One sweltering summer in a cinder-block classroom in tidewater Virginia, during my 13th summer, I learned to type. It made no sense, the fghj arrangement to which I anchored my forefingers, but I fell for the keyboard just the same. At around the same time, I fell big-time for the theater—maybe because I’d played Lady Macbeth the year before and  hadn’t yet gotten over the thrill of swearing onstage.

Decades later I’m still at it. My two books, Lorca: A Dream of Life and Staging Ground: An American Theater and Its Ghosts, are testament to my passions. My next book, a history-memoir about my slaveholding Scarlett ancestors, will touch on both stage and page in part through the stories of British actress Fanny Kemble and American writer Margaret Mitchell. From time to time I write about these and other things in my blog. Please visit.