LORENE CARY _____________________________________________________________________________
[email protected] lorenecary.com Play: My General Tubman, Arden Theatre (January 16-March 1; extended twice through March 13). During her temporal lobe epilepsy “spells,” Harriet Tubman travels through time to a Philadelphia prison and brings men back to the Civil War as her Combahee River Raid spies; one falls in love and figures out how to go back in time separately to marry her. Books: Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century (W. W. Norton & Co, 2019; paperback due June 2020). Everything changed when my grandmother moved in and our loving, funny, and complicated family shared life and faced death with her. I had to write the story to understand the loss and let it go, from free landowning progenitors in the South to my own spiritual challenge of forgiveness. If Sons, Then Heirs (Paperback: Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, 2012) Deeded to his ex-slave ancestors by General Sherman, Rayne Needham’s “heir property” has been held together, barely, for 50 years by his Nana Selma, now holed up in a tiny trailer on the old family farm. Rayne travels from Philadelphia to accept his inheritance: savage American story of black land ownership, family diaspora, and tragic loss. Free! Great Escapes from Slavery on the Underground Railroad (New City Community Press/Third World Press, 2005; Kindle, 2013). Based on the records of Pennsylvania abolitionist William Still, Free’s true stories of escapes—on foot, trains, horses, boats, in mail trunks— exhibit brazenness, stealth, and courage. (YA) Pride (Nan A.