once again finds herself with a mystery to solve after she stumbles upon Duck’s mayor, who has been conked on the head with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from his organic wine bar. “You disHill staffer Kit covered a dead body, Marshall takes to again?” asks her beleathe beach in Colleen Shogan’s latest Washguered husband. ington Whodunit, The police al“Dead as a Duck.” ready have their suspect. Unfortunately, it happens to be Kit’s brother. “’Murder’ and During the nearly two decades it ‘relaxation’ didn’t exactly go hand-intook to write his memoir, Mossin came hand,” she sighs, “but I couldn’t leave to terms with his past—or at least as my little brother hanging, especially much as anyone can. “There seemed… with an eager detective looking for a no one reality any of us could share,” convenient tourist as a scapegoat.” It’s he writes. “There were always these not as if there isn’t a raft of local posshards, these dislocated pieces. You got sibilities, including the mayor’s lessthem handed to you and had to figure than-grieving wife, his political riout a way to make them whole again.” val, a zealous environmentalist, and a In “A Son From the Mountains,” Mosspizza parlor owner displaced by his ing combines a compassionate honeswine bar. ty and a unique poetic voice to share a So Kit and her “Scooby gang” painful story of rejection, love, and ultionce again roll into action, dogging mate acceptance. suspects, checking alibis, and even Andrew Mossin has published conducting an interrogation from a six books of poetry, most recently kayak. “Solving a murder, I’d learned, “The Fire Cycle,” and a collection of required a team effort,” she says. But critical essays. He is currently an assonever fear. In between sleuthing, the ciate professor in the Intellectual Hergang has plenty of time to sample the itage Program at Temple University local delicacies (seafood! pizza! doin Philadelphia. nuts!) and consume copious amounts of prosecco. Be sure to tuck a copy of Beach Reading “Dead as a Duck” into your beach bag Kit Marshall sure could use a vacation. – right next to the champagne glass. She just spent three weeks shepherdColleen Shogan has been reading her boss, a Congresswoman from ing mysteries since she was six and North Carolina, on a “listening tour” writing her own since 2015. She has and she’s more than ready to kick worked as a Senate staffer and as a back at the seaside house she’s rentsenior executive at the Library of ed with her friends in the “sleepy litCongress, and is currently Senior tle beach town” of Duck. UnfortunateVice President at the White House ly, things there are not as idyllic as she Historical Association and Director had hoped. of the David Rubenstein Center for In “Dead as a Duck,” Collen J. White House History. www.colleenShogan’s seventh book in her Washshogan.com u ington Whodunit series, Marshall
THE POETIC HILL
by Karen Lyon Fans are back in the stands rooting on the Nationals. And now, to make the summer complete, award-winning writer, activist, and local icon E. Ethelbert Miller is publishing a new book of baseball poetry. His first, “If God Invented Baseball,” was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The forthcoming collection, “When Your Wife has Tommy John Surgery,” is another delightful paean to America’s pastime. In it, he pays tribute to Whitey Ford and Mudcat Grant, to coaches and managers, and to the girl who “could / run, hit / and catch” better than anybody else in the neighborhood. But the poems arc well beyond baseball. Miller weaves the game into lessons on loss, aging, racism, alienation, and surviving the pandemic. In his deft hands, baseball is both a metaphor for and a celebration of life. “When the games return / we will not hide behind the mask,” he writes. “When the tarp is lifted and rolled / back a sudden beauty will appear. / It will be the memories of what / we missed and what we love. It will / be baseball. It will be prayer.”
Hamiltonian Artists
For Angie Goerner
Grace and I are walking on U Street. It’s October. Leaves are falling and they will miss you as much as I do. Yesterday the Nats lost another playoff game. Rick sent an email at 2 am. He lost track of the pitch count. There is no beauty left in life when it breaks your heart every 10th month. Angie can you see us crying? There are no paintings on the gallery walls. The Hamiltonian was closed today. Life imitating art. From “When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Stories: Poems,” by E. Ethelbert Miller, to be published by City Point Press September 7, 2021 If you would like to have your poem considered for publication, please send it to klyon@literaryhillbookfest.org. (There is no remuneration.) u
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