Bacon's "Perdida" Heats Up Gathering 7/29/17

Personally, I already knew how powerful Genève Bacon's story is, having read it when it was published in a volume along with other excellent short stories by her and two of her colleagues. But hearing her read it was -- Wow! -- a different experience. Genève reads prose perfectly, giving each phrase accurate inflection and diction without trying to "act" the story -- a mistake I hear many readers make -- so that the story itself comes alive. The appreciative listeners, clearly moved by the exquisitely crafted work, broke into spontaneous applause at the end, and followed with a barrage of questions. The fact that Genève's answers were fascinating -- much ado about her own life as it relates to "Perdida" -- kept the conversation lively. But it was afterward, when she told me that she had learned something about the value of the story herself, that I felt this particular salon was exactly what I always hope for.

Genève Bacon had a long career with New York City publishers beginning with Conde Nast, followed by Hearst, McGraw-Hill, and Harper & Row. She was also a freelance article writer, editor, and ghost writer. After moving to Asheville, she was a theater reviewer for MAIN, and created and taught “The Female Face of Heroism” for the College for Seniors. She has taken awards from the American Short Fiction contest, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Contest, the Bread Loaf Rona Jaffee Scholarship, plus she is a Writer-in-Residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities. In 2004-05, she received a research grant from the Asheville Area Arts Council; and, with co-recipients Toby Heaton and Heather Newton, received a grant from the North Carolina State Council on the Arts to publish a collection of stories, Irons in the Fire, which includes "Perdida." Her flash fiction piece, “Anencephalic,” appeared in the Spring, 2015 issue of the Great Smokies Review.