Natalie Symons: Double Literary Threat

  

BY MARGO HAMMOND

                           

 Double threat: n. a person who is skilled at two things 

      

Meet Natalie Symons. Like a running quarterback on the football field, she is a double threat in the literary world: an award-winning playwright and a top-of-the charts literary thriller writer.

Last September Symons’ play “The People Downstairs” premiered at American Stage after its opening had been delayed by the COVID shutdown. 

It’s her “masterpiece,” declared Peter Nason in Broadway World, a theatre news website based in New York City covering Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, and international theatre productions. In 2021 “The People Downstairs” had received the Broadway World Regional Award for Best Original Script of the Decade. 

Also last September Symons published her first book of fiction, Lies in Bone. The literary suspense novel won a slew of book awards, including The Royal Dragonfly Literary Award, the 2021 Best Book Award from American Book Fest, the Eric Hoffer Literary Award, the NIEA Award. The book also was the 2021 Somerset Grand Prize in literary and contemporary fiction at CIBA (Chanticleer International Book Awards).

 

And last May when Lies in Bone came out as an audiobook, it soared to Number 1 across all categories on Audible, besting such blockbusters as Where the Crawdads Sing, Viola’s Davis’ memoir Finding Me, Matthew McConaughey’s memoir Greenlights and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — and became an international best-seller on Amazon.

When she was a little girl growing up in Buffalo, did Symons dream of being a playwright or a thriller writer?

   

 “Neither,“ she laughed when I reached her by telephone. “I wanted to be an actress.” Her pursuit of a career on the stage eventually did lead to her successful career as a writer for the stage, but it took a pandemic and a theater shutdown to turn her into a thriller writer.

I first saw a Natalie Symons’ play at an “after hours” performance at American Stage in 2013 with a posse of friends that often travel together (the woman who launched the group dubbed us the Wild Women and the label has stuck). The play, Lark Eden, which had been workshopped at Seattle’s Theatre Schmeatre in 2011, certainly offered the Wild Women an appropriately wild journey.

 

Lark Eden traces the life-long friendships of three Southern women, described in the playbill as “girls with skinned knees catching frogs who turned into wizened grandmothers.”  In our production the trio was played by Bonnie Agan, Roxanne Faye and Monica Merryman.

Written in epistolary form with the women writing notes, letters and telegrams to each other over the years, from the Depression era through the early years of the 21st century, the work had us crying and laughing, often at the same time.

“It sneaks up on you,” wrote the Seattle Times at Lark Eden’s premier there. “What begins as a pleasant romp gradually activates more and more emotions.” Critics compared it to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

Symons’ next three plays — The Buffalo Kings, Naming True and, her most recent, The People Downstairs — have all been comedies, some darker than others, but each one carrying a similar emotional punch in the gut as Lark Eden. The Buffalo Kings and The People Downstairs are set in Symons’ hometown of Buffalo while Naming True takes place in a Florida motel room, but all three, like Lark Eden, offer its audiences the healing power of laughter. Laughter, it would seem, is Symons’ trademark.

Natalie Symons, the playwright, that is.

Not so for Symons, the thriller writer.  

When I picked up Lies in Bone, I was expecting to find the same quirky humor that runs through all her plays. But laughter isn’t what drives the narrative in this gothic story of dysfunctional families set in a grim, fictional Pennsylvania steel town called Slippery Elm. What pulls you in is dark suspense, the intriguing story of an unsolved case, the sudden and unexplained disappearance of a child 20 years before the novel begins.

Lies in Bone does include some scenes reminiscent of the striking images Symons uses to such great effect on the stage. The opening scene of the novel features two brothers, the eldest dressed as Spiderman, the younger one in a goofy Huckleberry Hound costume, bicycling through a toxic fog on Halloween eve (one of them becomes the cold case of the novel). The novel also has its share of the kind of quirky characters that memorably people Symons’ plays. But while the exchanges between the narrator of the story (a girl goes by the name of Frank) and her wry, gay friend Ray are amusingly snarky, they never have you laughing out loud like Estelle does in The Buffalo Kings or Miles does in The People Downstairs.    

