BOOKMARKS: A repair manual for broken hearts
Stedman Stevens seemingly had it all. The CEO of Vu Systems, he was leading his company in developing new technology to help aircraft fly in low visibility. A longtime Wilmington resident, he lived near the beach, had a loving marriage and three daughters.
Then wife Lisa went to the doctor for stomach pains. The diagnosis: Late-stage pancreatic cancer. Forty-two days later, she was dead.
Stevens was devastated, and like many grieving spouses, he began keeping a journal of his feelings and his path through mourning. Originally, his audience was his three daughters.
Over time, and with the help of editors, however, Stevens reworked his text and published it as "A Beautiful Life: The Little Things That Help Grieving Families" ($11.99 paperback).
Novelist and University of North Carolina Wilmington professor Clyde Edgerton called it "that rare book that holds the tools of a repair manual and the heart of a novel."
Stevens offers friends and relatives practical suggestions of what they can do or say to help the grieving through their period of loss. For the bereaved, he offers hope and points toward ways of emotional survival.
"A Beautiful Life" is available through Amazon.com and comes in a Kindle edition.
'Sleepovers’
"Sleepovers," a new collection of short stories by former UNCW grad student Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, is coming out June 16 from Hub City Press of Spartanburg, S.C. An acclaimed independent literary publisher with an affiliate bookstore, Hub City had previously published Wilmington writer Philip Gerard's "The Patron Saint of Dreams."
Phillips, who earned an MFA in creative writing at UNCW, had won Hub City's $10,000 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize in 2019. The stories in "Sleepovers" follow characters in a small Southern town very much like Phillips' home town of Woodland, N.C.
"Sleepovers" has drawn endorsements from the likes of novelist Lauren Goff ("The Monsters of Templeton"), who called Phillips "a steely writer ... fully committed to the truth no matter how dark or difficult or complicated it may be." Excerpts have already appeared in The Oxford American and The Paris Review, and "Sleepovers" snagged a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
"Sleepovers" can be ordered through Amazon.com and comes in a Kindle edition.
So long to Salt
It's sad to see that Salt magazine is ceasing publication after seven years in Wilmington. Copies of the May-June issue are still around on stands around town, but that will be it.
In a letter to contributors, editor Jim Dodson blamed Salt's demise largely on the coronavirus epidemic.
The magazine's masthead read like a Who's Who of literary talent on the Lower Cape Fear. Essays and columns by Clyde Edgerton, Dana Sachs and Virginia Holman appeared in almost every issue, and contributors included Wiley Cash, Chris Fonvielle, Jason Frye, Nan Graham, Kevin Maurer, Annie Gray Sprunt and Bill Thompson.
Salt had been a subsidiary of The Pilot, a community newspaper in Southern Pines. In addition to the paper, the company published a fleet or regional magazines, including PineStraw in Southern Pines, O. Henry in Greensboro and Charlotte-based Business North Carolina.
Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmailcom.