Event Review: An Evening with Monica Prince, Tara Stillions Whitehead, & Jamie Beth Cohen
What happens when you bring together three powerhouse women, all of whom are writers local to Central Pennsylvania? An incredible evening of storytelling that challenges the boundaries of genre and uplifts the voices of those who are most left unheard.
On Friday, July 7, 2023, I had the absolute joy of heading to Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg to hear Jamie Beth Cohen, Tara Stillions Whitehead, and Monica Prince read from their captivating books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
Jamie Beth Cohen began the evening with an excerpt from her most recent book, Liminal Summer, the sequel to her 2019 hit debut novel, Wasted Pretty. Beth Cohen transported me to the sights and sounds of the nineties in State College, Pennsylvania, as she read the fourth chapter of Liminal Summer. Alice Burton, the main focus of the series, is facing her adulthood, her past experience with sexual assault, and all too relatable, and regrettable, feelings she has for her ex-boyfriend. As she read, Beth Cohen’s dialogue was quick and realistic, a conversation between close friends: “He’s a musician on tour. Isn’t fucking why they go on tour?” I found myself brimming with laughter, along with the rest of the audience. Aside from her novels, Beth Cohen writes personal and craft essays, along with other multi-genre work. She closed her reading with the prose poetry piece, “How He Died,” a poignant exploration of the mysterious circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Jamie Beth Cohen left the audience with an inconclusive finding and the clever questions: “Have you ever asked me how my dad died? What did I tell you? Was it a lie?”
Tara Stillions Whitehead, filmmaker and writing teacher at Messiah University, as well as the author of Blood Histories and The Year of the Monster, read from her newest release, They More Than Burned. Her work blurs the lines between genres, incorporating screenwriting, fiction, and creative nonfiction. They More Than Burned spans 2,900 miles and tackles addiction, abuse, and the crude behind-the-scenes realities of Hollywood. Stillions Whitehead read “When the Alcoholic Falls from the Sky,” a dizzying prose piece that begins, “When the alcoholic falls from the sky, there is no equation for calculating where she will land because, in every story but this one, she never does.” Stillions Whitehead also read “[redacted],” a harrowing piece written in screenplay format. She uses erasure to confront abuse in Hollywood. The intensity of this gritty reading was lightened with the help of Jamie Beth Cohen’s voice providing a “BEEP,” to signify the censored words throughout: “Do you know how many times a day ‘BEEP’ touched my thigh in video village?” and “How often did ‘BEEP’ laugh at the women trembling before the casting couch?” Tara Stillions Whitehead spoke with searing honesty, her words an inferno of pain and possibility.
Monica Prince, activist and performance writing teacher at Susquehanna University, closed the reading with her infectious energy as presented her new release, Roadmap: A choreopoem. Prince is also the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem, Letters from the Other Woman, and co-author of Pageant of Agitating Women, with Anna Andes. Before reading, she explained the choreopoem’s roots in Ntozake Shange’s famous For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf and its definition as a choreographed series of poems with dance, music, live art, or any form of performance media. Roadmap follows the life of Dorian, a young Black man in America who is “plucked from the regular world by an ancestral muse” named The Novelist, and explores whether nature or nurture will determine the ultimate cause of his death. He interrogates his family tree with a looming fact from the CDC— the leading cause of death for Black men ages 15 to 34 is homicide. Prince brought along her husband, Robert, and Monique Alexander to help bring this nuanced text to life and support the world of the choreopoem. The selections read from Roadmap took the audience on a haunting journey through what it means to be Black in America. In “Sex Work Is Real Work,” from the perspective of Dorian’s grandmother and read by Alexander, she says, “With this skin so Black, this body so woman—shouldn’t something feel good?” and “I’m a Black woman. I already broke the world.” The following selections, “Different,” “Unfinished List of Other Ways Black Parents Say I Love You,” and “The Greatest Good,” opened the “roadmap” of Dorian’s choices, as he begs to challenge the stereotypes he has inherited. Prince writes complex characters and confronts tragic realities, such as how “Many young men of color do not identify as ‘victims,’ even when describing experiences of being harmed” and “Within Black communities, depression is a character flaw.” In these excerpts from Dorian’s story, Monica Prince made it evident that she has crafted a raw, theatrical masterpiece that reflects life, love, and survival within the Black community.
Perhaps it could sound hyperbolic to say that this evening was transformative—but it’s the truth. I gained so much admiration for these three women, writers within my own literary community who left me eager to read their work and continue my own writing. To Jamie Beth Cohen, Tara Stillions Whitehead, and Monica Prince…thank you!