Why such a stark difference in the use of humor in her plays versus her first novel? 

     

“When I have a play read, even if there are only five people in the audience, or just the director and a lighting operator, I can see if it’s landing, especially the humor,” explains Symons. Not so with her novel. She wasn’t there when her beta readers read her book. 

    

“Beta readers,” Symons says, are what she calls the people who agreed to read her book in progress and offer gentle criticism (“I can’t take anything too harsh,” she laughs). When her beta readers were reading those first drafts, unlike at her live play readings, she couldn’t see if a scene was “landing” or gauge when and if her readers  were getting bored. She had to rely on what they told her they liked or didn’t like. She admits, based on that feedback, she did kill “a few darlings” from those first drafts. But she was never compelled to add humor. 

      

Perhaps writing the novel in isolation during a pandemic drew Symons into a darker place. But despite the lack of humor in Lies in Bone, the literary thriller does have one element in common with all her writing. Like her plays, it celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. “To me, they are all life-affirming stories,” says Symons.

   

Symons also points out an important commonality that links her first play with her first novel: the presence of a dog. 

    

“I can’t get enough of dogs,” admits the playwright/thriller writer. She and her husband Jim just added a second rescue dog, which they named Ted Danson, to her household. “We don't know what he is (a pocket-sized Leonberger? A pocketberger?) but he's ridiculously sweet and he has even helped Chloe get over her thunder anxiety!” she wrote in her newsletter to fans.

Does Symons plan now to toggle between playwriting and book writing? 

     

She certainly isn’t planning to abandon her first literary threat. She is co-writing a play titled Nightsweat with local actor Matthew McGee and is developing a limited series for television. Next February The People Downstairs will have its Western premier in Seattle.

She admits, however, that her current passion is to pursue more novel writing and is working on her next novel. 

Hopefully, she says, that novel will snag a New York publisher who could help her drum up maximum buzz for the work. With Lies in Bone Symons says getting the word out about Lies in Bone was a lot of work. She had to handled most of the publicity push since she opted for a small publishing house (Boyle & Dalton) with a limited budget.

Despite the extra work though, publicity director may be Symons’ third super skill in the literary world. I counted no less than 17 blurbs included in the paperback copy I read, an impressive number for a publicity novice. There is a rave review from Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Lane DeGregory on the cover (“I didn’t know Lane, but I admired her work, so I asked her to read my book. She was incredibly generous”). Inside there are six pages of praise from St. Pete Catalyst editor Bill DeYoung, duPont Registry Tampa Bay Magazine David Warner, fellow authors Lori D. Shannon, Paul Wilborn, Hannah Benitez, Diane Chiddister and Greg Fields, fellow actors J. Elijah Cho and Matthew McGee, fellow playwright and actor Roxanne Fay, The ‘Burg podcaster Cindy Stovall and feature writer Julie Garisto as well as positive reviews from Kirkus, Readers’ Favorite and Broadway World, and Independent Book Review.

And then there was that Number # spot her first novel grabbed on Audiobook, a pr dream.

    

On second thought, make that Natalie Symons, triple literary threat.

This article on Natalie Symons originally was posted in Arts Coast Magazine earlier this month.

ART FOR THE BOOKISH: When Authors Inspire Artists

By Margo Hammond

Every year on our wedding anniversary, my husband and I try to include a museum visit in our celebrations to remind ourselves that marriage is an art. This year — for our 25th on August 25 — we went to an exhibit at the Morean Art Center called Bookish. It was the last day of the show.

For the group show, artists had been asked to submit works based on a book they loved. Their entries were given the same title as the book they chose.

It was an inspiring concept.

Nearly 200 artistic — sculptors, fine art painters, printmakers, photographers. a jewelry maker, mixed media artists, collagists, a Florida folk artist, an Eckerd College student, a Pinellas County school teacher and, appropriately for an exhibition entitled Bookish, a book editor — heeded the call to link books with art.

