Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass Darlyn Finch Kuhn

Award-winning novelist Sonja Mongar chats with Darlyn about her novel, Two Spoons of Bitter, and explains why she always travels with a harmonica in her pocket. 
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Laughing comes easily for this husband and wife creative team, who founded the LOL JAX FILM FESTIVAL in 2016 and more recently took over as Jacksonville city producers for the 48 Hour Film Project. But the work they're doing is serious business. Running film festivals, while both working full-time jobs, producing a vlog, and making time to be a couple, is hard work, but they wouldn't have it any other way. Although neither is a Jacksonville native, the couple met here and became high school sweethearts. They stopped by Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass to talk about living their best lives, and share their excitement about Jacksonville's active and growing film community. 
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Ben Atkinson grew up in western Pennsylvania and currently resides in Jacksonville, Fla., with his wife and two young children. A poet with a PhD in wildlife ecology and conservation, he struggled to strike a balance between his scientific research and artistic pursuits. As a young father and husband, he set aside his passion for poetry for more than a decade, under the mistaken belief that he had to choose between a career in science and one in the arts. He rediscovered his poetic voice three years ago, and after reading his debut collection, Spider Lightning, you will be glad that he did. Ben stopped by Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass to kick off our second season, share a little poetry, and talk about his evolution as a polymath. 


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"I was living in Key West, and there were a lot of writers there. When I decided maybe I wanted to become a writer, I didn't know anything about writing, so I asked my neighbor, Tom (Tennessee) Williams, for his advice . . . He said, well, 'Just write.'" So begins a fascinating hour with Sharon Y. Cobb, an accomplished screenwriter, former UNF professor, and generous mentor, whose career has taken her from Jacksonville to Key West, to Hollywood, and back to Jacksonville.  After "retiring" from the advertising business to become an artist in Key West at 31, she took old Tom's advice and reinvented herself as a successful screenwriter. She is a member of the prestigious Screen Writers Guild of America - West, and an active member of JAX Film Bar Mondays, a group of more than 1,200 local filmmakers who gather weekly at various watering holes to talk shop, and make movies, and has written innumerable short feature scripts for local productions. Cobb, whose accomplishments are too numerous to mention here, stopped by Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass to talk about Jacksonville's surprisingly prolific film scene, and swap stories about her writing life, and the movie biz. 
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Emily K. Michael is a blind poet, musician, and writing instructor from Jacksonville, FL. Since 2016, she has worked as the associate poetry editor for Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Wordgathering, The Hopper, Artemis Journal, The South Carolina Review, The Deaf Poets Society, Nine Mile Magazine, Bridge Eight, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog, Barriers and Belonging, and AWP Writer’s Notebook. Her first chapbook manuscript Natural Compliance won Honorable Mention in The Hopper’s 2016 Prize for Young Poets. Her first chapbook, Neoteny is available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press.

Emily’s work centers on ecology, disability, and music. She develops grammar workshops for multilingual learners and delivers poetry workshops for writers at all levels. She regularly reads at Jax By Jax, a yearly literary festival celebrating Jacksonville writers. Emily is passionate about grammar, singing, birding, and guide dogs. Find more of her work at http://emilykmichael.com.
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A forbidden love affair, a suggestion of magical realism, a collective of village women lifting themselves out of poverty, and a family of Bengal tigers struggling to survive; Katy Yocom's debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear transports readers to India, where they are surrounded by the sights, the smells, the sounds, and amazing people. A lot has been written about the India of cities and slums. Yocom writes about rural India, where villagers compete with endangered tigers for food and water. Yocom stopped by Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass during the Jacksonville leg of her book tour, to talk about the growing market for environmental fiction, and how her novel was inspired by a litter of cubs at the Louisville Zoo. Katy Yocom's books are available at https://www.amazon.com/Three-Ways-Disappear-Katy-Yocom/dp/1618220837


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