Exhibiting Author Richard Morris Draws on Personal Experience in Writing His Novel

by Richard Morris

My novel, “Canoedling in Cleveland,” came about from many personal experiences: my canoe adventures as a teenager in Cleveland and young man in Maryland and West Virginia; my experience as a high school newspaper editor asking my adviser and a real estate agent why no African-Americans lived in our suburb, as well as books and research on the topic; explorations into the geography of the city and its history and environmental condition when the novel takes place in 1960 (Lake Erie beaches closed due to high bacteria levels, no fish in the Cuyahoga River from Akron to Cleveland, and thick oil on the Cuyahoga in Cleveland that caught on fire many times–conditions that have greatly improved since then); and the fanciful canoe stories I told my wife’s daycare kids as we sat around eating lunch. Six such stories about lion-worms, giant mules, and gum-chewing piranhas are included in the novel, and I will read several of them in the Imagination Station at Gaithersburg Book Festival while illustrator Audrey Engdahl sketches the action as it happens!