Bethsheba McGruder

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Excerpt

"There’s a ghost in the prairie. I see her digging with her hands looking for something. I wonder what it is? I wish I could go to the grassland by myself. I don’t know why they won’t let me go? I can do it. I don’t need anybody to watch me. I can do anything. I can swing to the sky. I have strong legs. I can ride my bike faster than anyone in Castleberry, Texas. I can do anything only if my parents would let me do it."

Father Simon Duplessis noticed it first; as he looked across the room at his then 4-year-old daughter Chloe stare with great intense of the high grassland that was fenced around their house in Castleberry, Texas that it is something mysterious in the prairie.

Chloe enjoyed sitting in the window with a big square pillow and looking out into the prairie while rubbing her clasp hand on the soft material that covered her pink pillow. She would sit in the window for hours.

He remembered when he would feel bad about her sitting in one spot for so long he would pick her up to carry her to the kitchen table for lunch.

Chloe’s long legs would dangle from side to side of her fathers hips and her long stringing red hair would become wet with sweat and cling to her face because she didn’t want to be moved. Chloe’s stomach, arms and shoulders would become hard, and solid. She would stretch her arm out to the window, pointing her small finger towards the only place, she is forbidden to go.

"I hope Malik will play in the prairie? I wonder do they have prairies in St. Lucia? I wonder if there are big trees? I hope Malik will help me dig?"

Bio

“We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.”--Alice Walker, author, 1976

Always having the passion to write, but rarely the time, Bethsheba McGruder enrolled in a fiction writing class at Columbia College Chicago after closing her bookstore. She completed a J-term class in reading and writing, which positioned her in the rich artistic sanctuary of New Orleans, Louisiana. Bethsheba was acknowledged as a featured writer for Columbia College at the Chicago Writer's Luncheon for her literary work in the Crescent City. In addition to her studies at Columbia, she was accepted into the University of Iowa's summer fiction writing course, taught by Pulitzer Prize-winner James Alan McPherson.

Bethsheba's body of work reaches audiences well beyond the Chicago area. Listed among her credits are recorded interviews with the Story Corps, in partnership with the June 2007 African American Women Evolving: Griot Initiative. They are archived at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.

Writer and literacy advocate, she is the 2010 winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award for college writers for her novel excerpt, "1950."

She was born and raised in Chicago and now resides in Fort Worth, Texas, with her two children.

Publications

"The Kitchen: Miles Davis @ The Sutherland Hotel Lounge 1960" in Tidal Basin Review, Summer 2011.
"Looking for Eleanor" in Seeds Literary Journal of Northeastern Illinois University, 2010.

Writing Description

Cultural remembrance with magical realism.

Writing Goals

Write 250 words a day on "The Box," a short story; actively have the characters be transformed from walking and talking in my mind to on paper.

Fundraising Goals

Octavia Butler was part of Clarion West. It is my responsibility to ensure another writer is able to attend and that I in turn will one day be part of the Clarion West Community.

I would like to raise $150+!

Website

www.mcgruderwrites.blogspot.com


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