Featuring mostly used books and some new titles, the store quietly opened over the Memorial Day weekend. Find out more about the store online at
• Or plan to visit the store in person at 7 p.m. Wednesday, as Jen Violi introduces her debut novel, “Putting Makeup on Dead People” (Hyperion Books).
Violi is a graduate of the University of Dayton and also received her master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. Her young-adult novel has a unique premise: a high school senior, still mourning the loss of her father, decides, after a schoolmate dies, that she’ll become a mortician.
Just released at the end of May, the novel, which includes scenes at the University of Dayton and other familiar sites around the city, has already garnered outstanding reviews.
Violi, who now lives in Oregon, says she set her novel in Dayton because, “In many ways, it is my love letter to Dayton, a seminal place for me.
In Dayton, I deepened my passions for both words and spirituality, found my writing voice, found healing for big losses I’d experienced, and honed my skills as a facilitator, all of which serves me now. Also, timing was a part of it.
When I first fleshed out the short story from which the novel came, it was the fall of 2005. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I had evacuated from New Orleans and my MFA program at UNO and was warmly welcomed back to Dayton.
I lived for a month or so with my old friend and co-worker Mary Niebler (she still works at UD in Campus Ministry).”
During Violi’s seven years of working in Campus Ministry at UD, eventually as director of retreats and faith development, Violi says she “experienced extraordinary creative freedom, writing drama on my own and with students, writing rituals and prayers. Also, and perhaps most significantly, I found my writing voice in Joe Pici’s fiction-writing class. ... . I’m also forever grateful to Barb and Jim Farrelly, Ann Pici, Dr. Kimbrough, Steve Wilhoit, and the late and beloved Joyce Durham, amongst others (it’s hard to list them all!), for making the English department a magical place during my undergrad years.”
• And while we’re on the subject of UD and its connection to the literary arts, it’s worthy to note that many of the 350 attendees of the 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop — recently held at the University of Dayton — wrote about their experiences in their own blogs and columns. Links to nearly 30 of them — many with endearing, Erma-inspired titles such as “College Boys Aren’t Cute Anymore” by Erin Breagy Gross or “The Spruce is Greener Surrounded by Family” by Steve Vest — can be found on the workshop’s website, humorwriters.org.
• And finally, Dayton’s own Sharon Rab was a finalist for the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver originally founded the Bellwether Prize in 2000 “to promote fiction that addresses issues of social injustice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships,” according to the PEN American Center website. The prize is now offered in conjunction with PEN, the world’s oldest international literary and human-rights organization.
Rab’s novel, “Paper, Scissors, Rock,” was only one of 10 novels shortlisted for the prize. Rab is founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.
Sharon Short is the author of the novel “My One Square Inch of Alaska,” to be published by Penguin Plume in February, and the director of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Contact Sharon with news about your book club or organization at www.sharonshort.com or e-mail sharonshort@sharonshort.com.
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