Samuel Autman’s essays have appeared The Washington Post, It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, The Kept Secret: The Half-Truth in Nonfiction, The Chalk Circle: Prizewinning Intercultural Essays, The St. Louis Anthology and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America and Bellevue Literary Review. He is a contributing editor for the London-based Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place and Nature, a creative writing faculty member at DePauw University, and has an MFA from Columbia University. His essay “Wonder Boys,” recalls an event he saw growing up in the Penrose neighborhood in St. Louis, and was adapted into A Long Walk, a short film starring Colman Domingo and directed by Chinonye Chukwu. It can be viewed at www.samuelautman.com. He is currently working on his own memoir project.
Opera aficionados and many St. Louisans already knew about her. Somehow, I did not. Being in Bumbry’s presence magnified my own desires to pursue the creative arts, travel the globe, and know more than one language. Very much like another famous St. Louisan Josephine Baker, Grace Bumbry’s life and story shattered the limitations of what is possible for Black Americans.
Our alienation from fishes stems from the fact that they have existed, both literally and figuratively, beneath the surface of our awareness. Gaze over a lake, a river, or an ocean, and while there may be legions of fishes carrying on with their lives within inches of the surface, we witness nothing of it.
"Eden’s days come back in shards of fractured memories, contextualized conjecture and research, and my mother's voice as the old reliable washing machine that spins and recycles for years after the events. I cling to these fleeting blissful moments from life on Crescent Avenue in Hillsdale, suburban St. Louis. We were as idyllic an American family as any with a mama and daddy, a son and a daughter and a German shepherd in the fenced backyard. Almost all of the actual pictures are gone. St. Louis County police and court records provide Suburban police reports reveal a patchwork quilt where compression is distortion and repetition alters the fabric."