I’ll never forget that sky. To this day, I still remember it, even though back then I was only an 8-year-old child during the deadliest tornado to hit the south side of Chicago – the 1967 Oak Lawn Tornado. Share my experience to find out if Douglas, my second-grade boyfriend, runs home fast enough before the storm hits. Stand in the back of my living room praying that the picture window doesn’t break and ruin my mother’s new couch. Come read my remembrance of that day in my first published story called “Shaken”, published in Turning Points, by Off Campus Writers’ Workshop.
This past year has been quite a ride, not just with covid-19, but with going through the process of writing a short story, having multiple edits, and then having Off Campus Writer’ Workshop put in the tons of effort to compile everyone’s stories into a published book called Turning Points. I am forever grateful to my OCWW friends for their continued effort and the tireless hours put into making this book possible and giving me the opportunity to finally be published.
Some of you may know that I have been writing a memoir for many years now, which was put on hold due to my teaching responsibilities during covid-19 which consumed all my time. The publication of Turning Points has given me an opportunity to understand the publication process and to allow me to finally say – I’m a published author!
Turning Points is a moving, poignant, funny, and fascinating anthology of works by amateurs and pros alike—a page-turner of the highest order. A product of the Off Campus Writer’s Workshop, one of Chicago’s oldest and most venerable writers groups, this collection will keep you up long past your bedtime as you keep saying to yourself, ‘Okay… maybe just one more.’ Highly recommended!
You can order Turning Points here: https://www.thebookstall.com/book/9781953294050, which has promised to promote the anthology, or from your favorite indie bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781953294050 or at Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B094L64L8R?ref_=pe_1724030_132998540
Come watch me read a portion of “Shaken” at the book launch this Sunday, June 13th from 4:00 – 5:00. Please send me your email address at sandykubillus@gmail.com so I can send you the link to the book launch.
Early comments on Turning Points:
“Whether the genre is fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, it is the ability to craft a story that brings the stuff of life—experience, memory, ideas, dreams—alive. The ambition of a writer is no less than to create life on the page, and the stories in Turning Points are exemplary illustrations of that. The book, true to the OCWW organization itself, whose 75th Year anniversary Turning Points celebrates, pulses with a passion for the art of writing.”
Stuart Dybek, author of fiction and poetry and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University
“Good stories, well written stories, stories full of life-lived wisdom, like those in Turning Points, are a genuine pleasure to read. What sets apart Turning Points is the vast range of the stories told: a family fleeing the Khmer Rouge to a divorced man trapped in an elevator with his hateful ex mother-in-law; social uproar in post-bootleg Chicago to a disabled woman’s conversation with an intrusive stranger; a young combat vet’s reentry into frat life to a dying murderer’s gleeful ruminations; more than three hundred stories in all, and each a well-honed beauty. Expect to be transported, bewitched, delighted, and moved by the unique voices and stories in Turning Points.”
Lynn Sloan, author of Principles of Navigation and This Far Isn’t Far Enough
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