Tampa Bay Times book editor Colette Bancroft contributed a portrait of hard-boiled crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Labeled The Big Sleep (after Chandler’s first novel featuring iconic detective Philip Marlowe), the piece earned Colette one of the show’s Honorable Mentions. (Colette was my successor at the newspaper, then called the St. Petersburg Times, when I retired as book editor in 2006)

Another former colleague of mine from the St. Petersburg Times also turned up in the show: photographer Joe Wallis. Joe, who works in black-and-white film, also received an Honorable Mention for his entry: a gelatin silver print inspired by Alwyn Scarth’s Vesuvius, a biography of the fiery volcano. 

One of my favorite pieces in the show was inspired by one of my favorite books: Connie Mae Fowler’s Before Women Had Wings. Rebecca Skelton (who is married to Wallis) contributed an angelic figure made with copper wire and wings with hanging feathers. The piece was awarded the Mark Pfeiffer Memorial Award for Sculpture. 

Rebecca wasn’t the only artist to choose a book that I loved.

A robust sculpture by Sallie Hackett Brown that combined parts of pitchforks and barbed wire captured perfectly the grit of working class America that I remembered from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Mary Helen Horne’s textured collage of entangled branches beautifully caught the spirit of The Overstory, Richard Powers’ powerful novel celebrating the intricate communication network of trees.

In Eileen Goldenberg’s mixed media piece, The Handmaid Tale (Margaret Atwood), the grotesque visage of clay popping out of the canvas seemed appropriately terrifying. 

Donna M. Richardson chose to illustrate Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye with a black-and-white drawing of two black figures with bright blue eyes set against a dizzying background of colorful pinwheels, echoing poignantly the novel’s theme of racial disparity. Richardson won the Margaret Murphy Steward Best of Show for the piece.

Ka-Rim Troyli’s pastel portrait of a bowing nude seemed to spring right out of Octavia Butler’s science fiction tale Wild Seed while Joe Terrana’s acrylic painting of ghostly disembodied heads was an eerie evocation of John Grisham’s heart-pounding legal thriller, The Runaway Jury. Terrana capped an Honorable Mentions for his Grisham piece. 

It was fascinating to see how these artist chose to translate books I had read into art. Many of the book titles, however, were entirely new to me. But many of these books are now on my reading list, so intrigued I was by the art they inspired.

Thanks to Judith Villavisanis’ eye-popping mixed media piece of a tree come to life under the light of a full moon (which won the show’s Raymond-James Sponsor Award), I now want to read Canadian Deborah Dunleavy’s  2015 young adult novel about sex, death and grief called The Truth About Trees. Villavisanis’ more demure figurative paintings are currently on display at the Brenda McMahon Gallery in Gulfport. 

Also on my must-read list now is Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by English biologist Merlin Sheldrake. Two artists picked this book: Amanda Izzo created a nature-inspired quilt painting while printmaker Peter Shurtz chose to honor the book with a gouache on paper rich in earth tones.

    I found two works in the show that were prompted by poetry collections: Riley Kinkade’s Lost in My Mind, described as a collection addressing mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, and Devon Attaei's I Can't Sleep...

To illustrate the Kinkade collection, Susan T. Martin, an artist with a bipolar disorder, painted a bespectacled woman in front of a bookshelf filled with cat books. She seemed to be reading Thomas Gray’s “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” to her cat. I’m not sure how this connects to Kinkade’s poetry, but it certainly piqued my interest to find out.

Also inspired by poetry, mixed media artist CeCe Skeith offered a dream-like piece in homage to Devon Attaei’s I Can’t Sleep…: a photograph of a reclining woman severed into strips set among shredded paper and broken watches. Of course she can’t sleep!

I found several pieces in the show based on children’s books.

Appealing to the kid in all of us, Rusty Hammer’s playful wood sculpture of a tower of dogs was inspired by 100 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. It won the show’s Tim Salen Memorial Award.

 

Peter Hynes’ sculpture of clay and acrylic was animated by the original 1740 version of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Villeneuve. A riot of color, it won the John Eckerd Memorial Award.

