Photo by Claudia Raya on Unsplash
My personal highlight from a relatively quiet month is a childhood memoir piece. Responding to a Narrative Arc prompt about back-to-school, I suddenly remembered a talent show I entered in grade six, and the friend who encouraged me to do it and then joined me on stage in a surprise (to the audience) cameo. The rest of the story is how we made very different choices soon after that.
The editor liked my story enough to feature it at their Medium Day talk. Editor Deb Harman described my story thus:
“John Alan Urquhart’s memories of his early stage days with a friend who took a different path are both funny and poignant. Two young men perform together on school stages, but they grow up to be much different people. The unique element of this essay is that Urquhart paints a sad picture of his wayward friend — but never judges him.”
I also ventured into film criticism, commenting on Ridley Scott’s misunderstood (I believe) The Dog Stars, and my book review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Sir Walter Ralegh, an academic but accessible look at Elizabethan England, also appeared.
Finally, I reviewed the fantastic British singer, songwriter, and guitarist Liana Flores’s And So It Goes. All three of these reviews were published in PopMatters.
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