Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood

by Regi Carpenter

Overview

Family: comfort food or a recipe for disaster? Award-winning storyteller and performer Regi Carpenter brings her humor and honesty to print in Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner.

Regi is the youngest daughter in a family that pulsates with contradictions: religious and raucous, tender but terrible, unfortunate yet irrepressible. These honest tales—some hilarious, some heartbreaking—celebrate the glorious and gut-wrenching lives of four generations of Carpenters raised on the Saint Lawrence River in Clayton, New York. From teenagers struggling to find their identity to disabled veterans grappling with the aftermath of war and change to the complications and sweetness of love between family members, this collection of linked short stories holds the universal message that life’s difficulties are softened by love and fortitude . . . and family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942934400
Publisher:	Familius
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Regi Carpenter is a solo performance artist, writer, teacher, and performance coach. An award-winning performer, Regi has toured her solo shows and workshops in theaters, festivals, and schools both nationally and internationally. Her writings and blogs about storytelling, ancestry, and identity have been published in various print and online publications. Regi holds a BFA from Ithaca College where she currently teaches storytelling.

Regi is the recipient of the JJ Reneaux Emerging Artist Award, a Leonard Bernstein Teaching Fellowship Award, the Parent's Choice Gold Award, the Parents's Guide to Children's Media Award, and the Storytelling World Award. Her performance piece "Snap!" won the 2012 Boston StorySlam. "Snap!" is a featured listen story on The Moth website. In addition, she recently raised the funds from fans across the country to make a CD and DVD of "Snap!"

Along with her work as a performer, coach, and writer, Regi is also the founder of Stories with Spirit, a creative initiative dedicated to bringing songs of joy and stories of hope to grieving children and the people who love and care for them in homes, hospices, and hospitals. Her high school storytelling curriculum, "Teens Talking" has been awarded grants from the New York State Council of the Arts. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

Table of Contents

• The Lucky Caul
• Scars are Tattoos with Better Stories, or How I Became a Carpenter
• Peanut Butter and Jelly
• Self Defense, or How Librarians Are Making the World a Safer Place
• Matter Rearranged
• One Man’s Trash
• Love Is War
• Bendable Barbie
• Dead Man’s Float
• Flames of Jesus
• The Piano, or The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways; Mothers Do Not
• Snap!
• She’s Climbing the Stairway to Heaven
• Me, Moses, and the Dog
• I Love You; Will You Bury Me?
• Diving and Emerging

Editorial Reviews

"I laughed, gasped, wept—sometimes all in the same paragraph—when reading Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood by Regi Carpenter. Growing up as the youngest of the exuberant, notorious, and often destitute 'Carpenter kids' of Clayton, NY, Regi is resourceful against all the odds. This is a candid story of desperate measures, explosive humor, and, ultimately, the sanity behind seeming madness.  It teaches a new understanding of family love. Brilliant writing!"
—Jo Radner, reviewer for the National Storytelling Network's magazine

"Giver of story, giver of light: Regi Carpenter takes lived experience and imagined choices and shapes them into what listeners—and now readers—need in their deepest hunger. To hear her tell is to live a way of seeing existence—becoming existence—in a world where it’s okay to ask questions about why we exist at all. To be in her presence is to know golden genius. And now this book can carry her spirit into minds and hearts allowing her in: welcome, readers seeking treasure, to this trove of tales that glow."
—Katharyn Howd Machan, author of Redwing: Voices from 1888 and Wild Grapes: Poems of Fox

"I am a believer that the Lord works in wondrous ways and especially through the stories of Regi Carpenter in Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood as I laughed and cried with the brilliant writer Carpenter!
Do yourself a favor and go get Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner at once! You'll be in for a literary treat if you do!"
—Nancy Slonim Aronie, founder of The Chilmark Writing Workshop and former Harvard University professor

Praise for Regi Carpenter:

"Regi Carpenter's stories are pure joy. Exquisitely written, funny and deeply moving they are brimming with profound insight into the complex ways families love. I read them over and over and always find something new."
—Noa Baum, author of A Land Twice Promised

“[Carpenter’s tales] are an unexpected gift that promises to leave us longing for more empathic vignettes from this comfortable, compelling voice.”
—Booklist Review of CD Diving and Emerging

