I love books. I love to study the history of people, science, civilization and all manner of things. I especially love to explore stories that relate to military history and operations, more so to those tales related to my time in the Navy when I served in the Far East. I also love photography, art of all kinds, and the stories of individuals who have overcome great adversity to survive in our crazy world of today. Books of all kinds are essential in my quest for knowledge, and I am often spellbound as I come to the photography section in a library or bookstore.
I also love to write; to tell my stories in a way that grabs people’s attention, and in a way that engages them and leaves them seeking more. My theme this year for ALIVE is to write about the arts, and today about the art of writing. Where better to publish my stories than a beautiful, well designed magazine produced by this professional publishing company, ALIVE, headquartered in downtown Alamo.
According to Merriam-Webster, writing is considered an art if it is used creatively, with skill and imagination to create something that is beautiful and emotionally expressive. Some writing is considered fine art, including poetry. In my recent columns, I have explored how certain aspects of art have enriched life, making it more rewarding, fulfilling, and perhaps, more tolerable. Today, I will examine how a poorly conducted university class in playwriting challenged a college student to change her course of study from that of becoming an actress, to that of becoming a playwright and eventually an author of richly rewarding, fictional tales.
In September of this year, while serving as a member of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation board, I was involved with communications and 
photography. I was invited by the Artist-in-Residency program committee to become acquainted with and write about their current guest and artist-in-residence at the Tao house, educator, playwright and author, Kara Lee Corthron. While doing a little research before I was able to meet with her in person, I discovered that while she is a relatively young woman, she certainly is not a novice writer. Miss Corthron has already written 11 plays, a couple of which have just been produced in significant playhouses, garnering excellent reviews. Welcome to Fear City closed at the Kansas City Repertory Theater this past May, as did Listen for the Light, which closed following its world’s premier at the 99 seat Know Theater of Cincinnati. Her debut Simon and Schuster novel, The Truth of Right Now was released last year, and in one of New York City’s premier book stores, Bank Street Books, it has been declared (in September of this year) as one of their Best Books of 2018. Further, it won the Parent’s Choice Gold Award as well.
So how did this very talented lady’s journey evolve from a happy and secure little eight-year-old in Cumberland, Maryland, to a life that drastically changed (basically overnight), when her father passed away, totally unexpectedly, of an embolism in that same year? Kara Lee’s father was an accountant at a paper mill and her mother was a dedicated housewife and mother to several children. Economically, in the 1940s, Cumberland was a thriving manufacturing center with successful industries in glass, breweries, textiles, tire manufacturing, and iron and steel works. But following World War II, these traditional industries began to lose ground to newer technologies and better merchandise transportation. By the 1970s and 1980s, the economy in her home town continued in a serious financial decline. A continuing reduction of jobs in the region and her mother’s lack of money management skills became even more of an issue when her mother contracted heart disease. Eventually her mother became completely disabled. This series of terrible events drove the family into deep financial trouble and psychological despair.
In this community at that time, there were not a lot to opportunities for youngsters of African American lineage to engage in any form of the arts. Kara Leewas able to take dancing lessons and discovered that she loved to dance. Because of her talent as a dancer, she thought that maybe she could get involved in theater. She did, and it was in theater that she did not feel awkward anymore. The first theatrical show she performed in was Jesus Christ Superstar, which became a door opener for her. For the first time she felt truly secure on a path that she could live with and love.
She worked hard and with help from the family, made it to college and therein, focused on theater. She fell in love with dramatic literature 
and her favorite part in her theater classes came when she actually got to engage in “scene studies” from scripts. At the same time, she also began to discover that rehearsing and reading the same lines over and over in order to memorize a script and rehearsing for hours was starting to bore her. She then realized that she preferred writing and the research that goes into writing. During her last year of college, she took her first playwriting class but found it a very poorly conducted and disappointing class, with a teacher who primarily talked about writing plays but provided the students little opportunity to actually write plays. She said that during the first six months of the class, they simply talked about what they would write, and by the time the class was over, they ended up writing themselves only about ten minutes of a script. Totally frustrating! However, the frustration that she experienced from this class turned out to be good for her, because it made her challenge herself to start writing her own plays.
As I prepared for my interview, I did not have ready access to Kara Lee’s plays, so I instead purchased her novel, The Truth of Right Now. I wanted to properly prepare myself for a meaningful interview about how this writer’s love of writing evolved. As I held the book in my hand, I already knew from the publisher’s praise sheet that the story was about “a touching romance and a poignant coming-of-age story that was considered deeply in tune with the harsh realities many teenagers and young adults face today.” From sexual assault to domestic abuse, to systematic racism, Lily (a white girl) and Dari (a black boy) reveal the perils in their complicated romance with each other. While reading this story, I was able to better appreciate what it must be like to endure life while “living black.” I was so taken with this book—captivated by its realism—that I could hardly put it down, sometimes reading until late into the morning hours. Several times, tears welled up in my eyes as poignant echoes of my own life; my own trials and tribulations and disappointments with family, seemed to parallel Lily and Dari’s family life.
The Truth of Right Now is not only a great novel, but a great work of art. If you should purchase and read this fine novel, and I hope you do, there is a section (like a chapter) entitled, “A Brief Detour – The Ballad of Lily and Bobby,” that is a brilliant detour indeed, making this one of the more unique novels I have ever read.
Kara Lee explained to me that many different issues of social injustice often come up in the world today and that is what motivates her to focus on such issues in her writing. Her next book has a working title of Daughters of Jubilation, and even though she says it may be a year or more before it is published, I will look forward to its arrival.
Kara Lee came to the Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence program to continue her research for another play, which is well on its way to publication. The working title of the new play is What Are You Worth, and is based on her discoveries about the past, present and the future of slavery in our country, which she learned while working at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati last year, where they have an entire room dedicated to slavery. It was there that she learned that there are roughly thirty million enslaved people (in one fashion or another) worldwide, including approximately sixty thousand in our own country, right now. I am looking forward to this play as well. As I am writing this article, Kara Lee has just informed me that she is now excitedly on her way to Los Angeles as she has an opportunity to work as a script-writer for the movie industry. Another door has just opened!
Perhaps it is time for you to consider writing your story. If you have questions as how to approach having your own book published, be sure to visit alivebookpublishing.com. Or better yet, email or call for a personal, confidential, free, one-on-one appointment with one of our publishing consultants! It’s all very friendly, personal and informative. Call 925-837-7303 for more info!
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