My novel Cabbagehead is the story of fifty-year-old BRADLEY PETERSON who has always avoided being known or engaged in life. Mistreated by his parents, then bullied by his wife, and overwhelmed even by mundane events, Bradley has retreated to an uninspiring, interior life. His only contentment is in gardening—until the day a plant, looking like a large and unlovely cabbage, speaks to him. They become friends and have conversations that range from religion to the merits of mold. Encouraged by the wise and persuasive CABBAGEHEAD, Bradley becomes more assertive at work; reconnects with his children and father; stands up to his wife; and embraces a new, fulfilling life. But Bradley is alarmed when he learns of Cabbagehead’s plan for him—saving the planet from ecological disaster.
In the mix of humor and consequential matters, Cabbagehead is an uplifting character study—of Bradley, his wife, their children, and of a feisty succulent. Readers of Cabbagehead have described it as a tale of “serious matters told with humor,” noted the author’s “wonderful writing,” and the book’s “beautiful lines and passages.” One reader describes it as “Walter Mitty meets Kafka’s cockroach."
About me: I was born in the Panama Canal Zone and have lived and traveled throughout the world. I have lived in 26 cities and in 18 states or countries, and have traveled in Africa, China and Europe. After various careers including teaching and journalism, and raising three children, I turned to writing. For many years I had been writing poems and short stories, particularly very short ones, most of them dark and a little off kilter. (Like the woman who thinks she needs to commit a murder to fix the flow of time; the man obsessed with a neighbor’s legs who is actually experiencing dementia; the woman who kidnaps a neighbor’s baby when the neighbor acquires a monkey). My story “A Glitch in Time” won second place and appeared in Short Story America, VII (2022); several of my award-winning stories have been published in WOW! Women on Writing; Beaufort, South Carolina’s Lowcountry Weekly; and my nonfiction “Mobile Summer” and poem “Stars” are in the 2020 and 2021 volumes of the South Carolina Writers’ Association’s anthology Catfish Stew. I studied English and Philosophy at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, and have taken graduate English classes and participated in the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College and Colgate University’s novel, short story, and poetry workshops.
Finally I decided that I wanted to write a novel, but I didn’t have an actual story in mind until I had a dream in which a human head was sticking out of the ground, talking to me. That prompted my story. Because of my insecurities, I had to convince myself this didn’t have to be a good novel. In fact, to do this, I had to want to write a bad novel. Believing that was freeing.
Because of the communication between Bradley and Cabbagehead, I became interested in animal-plant communication. I discovered there were some great thinkers who were intrigued by the subject, from the poet William Blake in the 19th century, to E. O. Wilson’s Biophilia, The human bond with other species to The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. I visited an exhibit that demonstrated in film the roots of plants communicating with one another. Just last week, the New York Times published When They Hear Plants Crying, Moths Make a Decision. And that article rereferred me to audio recordings of plants crying.
Doris E. Wright, Author
Cabbagehead
DorisEWright44@Gmail.com
North of the Broad Hosted by Robyn Zimmerman
Filmed at the Pat Conroy Literary Center
December 2024
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