Welcome back to the blog! I promise I’m working on a more regular post schedule; life has been happening lately with unusual speed. But I’m glad to be back, and I’m delighted that today’s post features the work of my friend Meredith Doench, novelist and writer of short fiction.
Meredith and I met several years ago at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. When I heard her work, I was struck right away by her confident writing voice and warm, engaging style. Her flash fiction story featured today, “Tuesday After Lunch,” showcases these qualities, along with beautiful emotional depth and balance.
“Tuesday After Lunch” was first published in Spillway Review in 2006, as the feature for the journal’s Valentine’s Day issue. It was later reprinted in American Athenaeum, Winter 2013. Meredith sent it to me for the blog with the note that it had always felt musical to her, a feeling I totally agreed with when I read it. While I thought about musical pairings for it, I read and re-read it, and found it richer and more compelling every time.
In the video, I’ve paired it with the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine. (Ravel gets a lot of features on this blog!) “Tuesday After Lunch” demanded music of a very specific flavor: sensual and poetic, with exactly the right blend of light and darkness. As an Impressionist composer, Ravel often explores exactly that combination of sounds, with his lush harmonies and alternation between consonance and dissonance. The second movement of the Sonatine had all the characteristics I wanted to accompany Meredith’s story.
Please enjoy the video, and learn more below about Meredith and her work. As always, thank you for visiting the blog!
About Meredith:
Meredith Doench is the author of the Luce Hansen Thriller series from Bold Strokes Books. Crossed, the first in the series, won Silver in the 2015 IndieFab Awards (Mystery). In 2017, Crossed was awarded the Mary Dasher Award for fiction (College English Association of Ohio). The second novel in the series, Forsaken Trust, was published in 2017. Doench’s works of short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Lumina, and Gertrude. Doench currently resides in Dayton, Ohio where she teaches writing and literature at the University of Dayton. Visit her online at http://www. meredithdoench.com
Writers! Would you like to contribute your work for the Storytelling and Sound series? (You provide the words, I provide the live reading and the music.) Email me at kris@krisfaatz.com for info.
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Storytelling and Sound fans: if you haven’t done it yet, don’t forget to check out music-inspired To Love A Stranger!
Kris Faatz 