Monday Readings
The National Writers Union will be hosting a reading and open mic on Monday, June 17, starting at 6:00 p.m. in Tucson.
Title: “Clean as Bone, Firm as Stone: Earth Science and Place in the Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries” by Susan Cummins Miller
Synopsis: A mystery series featuring a geosleuth protagonist requires scientific detail for verisimilitude and a textured depiction of place. Yet, too much science slows the pace and distances the reader. Through short passages from recent Frankie MacFarlane, Geologist,mysteries, Miller will illustrate how she strives for balance between too little and too much detail as she melds geology and place.
Author’s Bio: SUSAN CUMMINS MILLER, a recovering field geologist and college instructor, writes the Frankie MacFarlane, Geologist, mysteries set throughout the contemporary West. Chasm, Fracture, Hoodoo, and Quarry were finalists for the WILLA Award (Contemporary Fiction). Fracture also won the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award (Mystery) and the Foreword Magazine Book-of-the-Year Award (Mystery). Detachment Fault was a finalist for the Mountains and Plains Book Award (Adult Fiction). In addition to writing novels, Miller compiled and edited A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800-1922. Her award-winning poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including So West: So Deadly, And All Our Yesterdays, More Voices of New Mexico, What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest, and Roundup! Western Writers of America Presents Great Stories of the West from Today’s Leading Western Writers. Miller, a research affiliate of the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women and a 2018 Pima County Public Library Writer-in-Residence, recently completed My Bonney Lies Under, the first in an 1880s historical mystery series. She is currently working on Right of Capture, the seventh Frankie MacFarlane mystery, set in southwestern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. Website: www.susancumminsmiller.com
The open mic is for spoken word only, but is open to all forms of spoken word (fiction, essays, poetry, articles, polemics, etc.). So bring something to read!
The event will be held at the AFSCME/SEIU Union Hall at 877 S. Alvernon Way in Tucson. The building is on the east side of the street (opposite the Randolph Park golf range) and is a couple of blocks north of 22nd Street. There is ample parking. The room is on the first floor and we will have signs up to point the way.
Friday Morning Breakfasts
The next NWU Tucson Friday morning breakfast will take place on Friday, May 24, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. at Laverna's Coffee Shop. The address is 220 S. Plumer, which is one block south of Broadway, on the west side of Plumer. See you there!
Steering Committee
Our elected Steering Committee members are Co-Chairs Keith Bagwell and Barbara Wright; Secretary Alice Whittenburg; and Events Coordinator Greg Evans. The Steering Committee usually meets on the first Monday of each month. Contact us at nwutucson@yahoo.com to confirm the date and location of the next meeting.
