I was sipping a slow drink at Gramps this past Christmas break as one after another, writers and wanna-be-writers shared sometimes jarring, sometimes quirky accounts of their Christmas past in “500 words or lessâ€.
Suddenly, one placid-as-a-lake reader stormed me out of my sluggish daze with her unique mixture of tragedy and the kind of casual humor that reminds us of our vulnerability in a random, apathetic universe.
Jan Becker is an MFA student at FIU and one of those writers that shakes us out of our usual morose mode of existence and into a hypersensitive state of being. (And isn’t that ultimately what we expect of all writing?)
It was her twisted witch-like throwing into the cauldron of death and illness along with scandalous lechery that cast a spell over everyone present. And I was thrilled to find out she’s just recently published a book.
Available on Amazon, The Sunshine Chronicles is made up of “an inventive compilation of shockingly delightful Facebook postsâ€Â from Jan’s page. And I for one am ecstatic to witness the emergence of a social-media literature spearheaded by one of our very own Panthers!
Encouraged by my fangirl enthusiasm I messaged Becker on her FB page,of course. And in the spirit of avant-garde genre mixing, I want to share what she had to say about her book and the publishing industry at large, straight from our Messenger conversation…
As it turns out, Beckers’ is one of a series of books by local writers telling local stories published right here in the 305—making her work an integral part of a flourishing #madeindade art scene. So check her out—you can always get a piece of her writing by following her quirky FB posts on the daily!
