Bread & Roses: The Craft of Writing
Date and Time
Jul 16, 2019 6:00 pm
Location
Takoma
Jul 16, 2019 6:00 pm
Takoma
Bread & Roses is a monthly labor series that features a variety of events focused on workers and organized labor. Each month brings a new topic through interactive discussions, film screenings, and performances. The hope for these events is that attendees walk away with a greater understanding of organized labor, its role in shaping history and current relevance. The name "Bread & Roses" was inspired by a poem/song written by James Oppenheim that appeals for both fair wages and dignified conditions.
This program features Bill Fletcher, Gary Franks & Tim Sheard, all longtime labor activists who have published novels in the last year. The program will include readings, followed by Q&A and discussion. All books will be available for purchase in our bookstore.
Bill Fletcher Jr.: The Man Who Fell from the Sky
In 1970, a sniper’s bullet shocks the sleepy Cape Cod village of Osterville. David Gomes, a young reporter for the Cape & Islands Gazette covers the story, thinking his reporting might lead to a job with a major metropolitan newspaper. With protests against the Viet Nam war and the rise of the Black Panthers roiling the public, the murder investigation becomes deeply personal when Gomes, a Cape Verdean American, encounters the smoldering racial antagonism between the descendants of Cape Verde and African-Americans, as well as the deep-seated hatred toward all people of color among some members of the white community.
Timothy Sheard: One Foot in the Grave (A Lenny Moss mystery)
Climate change has brought a new, aggressive Zika virus to Philadelphia, making pregnant women fearful they will become infected, and overloading the hospital with a crush of frightened patients. Pregnant nurses at James Madison Hospital beg to be relieved from caring for patients with the virus, but Mother Burgess, the Director of Nursing, refuses. The nurses turn to wily shop steward Lenny Moss for help joining his service workers union. But when Rachel Austin, a popular family practice physician, is brutally attacked, Lenny Moss must investigate, all too aware that a killer is roaming the hospital.
Gareth Franks: The Moment Between
A psychological thriller released by Three Women Press on January 25, 2019, brings death to life through the story of Doctor Hackett Metzger, a neurologist who struggles with grief four years after losing his wife when he becomes involved in a medical study of near-death experiences and meets a woman with a dangerous past. Hackett is reluctantly involved in the study because he doesn't want to be reminded of his wife's death and he doesn't believe in the afterlife. His life and research are about to collide. The Moment Between is not a fantasy or a ghost story. Instead, it uses fiction to explore the very real phenomena of near-death experiences in a way that forces the reader to challenge their own assumptions about the possibilities of what awaits us all in that moment between life and death.