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With laughter at inside jokes and sharing personal anecdotes, the book reading at ArtRage Gallery on Monday was not just a discussion between an author and readers, but a gathering of friends.

ArtRage Gallery hosted author Mary Slechta for readings from her new book and a discussion with the audience. She read four short stories before her Q&A, but the audience asked repeatedly to hear more.

“(The event tonight) says something about her networks in Syracuse,” Syracuse University professor Joan Bryant said. “She has wide and deep roots here, and I think that that’s interesting, that that kind of sensibility is also in (her book).”

In 2019, Kimbilio, an organization that supports Black fiction writers, named Slechta a Kimbilio Fellow. She attended an annual retreat put on by the organization in New Mexico later that year.

At the retreat, she began writing a collection of short stories about a fictionalized version of her neighborhood that combined elements of fantasy, history and her own experiences. She was inspired by looking out of her own window in Syracuse, a Dr. Seuss book and the people of her community.

She named the street in her book “Mulberry Street” after she heard about the controversy surrounding Dr. Seuss’ “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and its racist drawings.

Slechta is originally from Connecticut, but has lived in the Syracuse area for the majority of her life. She first lived in the East Side, then moved to Westcott and now lives in DeWitt. She went to the University of Connecticut for her undergraduate degree and SU for her master’s degree in English, where she graduated in 1982.

When she began thinking about the book, Slechta went on walks with her friend, Bryant. They discussed history and stories that would later be included in the book.

Bryant loves that you “can’t contain Mulberry Street.” It includes the natural and the supernatural, and every event seems to happen at the same point in time, for better or for worse, Slechta said.

“It was lovely to hear her reading. That’s a different experience, to hear her tell the stories like a storytelling versus reading it,” Bryant said. “To have the stories being told in a community of people who are invested in their own way is a sort of interesting and gratifying experience, a sense of connection.”

She submitted her collection for a joint contest between Kimbilio and Four Way Books in 2020 and won in 2021. The book came out on Sept. 15 and was launched in New York City before the Monday event at ArtRage.

Slechta has been connected with ArtRage for decades. She worked with Rose Viviano, the director at Artrage in the 1990s, through a group no longer meeting called the Syracuse Community Writers.

“I absolutely love ArtRage,” Slechta said. “I love it. I just know the community. So it’s really part of that community, giving back the stories to the community.”

Amy Zamkoff, who attended the event, also met Slechta through Syracuse Community Writers. She said she attended the event primarily because she found the book remarkable, but also because it tells the story of a dear friend.

“(Slechta) has been a great gift in my life,” Zamkoff said. “But now she has gifted me something even more, which was giving me some insight into her life.”

The book gave her a chance to enter someone else’s life through literature, Zamkoff said. It tells a story of Syracuse from the perspective of the Black community there.

She said that there are parts of history, and parts of people’s experiences, that don’t get enough attention. For example, Zamkoff grew up in Oklahoma and said she had never heard about the Tulsa massacre until the recent movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” came out. Today, Slechta’s work highlights some of that underrepresented history in Syracuse, Zamkoff said.

ArtRage decided to do the event in conjunction with Helen Zughaib’s “Stories My Father Told Me” exhibit, which runs until Oct. 28 at ArtRage, because her work focuses on personal stories, just as Slechta’s book does.

“We decided that would be very cool … reading about stories and about neighborhoods within an exhibit that’s about a neighborhood and stories,” Slechta said. “It’s also celebrating something that’s really meaningful to me around people that I really do admire and love.”

Published on October 23, 2023 at 10:23 pm