Charlotte Lit’s Blog

Welcome to Charlotte Lit’s literary arts blog. What you’ll find here: reviews, interviews, craft essays, previews of literary arts events, and anything else that catches our attention.

It Is Okay to Weep in the Aisles

It is okay to weep in the aisles wiping tears before handling grapes, sampling wines. Red or white?  Just choose. Your heart won’t know the difference. No matter that the woman with the chic side braid—her child pushing the cart, training to become  a customer— stares at you as though you’re out of line, then […]

On Parachutes and Literary Citizenship

Lately, I’ve been thinking about parachutes. Not related to jumping out of airplanes and free-falling until you snap your parachute open. Rather, I remember over thirty years ago and filing into my school gymnasium along with the rest of my first-grade class. We sprinted around the perimeter of the room for a warm-up, our eyes […]

Reverse Physics

If millions lose their health care, will anyone hear in the forest of the innocents? Gravity will run upward like a cyclone sweeping all before it, the apple will go skyborne from the grass into the golden leaves, thousands will stand outside the orbit of hospitals, clinics, doctors, the chemistry of addiction will grow inward— […]

When You’re the Emcee

Hosting a literary reading? Here’s poet Richard Allen Taylor on the fine points of being the emcee. Emcees worry about making the colossal gaffe. Just ask Steve Harvey, who famously announced the wrong winner in the Miss Universe pageant. A friend of mine, John B, made a less colossal mistake when he served as emcee […]