Six writers gathered for a writing workshop by award-winning actress and accomplished author Denise Nicholas are featured in the workshop’s debut collection of stories called “A Gathering of Voices.” The book, which was released in March, opens with a foreword written by actress Phylicia Rashad, and chapters written by the diverse group of writers in Nicholas’ workshop. Among them are fellow actress Hattie Winston, former bookstore owner Denise Billings, television and film producer Charles Floyd Johnson, retired anesthesiologist Otto E. Stallworth Jr., MD, and GW Williams, who retired as an assistant general manager for supply chain services with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
With an acting career spanning nearly four decades, Nicholas, 80, is known for TV shows like “Room 222” and “In the Heat of the Night”, and films like “Let’s Do It Again.” In 2005, she released her debut novel “Freshwater Road”, which earned critical acclaim from the likes of The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune. While searching for inspiration for another book, Nicholas launched the Longwood Writers Workshop out of her Los Angeles home in 2018, and continued to host the group every two weeks until the COVID–19 pandemic in 2020.
“I was having trouble getting started on a new project myself, and I had been in a really great workshop, as some years ago my book ‘Freshwater Road’ came out of a workshop,” Nicholas explained in an interview with the Amsterdam News. “So I thought maybe if I set up a workshop for myself and bring people in who are interested in longform fiction or memoir, it would give me a boost as well.”
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To gather the other five writers, Nicholas began reaching out to people in her Los Angeles social circle she knew had expressed an interest in writing. Most of the other participants had little to no formal writing training when they started meeting. For a few involved, “A Gathering of Voices” is their debut as published authors.
“My original thought was that I needed it for my own sense of balance and forward progress, and I got that from it in addition to the fellowship that we shared,” Nicholas said. “We had some great times together. We’ve consumed quite a bit of champagne, and we have talked about everything but writing sometimes.”
Shortly before joining the workshop in 2018, Otto E. Stallworth Jr., MD took writing courses at UCLA after his retirement from anesthesiology. It was a way for Stallworth, now 79 years old, to revive an interest in writing that first started to grow while he was an undergraduate student at Howard University, before he began his 45-year medical career.
“When I faced retirement I was trying to figure out what to do, and I have a cousin who’s a neurosurgeon and he said the best thing to do is pursue something that you haven’t done before,” Stallworth said.
Stallworth’s memoir, “Are You A N****r Or A Doctor?” was released as an ebook and audiobook in December 2022, making it the first book to come out of the workshop. In it, Stallworth’s humor shines through as he details the first 40 years of his life, including a sometimes difficult upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1950s and ‘60s. “A Gathering of Voices” features four chapters taken from the memoir, which takes its title from an actual question Stallworth was asked in his early twenties, a moment he wrote about during one of the first workshop meetings.
“I went to an all-Black elementary school, high school, predominant[ly] Black college, predominantly Black medical school, and then I went to an internship in Ohio, and I was the only Black doctor among 35 other residents and interns,” Stallworth explained. “And I was asked that question by a patient. So that was the first story I wrote because, how could I ever forget that?”
Three of the chapters in “A Gathering Of Voices” are written by Nicholas herself. They include excerpts from “Freshwater Road” and her memoir “Finding Home,” which is scheduled to be released in November, and a chapter from a novel she’s still developing called “Willie and Iona.”
Nicholas’ “Finding Home” chapter, titled “The Sea That Takes You,” details a road trip she took with family in 1975 that illustrated how success as a celebrated access didn’t shield her or her travel companions from everyday prejudices experienced by Black women. While “A Gathering of Voices” includes some fiction, the majority of it is nonfiction, with writers drawing directly from their own life experiences for inspiration.
“We shared very personal things at the table, there were tears, there was laughter,” Nicholas said. “The work brought those emotions to the surface, and that’s precisely what we needed to do.”
“Some of the stories are funny, some are traumatic, but I think you’ll see that none of us have gone through life without some kind of adversity,” Stallworth added. “And in spite of that adversity we have pushed on.”
Stallworth is working on a fictional murder mystery book, and also plans to write a second part of his memoir to cover his life since turning 40. Billings released her debut book, “Road Trip: A Memoir” in 2023 and has more books in the works. Winston, who was a regular on the TV show “Becker,” also has a book she’s aiming to get published.
“A part of me is shocked that it’s come as far as it has,” Nicholas said. “I think it’s beautiful. I think generally people have these experiences that, if you’re not a writer, you push them to the side and you carry on with your life, but we have to exploit those experiences.”
“A Gathering of Voices” is available online via Barnes & Noble and Amazon and at longwoodwritersworkshop.com.