What Holds Us Close: Poet Wendy Ingersoll and Memoirist Gail Sezna to read at Beseme.

Patrons who dine at Beseme Bistro in Lewes, Delaware on the third Tuesday of each month aren’t always aware that if they stop by the back room of the eclectic bistro, a sampling of literary fare is available to compliment the hearty crepes, salads or gourmet burgers often served. Each month, the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild invites poets, prose writers and musicians to share their work of 300 words or fewer, usually based on a theme. Stories, poems, songs, ditties, and excerpts from memoirs cover the range from laugh-out loud humor to serious, draw-in-a-sharp-breath grief. And, as with all Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild events, there is no charge and one does not have to be a member to participate.

On Tuesday, March 16, the Night of Literary Prose and Poetry will again take place from 7:00 –8:00 pm, but with a twist: Instead of a queue of readers, there will be only two, both award-winning published writers who also happen to be sisters.

Ingersoll, who is also a musician, has published in numerous literary magazines, has won first prize in nearly every state-wide writing contest, including the 2007 Writers at the Beach contest, will both begin and end the night by reading from her newly released collection Grace Only Follows.   In between her reading, Gail Sezna, who, like her sister, won first place in the Writers at the Beach Contest (2006), will read an excerpt from My Boys: A Mother’s Story After Multiple Losses,  a compelling, devastating, and ultimately uplifting story about the loss of Sezna’s two sons within a one-year time frame: Teddy at age 15 was killed abruptly in a freak boating accident on a beautiful summer day; a year later, on September 11, 2001, Sezna’s older son began his first day of work at the World Trade Center….

Despite the tragedy at the heart of Sezna’s work, tragedy that also finds it’s place in many of Ingersoll’s poems, the reading will not be a sad event. Poet Gail Comorat, who will be introducing Ingersoll, has found her collection to be “stunning,” in its beauty. “Wendy has these amazing twists in her work that offer the reader a perspective that completely surprises you,” she says. And novelist Maribeth Fischer, who will be introducing Sezna and who read the book both in manuscript form and in its final published version, comments similarly, comparing Sezna’s book to that of nationally acclaimed author, Marian Fontana, with whom Sezna worked. Fontana, a regular participant in the annual Writers at the Beach conference lost her firefighter husband on 9/11 and went on to write a best-selling memoir--Widow’s Walk, that is compelling, poignant, and funny.

“Yes, Gail’s story is devastating,” Fischer says, but “but the real power in her writing comes from the writing itself, from the way she transforms experience into art.” Fischer adds, “Anyone who is interested in turning personal experience into art should attend this event. There are few better teachers than these woman.”