“While hearing Regi tell in Jonesborough, I scrawled in the margins of my program, ‘A Must Have!’ for our festival in Cape Girardeau. And after featuring her twice now on the banks of the Mississippi River, her delightfully eclectic performances and artful approach to storytelling have absolutely validated that initial assessment. There is such a sincere charm to her subtle—yet swiftly quite spirited and sly—telling. As she affectionately unrolls her tapestries of personal narrative drawn from generations along the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York I am thoroughly charmed by how seamlessly she weaves the threads of genuine reflection, baby boomer sensibilities and whimsical song. In a word, for me . . . captivating (OK, probably contagious too)."
—Joel Rhodes, Director, Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival, Missouri

“You don’t have to be a St. Lawrence ‘river rat’ to be mesmerized by Regi Carpenter’s work. It transcends time and space to embody the essence of storytelling, connection: with each other, with our histories, and with our own humanity—deceptively embedded in flat-out, full-tilt entertainment. She is among the very best of a talent-studded field.”
—Caren Niele, Producer, Adventura Arts and Cultural Center, Adventura, Florida

 "Inventive, insightful, emotionally nuanced in the midst of lovely singing and deadpan humor, yes, these are characteristics of Regina's storytelling but more than that, here is a great, big-hearted embrace of the world that makes her a pleasure to work with and an inspiration to hear.”
—Loren Niemi, Executive Director, Heart of the Beast Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota

From the Publisher

I laughed, gasped, wept—sometimes all in the same paragraph—when reading Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood by Regi Carpenter. Growing up as theyoungest of the exuberant, notorious, and often destitute “Carpenterkids” of Clayton, NY, Regi is resourceful against all the odds.This is a candid story of desperate measures, explosive humor, and,ultimately, the sanity behind seeming madness. It teaches a newunderstanding of family love. Brilliant writing!

—Jo Radner, reviewer for theNational Storytelling Network's magazine

Giver of story, giver of light: Regi Carpenter takes lived experienceand imagined choices and shapes them into what listeners—and nowreaders—need in their deepest hunger.To hear her tell is to live a way of seeing existence—becomingexistence—in a world where it’s okay to ask questions about why weexist at all.To be in her presence is to know golden genius. And now this book can carry her spirit intominds and hearts allowing her in: welcome, readers seeking treasure, tothis trove of tales that glow.

—Katharyn Howd Machan, author of Redwing: Voices from 1888 and WildGrapes: Poems of Fox

I am a believer that the Lord works in wondrous ways and especially through the stories of Regi Carpenter in Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood as I laughed and cried with the brilliant writer Carpenter!
Do yourself a favor and go getWhere There’s Smoke, There’s Dinnerat once! You'llbe in for a literary treat if you do!

—Nancy Slonim Aronie, founder of The Chilmark Writing Workshop and former Harvard University professor

Endorsement

"Regi Carpenter's stories are pure joy. Exquisitely written, funny and deeply moving they are brimming with profound insight into the complex ways families love. I read them over and over and always find something new."

—Noa Baum, author of A Land Twice Promised

“[Carpenter’s tales] are an unexpected gift that promises to leave us longing for more empathic vignettes from this comfortable, compelling voice.”

—Booklist Review of CD Diving and Emerging

“While hearing Regi tell in Jonesborough, I scrawled in the margins of my program, ‘A Must Have!’ for our festival in Cape Girardeau. And after featuring her twice now on the banks of the Mississippi River, her delightfully eclectic performances and artful approach to storytelling have absolutely validated that initial assessment. There is such a sincere charm to her subtle—yet swiftly quite spirited and sly—telling. As she affectionately unrolls her tapestries of personal narrative drawn from generations along the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York I am thoroughly charmed by how seamlessly she weaves the threads of genuine reflection, baby boomer sensibilities and whimsical song. In a word, for me . . . captivating (OK, probably contagious too).

—Joel Rhodes, Director, Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival, Missouri

“You don’t have to be a St. Lawrence ‘river rat’ to be mesmerized by Regi Carpenter’s work. It transcends time and space to embody the essence of storytelling, connection: with each other, with our histories, and with our own humanity—deceptively embedded in flat-out, full-tilt entertainment. She is among the very best of a talent-studded field.”

—Caren Niele, Producer, Adventura Arts and Cultural Center, Adventura, Florida

“Inventive, insightful, emotionally nuanced in the midst of lovely singing and deadpan humor, yes, these are characteristics of Regina's storytelling but more than that, here is a great, big-hearted embrace of the world that makes her a pleasure to work with and an inspiration to hear.”

—Loren Niemi, Executive Director, Heart of the Beast Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Praise for Regi Carpenter