that last visit, how you told me that you were doing better. I’ll never know for sure if you truly believed it or if, as someone implied and now seems most likely, you just wanted to put my mind at ease. I can still hear the relief in my voice as I said how glad I was.

Not knowing the doctors had given you all of six months.

Or that you’d last only four.

* * *

There’s another thing I don’t understand, old friend. How it still seems like you’re just behind a door. How it is that even while the sadness is gone, and the anger, a tiny part of my brain has never quite accepted the truth. I guess it doesn’t really matter, since I also believe you’re very much alive in a world with no more partings.

I wrote you a poem after you left us, a poem that has never seemed good enough, but it is so hard to write about someone who has died without sounding maudlin (at least it was for me!), and you didn’t have a maudlin bone in your body that I ever saw, though you didn’t have the easiest life.

But I think you would have liked it. It was twenty years ago today, and I am thinking of you, and so I wanted to share this poem again, even with those who never knew you. To honor you.

I’m glad you were my friend. I’m glad there were no barriers of generation between us in spite of our quarter-century age difference.

And I’ll see you again one day, just behind that door.

* * *

WE ARE STILL WALKING

The hardest trail we walked
was the railbed in Savannah
abandoned to all but the promise of snakes—

gray gravel with no grass for our feet,

a canopy of sun leaving just breath to breathe

until water was manna that I poured on my neck,
thinking “Never enough,”

until I walked the floors of a hospice
waxed clean of tread and tears

while the white knife of cancer
carved the flesh from your bones
and the timbres from your voice:

That day I left you wrapped in sheets
and bags of fluid, when all the water in my eyes
would never be enough. I knew then
I’d been wrong, that this path was the hardest.

Yet we are still walking. You stride
across my mind with your resolute tread
and strong back unbent. I can level
the trail of memory as I wish, discarding
bad days like pebbles kicked from dirt. There

my footing is sure and you are still beside me
with your face turned towards the sun,

and we are still walking.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: cancer, death, friendship, Lorraine Terrell, memories, poetry, walking

July 9, 2019 By Lucie Winborne Leave a Comment

30 BOOKS AND 30 THANKS: RENEA WINCHESTER

Once again I ended up glued to a book I wasn’t sure I’d like.

It’s actually pretty nice when that happens.

If you’ve read previous entries in this series, you might recall that I hesitated over accepting an assignment to proofread Mike Dellosso’s Midnight Is My Time, as I’m not generally a fan of dystopian literature, and how I ended up glued to the fast-moving, scary, can’t-figure-out-where-the-heck-this-is-going-but-can-hardly-stand-the-wait-to-find-out plot, which was adapted from a passage in Revelation that I’d never seen or heard of (especially since I tend to avoid that particular book of the Bible).

Renea Winchester

I found myself recalling those feelings of hesitancy recently when I was approached with another assignment from the same publisher (and my regular client), Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Not because there was anything dystopian or frighteningly prophetic about it, but because it came with something unprecedented in my work for them—a disclaimer. Specifically, that there was some language (not too strong, though) and a rape scene (not too graphic).

I started skimming the manuscript as soon as I received it, looking to see just how bothersome that one scene would actually be. Yes, it did make me uncomfortable. As it should any reader. But I kept on skimming, and at first superficial glance I didn’t really think I would bond with these characters. Still, I’d already said yes, so back to page one I went and started reading in earnest. And, as with Midnight Is My Time, I soon found myself so glad I did.

Because, Renea Winchester . . .

Remember this?

Girl, you can tell a story! You can set a scene. With just the mention of a few old product names you took me back to an early-seventies family room where I sat facing the TV while my mom wrapped my stick-straight, Dippity-do’d hair around pink foam rollers. And then to another family room in front of another TV, where, like Doretta, I also crushed on One Life to Live‘s Marco Dane, snake and cad that he was.

Gerald Anthony as Marco Dane (Wikipedia)

No, I’ve never experienced an unwanted and unplanned teen pregnancy, or worked a blue-collar job in a textile factory. I’m a stringent saver but I’ve never had to scrimp like Barbara and her mother Pearlene, to the point of scrounging for coupons in a landfill. I’ve never had to eschew buying “fancy” Charmin toilet paper or lived in a rundown trailer with a “makeshift picnic area” created from discarded power company spools. (Kudos to the creativity, Carole Anne).

But I’ve lived in a three-generation household of strong-minded Southern women who knew a thing or two about making do. Gotten laid off as a result of economic decisions made by the powers that be. And oh, how delighted I was to see things were FINALLY looking up for our trio of gals at the end. Still . . . you didn’t give me everything I wanted, Renea. There were still secrets. And it was clear they were going to stay secrets. How I wanted just one of them to be revealed. (I bet you know which one.) How I wanted justice even though the time for it was past. How I wanted to see at least one skeleton released from its stuffy black closet.

You didn’t give me that, but it’s okay. Because that’s how real life works so much of the time.

And this book is full of real life. You had me almost trembling from the comfort of my bedroom recliner on a night that started—and should have ended—with a young girl’s dreams. Almost sick with dread at the prospect of a pink slip. Recalling some of the challenges my mother faced while caring for an elderly parent as I watched your Barbara navigate the challenges of her mother Pearlene’s decline. Grinning at Pearlene”s malapropisms like “crotch pot” and “cue-pins.” Inwardly raging at the dismissive labeling of underprivileged kids as “rejects.”

Oh, Renea, here I am once again in danger of giving away a little too much, even as I think, Girl, you can tell a story.

And how did you? I wondered. Tell this particular one so realistically. Was it mostly good research, or could there be a shade of Barbara in you?

I found out when I reached your Author’s Note and Acknowledgements. Bryson City is a real North Carolina town, and it was your town. The Maroon Devils were and are a real football team. The folks rich and poor, sane and drunk, making do and making out, may have been fictionalized, and yet they were real.

No wonder you could tell such a story. No doubt much of it was due to that mysterious, God-given gift handed out to future writers in their cradles, but I doubt I’ll ever forget how the gaze of that little freckle-faced girl locked with yours from a window in a trailer park, or how your brother said that fated day, “There’s your book” while pointing to that trailer park.

Can you thank him for me? As I thank you for respecting and listening to and honoring the voice of the storyteller within you and giving us Outbound Train?

Dang it, with a voice like yours, Renea, I’m thinking I’m going to have to check out some of your other books as well.

(Look for Outbound Train on April 1, 2020 from Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas.)

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Bryson City, Dippity-do, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, Marco Dane, Maroon Devils, One Lilfe to Live, Renea Winchester

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