 

A minimalist bas-relief by Marie Hammer (part of another artist couple in the show!), made entirely of simple wood pieces, brought to life Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. And I half expected Eckerd College student Atlas Chamber’s whimsical rabbit, straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to hop off the pedestal and yell “I’m late, I’m late.”

But then again, a lot of the works in this show seemed to be pushing beyond their normal boundaries. I was struck by, for example, how many of the paintings on display popped out of their usual 2D state. It was as if the book ideas that inspired them could not be limited to a flat surface, but needed to emerge full blown like the images in our heads when we read. Especially enchanting were the wire whiskers emerging into space from Judy Vienneau's entry based on Life Lessons from the Cat, one of the titles in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series by editor and publisher Amy Newark. Vienneau, the founder of Founder and Director, Gulf Coast Artists’ Alliance, Inc., specializes in wire sculpture, mixed media with wire and graphic design.

The work based on the classic Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea also floated out into the viewer’s space, artfully conveying a strong environmental message. Depicting a ship made of two plastic bottles navigating through a sea of corrugated cardboard and paper fish with paper seabirds flying above, artist Dean Fortune mixed media artwork wryly included the label Twenty Inches Under the Sea. Beneath that title was a pull chain with the instructions: Pull Gently Please.

 

Fortune supplied the artwork in rooms at TradeWinds Island Resort and decorated its walls with paintings of fish. Check out a fly-through (a computer-animated simulation) he created for the 2019 Christmas card he designed for the St. Pete Beach hotel.

Some of the pieces in the show left me wondering just what the artist was trying to say about the books they chose — especially if it was a title I hadn’t read yet. Was Kathy Smith inspired by the alcoholic writer in Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend when she painted a man cradling a glass of red wine or was the man in the painting her own lost weekend?

 

Kenwood-based Richard Pollin’s photograph shows a young bearded, long-haired, shirtless man who fell asleep while reading The Absolute Male, a collection of drawings of male nudes by realist artist Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). Was Pollin’s commenting on how boring Eakins' obsession with male nudes was or did he want to provide us with a modern update of the Absolute Male?

 

And who is The Keeper of Happy Endings in the Barbara Davis’ novel Lisa Bagley chose for her piece, a dynamic landscape made of flowing ribbons that seems to move through space?

I guess I’ll have to read the book to find out.

NOTE: A version of this story was posted in Arts Coast Journal on August 30, 2022.

   

Celebrating the #LiteraryLifestyle

Arts Coast Journal has asked me and a number of others to follow for a year the activities of area arts organizations that have received a Pinellas Recovers Grant from Creative Pinellas (via a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts American Rescue Plan). The idea is to gather stories about these groups for a book promoting the importance of fundings for the arts. I'm proud to be part of this project. 

I was assigned two organizations: The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation and TheStudio@620. Cultured Books is a children’s bookstore in a predominantly Black neighborhood which champions stories that provide positive images for Black kids. Through its foundation, it is encouraging reading as a community activity. TheStudio@620 is a unique center that for the past 18 years has promoted inclusion in all of the arts. I look forward to learning  more about both of these institutions.

Below is the first in my series on Cultured Books, posted on the Arts Coast Journal site earlier this month. 

                                                                                                -- Margo Hammond

“Fostering a #literacylifestyle by exposing children to the world -- through art, music and books!"

                                                              -- Cultured Books founder Lorielle Holloway

 

The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation is a nonprofit, book-promoting organization with an unusual mission. Unlike most literacy programs which look to the needs of individual children, CBLF is interested in fostering literacy throughout an entire community — the Black community of South St. Pete.

“It’s not just about focusing on the children,” the foundation says on its website, “It’s about supporting and involving parents as well.”

    

For CBLF, literacy is a lifestyle.

The anchor of the foundation is Cultured Books, a pop-up children’s bookstore and art gallery in South St. Pete. Sharing the space at number 833 with Green Book of Tampa Bay, another non-profit, and The Well, a mental health center directed by LaDonna Butler, it looks out onto an historic corridor -- 22nd Avenue S. Dubbed "The Deuces" after its double 2s, it  was the heart of the African-American community when Blacks were not allowed to live in other parts of the city.

