INNER LOOP PANEL: IN THE AUTHORS CORNER —with Kyoko Mori

Every story exists within a world, either existing, created, or adapted. What preconceived notions or associations does the reader bring to those worlds, and how does the writer navigate them? What are the constraints of working with an existing place or time, and how do its traditions, mythology, or folklore affect the stories we choose to tell? Memoirist Kyoko Mori speaks with local writers Michele Evans, Tamar Shapiro, and Charlotte Taylor Fryar about crafting writing in tandem--and also distinct--from the lore that exists around their subjects.Michele Evans, a fifth-generation Washingtonian (D.C.), is a writer, teacher, and adviser for Unbound, an award-winning Northern Virginia high school literary magazine. This Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee studied at Smith College, King's College London, and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland. Her poems have appeared in Artemis Journal, The ASP Bulletin, Maryland Literary Review, Mid-Atlantic Review, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Yellow Arrow Journal, Zora's Den, and elsewhere. This Watering Hole fellow and Teacher Consultant for the Northern Virginia Writing Project lives online at www.awordsmithie.com. purl is her first poetry collection.Tamar Shapiro was raised in both the U.S. and Germany and now lives in Washington, DC with her husband, two children, and the world's best dog. While writing Restitution, Shapiro attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Program and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. A former real estate attorney and non-profit leader, she is a 2026 MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia. This is her first novel.Charlotte Taylor Fryar is a writer, historian, educator, and herbalist. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Glen Echo, Maryland, less than seven hundred feet from the banks of the Potomac River. Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River is her first book.Kyoko Mori’s new nonfiction book, CAT & BIRD, was published in March 2024 by Belt Publishing. She is the author of 3 other nonfiction books (The Dream of Water; Polite Lies; Yarn) and 4 novels (Shizuko’s Daughter; One Bird; Stone Field, True Arrow; Barn Cat). Her essays and stories have appeared in The Best American Essays, Harvard Review, The American Scholar, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, and others. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at George Mason University and the Low-Residency MFA Program at Lesley University.Potomac Fever, Restitution, and purl are The Inner Loop's Author's Corner fall spotlights. The Inner Loop (https://theinnerlooplit.org/) cultivates and promotes the distinctive literary culture of Washington, DC. Author's Corner supports local authors' independently published books by spotlighting them in community programming and collaborations.PURCHASE BOOKS: https://politics-prose.com/inner-loop-panel