Kevin J Moriarity

Playwright, author, and history geek Donna Latham’s over the moon to be back at Water Street Writers. Her plays have been produced coast to coast and around the world. AND WE WILL SHARE THE SKY received the Kennedy Center Mark David Cohen Playwriting Award, and ALL THE WAY BACK received the Prize for Climate Justice. Donna grew up in a haunted house in the wilds of Chicagoland and has been obsessed with spooky stuff forever. She’s a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.

Cathy Borders is the author of The Tarot for Writing Project, A Suburb of Monogamy, and her latest, Robin Williams Is My Uncle: And Other Stories We Possess, is a work of autotheory about alienation, the uncanny, and epigenetics told through the lens of Robin Williams’s children’s movies, fairy tales, feminism, and the death of her beloved cat. She's a book midwife, story therapist, and also the founder of The Republic of Letters and Water Street Writers. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School in New York and a Bachelor’s degree in English literature and critical theory from the University of Iowa. She now lives in the forest with her husband and two daughters where she writes, edits, and walks. You can find out more at CathyBorders.com.

 Heather Lynn is an interdisciplinary artist who combines writing, dance, visual art, myth, and ritual. She has written and directed the musical Templehead and the play Genesis & Nemesis. She has been self publishing her writing for over 30 years, most recently “Divine Hustle” in 2023 and “Love Letters for Nesting Dolls” in 2024.

Robin Williams Is My Uncle: And Other Stories We Possess by Cathy Borders My rating: 4 of 5 stars Disclosure: I formatted the interior of this book. I've been paid. I make nothing extra based on book sales. I rarely read the books I format. Of course, I have to read a little bit of each book to figure out what goes where. That's my job. With this book I would read a line to figure out where to put it and a few minutes later realized I had read a couple pages. I knew I had to read the whole thing. The back cover and Amazon description says the book is a "bricolage study." Words like "autotheory" and "epigenetics" are there too. Academic gobbledygook. I could have looked them up, but I didn't care to know. I did know that the book is a good read. I'm a pedestrian book consumer: mysteries, legal dramas, non-fiction history... I should not have found this book compelling. But, I did. I started it and didn't stop until I was done. It kept...

I drove out to Waubonsee Community College today. I knew there was a trail there somewhere and I found one (maybe there's more than one?). I spoke to a bike rider and he told me it went all the way down to Oswego -- about 10 or so miles. I didn't not walk that far. If the trail markings are correct I turned around at the 4K mark. It was a nice day for a stroll down the path. I'm a city boy, so this is my kind of trail -- paved! I didn't know WCC had an observatory. It's not exactly Kitt Peak, but I suppose you can still see some cool stuff.

The clouds have been interesting the last few days. They are big, substantial-looking things that float by slowly, majestically. In two or three months the winter clouds will arrive--a bland, continuous blanket of gray. I'll enjoy these clouds while they're here!