Instead of dwelling on segregation, however, the bookstore  is “curated to foster a love of self by highlighting Black joy narratives,” says Cultured Books founder Lorielle Holloway. It is  stocked with multicultural volumes written to empower children to believe in themselves and create a sense of community, to foster pride by showing positive images and telling inspiring stories about people of color. Reflecting perfectly that mission is the image, shown above, of an exuberant Louis Armstrong on a mural by Herbert Davis at the Creole Cafe, right next door to the bookstore.

“To show our children our stories don’t begin with struggle,” says Hollaway (above) who is a mother of three girls ages 3-12. 

The bookstore’s art gallery, dedicated to exhibiting art rooted in literacy, also is community-driven. It includes the paintings and collages produced by kids who have participated in the foundation’s Book Report Project. 

The Book Report Project gives kids the chance to create a book report about a book they have read and then use it as currency to purchase another book. The book reports can be in any form. Kids can choose to submit a traditional written report but they can also create a musical composition, poetry, visual art (a drawing, painting or collage) or a podcast. Kids just fill out a survey, pick a book, read it and when they hand in their report on the book — in whatever form they have chosen – they can get another book of their choice at Cultured Books. 

The goal of The Book Report Project, says the project’s mission statement, is “to build children’s positive coping skills in the face of adversity by providing reading and creative outlets.” Hollaway calls herself a Founder, a Dreamer and a Book Pusher. Every second Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. she pushes books in front of the store at the Deuces Sidewalk Market, organized by Deuces Live, the nonprofit advocate organization for the Deuces corridor. 

Hollaway also pushes books out into the community — to help foster the “lifelong journey of literacy” in south St. Petersburg. Currently one of the most popular events offered is Breakfast.Literacy.CommUNITY -- known as BLC -- a party in the park held on the first Saturday of every month at the Thomas "Jet" Jackson Recreation Center in Wildwood Park, where books are served up with breakfast from Pop Goes The Waffle, a Black-owned business, and Jug, a local farmer. 

Since May, thanks to CBLF’s The Art of Literacy Residence Program, breakfast and the book readings are followed by a workshop created especially for the event by visiting literacy artists. May’s theme was “Affirm” and began with a reading of "I Affirm Me: The ABC's of Inspiration for Black Kids" by Nyasha Williams, illustrated by Sóf’ya Glushkó, followed by a poetry workshop created by visiting literacy artists Yuki Jackson and LaTreca Ali.

The June BLC was postponed, but in July participants — Cultured Books calls them “bookworms” — came to the park for a reading of "Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America" by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Jamey Christoph. 

After a breakfast that included waffles from Pop Goes the Waffle, visiting literacy artists St. Petersburg photographers Tre Butler and Byron Boykins led kids around the park to take photographs à la Gordon Parks, the first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine. 

Each child was given a Polaroid camera and instructed to take five photographs of anything that struck their fancy. When they returned to the picnic area with pictures of trees, fences, cars and, in one case, a flower held aloft, everyone took a Polaroid selfie. Then they were given a picture frame so they could mount their park pictures with that selfie. Finally, they were asked to write down six words about their experience on a slip of paper and include that in their framed montage.

The Art of Literacy Residence Program that creates these workshops is made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Pinellas and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners.

Community partnerships have been the key to the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation’s success. 

Before the pandemic hit, Hollaway pushed poetry books in the garden at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African-American Museum as part of the SunLit Literary Festival's Kid’s Lit! Poetry event. 

Her bookstore also partnered with The Deuces Live to present an International Film Series at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Suncoast, showing films, bringing books and providing snacks at the historic Royal Theater down the street from the bookstore.

During the pandemic Hollaway paired with Tamia Iman Kennedy, founder of Black On the Scene, a production company that guarantees space for Black creatives, to launch Read About It, an unscripted web series that takes viewers on literary trips around Tampa Bay to promote reading and literacy. 

