Summer Newsletter 2023
“Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.”
It turns out that an acceptance from a press looks, at first glance, not that different from a rejection letter. When I opened the email from Apprentice House Press and read, “Thank you for submitting your work, The Deceived Ones … to Apprentice House Press. We have reviewed your manuscript and feel…” I thought, “Oh, well, another one bites the dust,” or words to that effect. But then I read on, “…it is a great fit for our press.” The happy outcome is that my debut novel will be published in May 2024 as part of their spring lineup.
Given that my book is set very much in Baltimore, in and around the campus of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Apprentice House is the perfect home for it. The press is housed at Loyola University Maryland, and is the first student-run publishing house in the country. It’s directed by Dr. Kevin Atticks—who, incidentally, is also the Secretary of Agriculture in the new administration of Maryland Governor Wes Moore, as well as the executive director of the Maryland Wineries Association, the Brewers Association of Maryland, and the Maryland Distillers Guild!
Back in 2016, in the early days of BookNotes, I spoke to Kevin to mark the press’s 10th anniversary, never dreaming that seven or eight years later I would become one of their authors. You can listen to the podcast of our short interview here.
In my Spring Newsletter, I mentioned the book I want to write about one of the first named female composers in America. After many false starts, I have finally found out how I need to write it. I spent a riveting day at the Library of Congress poring over the Ephrata Codex, where I found her name, and I followed that up with a return visit to the Ephrata Cloister where she spent her life working, singing, and composing.
The reason why I had to circle around this writing project for so long before it showed me how it needed to be written, is because it wasn’t immediately clear if it should be fiction or nonfiction. Finally though, no matter how many books I consulted or how much research I did, there simply isn't enough primary source material available for me to be able to tell her story without a healthy dose of imagination, so historical fiction it is. I’m looking forward to getting to know her over the summer.
Spring has been a rich season for fascinating and inspiring interviewees. For the Shriver Hall Concert Series, which brings the top recitalists to Baltimore, I spoke to (amongst others) the Polish-born pianist, Piotr Anderszewski, who first came to public attention at the Leeds Piano Competition in 1990, when he walked off stage in the semi-finals because he felt he had not been playing well enough. Fast forward to a highly successful international career.
An intriguing and beautiful book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, has been co-authored by Susan Magsamen, who is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She says, “The opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression.”
In March last year, the publicist for conductor, Jonathon Heyward, emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in interviewing him about his debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. It was a pleasure to do so, and then I sat back and watched him becoming one of the most exciting conductors on the international scene—including his appointment as the BSO’s new Music Director. His tenure starts officially in September, but he was in town to conduct a couple of programs with the symphony last month, and it was a treat to catch up with him again.
You can pick and choose or listen to all the podcasts by clicking on the links below:
Jonathon Heyward
Sadly, I had to miss the second of Jonathon's two May concerts. I was suffering from what I thought was punishing sinusitis brought on by too much vigorous summer planting in pots. Out of an abundance of caution, I took a Covid test before the Sunday afternoon concert, and—well before the 15-minute timing was up—I watched in disbelief as the telltale pink line made its unmistakable appearance. I took the test twice to be sure! Alas, after 3+ years of evading the little demon, and three weeks after I'd had the latest Moderna booster, there it was ... and it's been ferocious. Yes, I did take Paxlovid, and yes, it does make your tongue taste as if you've been sucking on old pennies, but it got me through. I failed the test after the first 5-day quarantine (did I mention ferocious?) but I'm hopeful I will emerge into the summer air when I test again this weekend.
I wish you a wonderful summer—or winter, depending on which hemisphere you’re reading this. Until the next season rolls around, please take care!
Judith