In the pilot episode — Read About: Art — then 11-year-old Nadia and 9-year-old Ava Hardy, two avid readers (and daughters of Hollaway) are inspired by their reading of Kimberly Drew’s book "This Is What I Know About Art." The sisters board a bus to seek out art spaces in the Tampa Bay area where they can find Black representation in art.

They meet up with digital artist Nick Davis to see his Black Is Beautiful portrait series, view the murals of Ya La'Ford (who lives in St. Petersburg’s Kenwood district) and tour the Derrick Adams: Buoyant exhibit held in 2020 at the Museum of Fine Arts. Produced by Kennedy and directed by Moji Wilson, the pilot was an official selection of the Sunscreen Film Festival in its Web Shorts category in 2021.

From the 2020 MFA exhibit Derrick Adams: Buoyant 

The Read About: Art pilot is available for rent for a 24-hour streaming period on Vimeo for $1 – but, lacking funding, no other episodes have been produced.  “We have so many episodes in mind,” says Tamia Iman Kennedy who produced a trailer to promote the series. Take a look at it here.

Many of the partnerships between the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation and other nonprofit groups have been ongoing and going strong. The WORD! Initiative and Keep St. Pete Lit still fill book boxes in South St. Pete with purchases from Cultured Books as part of their Word! Book Boxes project, a free book swap. 

Cultured Books also supplies books for the Barbershop Book Club, a project spearheaded by barber Antonio Brown which holds book clubs for kids every Wednesday at nine Pinellas County barbershops.

Earlier this year The Barbershop Book Club along with Shaping The Early Mind partnered with the foundation to conduct a mixed-methods study called St. Pete Reads! The study addressed the literacy gap between Black students and non-Black students in Pinellas County and how community plays a role in closing it, concentrating on family literacy engagement in south St. Petersburg.

Ninety-minute paid focus groups were held at The Well, and the Enoch Davis and Childs Park Recreation Centers throughout April and May. “Ambassadors” recruited from the community — young people, caregivers (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and older siblings), and literacy stockholders (educators, mentors, community leaders and youth pastors) — addressed how family reading programs and community engagement in literacy could contribute to the success of early learning and social development among Black youth and families, to point out the obstacles and barriers to literacy head-on and offer solutions. Participants received a $15 gift card, meal and swag bag. 

The data that was gathered will be used to better understand how to improve reading programs in support of Black youth and families in south St Petersburg.

. . .. . .  

In November — which is National Family Literacy Month — the group is planning to celebrate its first St. Pete Reads! Literacy Day, offering an opportunity for youth and families to learn what literacy resources and programs are available to them locally. Also in the fall Hollaway hopes to revive a popular Cultured Books’ program that has been on hiatus – SLC or Skate. Literacy. Community – a gathering at Campbell Park Skatepark at Campbell Park Elementary School, 600 12th Street South, that combined reading with skating on skateboards and roller skates.

Hollaway likes to quote Edward Hale, grandnephew of Nathan Hale, the American spy during the Revolutionary War: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” 

Her own resolve to do something began in 2012 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges for shooting Trayvon Martin because he claimed to have felt threatened by the 17-year-old unarmed boy.

“Something was not right,” she told herself. The non-guilty verdict “lit a spark in me to do something,” she said, speaking online at CreativeMornings/St. Pete, an organization connecting creative communities in more than 210 cities across the world. Cultured Books eventually became that something. 

Born out of protest, the bookstore – and The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation that has grown from it – looks to promote positive stories about Black people and people of color.  “We have so many episodes in mind,” says Tamia Iman Kennedy who produced this trailer to promote the series.

“We are, can and we will be the stars of our stories,” says Hollaway. “We are no longer the token, the afterthought, the sidekick.” 

Want to Help? Hit the support button on the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation site to partner or collaborate, to volunteer or to become a donor. A donation of $18.69, the average cost of a children’s book, would help keep the Book Report Project funded. Would you like to see more episodes of the Read About It series – or as Hollaway describes it, “this dope show about Black kids reading books while exploring their city”? Donations can be made on the Cultured Books website.