Lovers, Dreamers, & Thieves: An Evening with Local Memoirist and Playwright Marcia Cebulska
About the Event
From Flint Hills Publishing in Topeka comes a brand new memoir by the award-winning author and playwright, Marcia Cebulska! Lovers, Dreamers, & Thieves is full of classic Chicago, life at a Polish bakery, fake weddings, parakeets riding around on pet dogs, and more. Join us at the Raven for an evening reading and discussion with Cebulska on May 18 at 7 p.m.!
About the Author
Marcia Cebulska’s critically acclaimed plays have been performed at thousands of venues worldwide. She has received the Jane Chambers International Award and the Dorothy Silver Award. Her non-fiction book Skywriting was published in 2019 and her novel Watching Men Dance in 2020. Marcia grew up in Cragin, a Polish neighborhood in Chicago where her family owned a bakery and where, as a Kindergartener, she was dressed as a nun to represent her parish for a citywide centennial celebration of Holy Name Cathedral. She now lives in Topeka, Kansas with her husband, historian Tom Prasch.
About the Book
In this touching yet wickedly funny memoir, Marcia Cebulska gives you a peek behind the curtain to see what life was like in the family bakery that adjoined her childhood home. You will meet the warm, rowdy, lovable, and sometimes criminal characters of her life: a grandfather who stages fake Polish weddings; a parakeet that rides on the head of the pet dog; a cousin who collects nun dolls. But also: a father taken away in handcuffs; a mother in love with a priest; an uncle in the mob.
Cebulska is a superb storyteller who, in short, captivating vignettes, captures her memories as individual, evocative, beautifully told worlds in themselves. Woven together, these stories tell a larger tale, one of desire and struggle, passion and defeat, dancing and joy. Reading Lovers, Dreamers, & Thieves is a stimulating and enriching walk in another time, another life.
"With a novelist's eye for detail and a poet's gift for language, Cebulska has written a visceral knockout of a memoir packed with vibrant, unforgettable family members and unexpected happenings. Cebulska is a brilliant, big-hearted, and luminous storyteller who can capture a world in a short vignette. I was entirely captivated by these intimate and moving family portraits
She is a wanderer; he will not fly. She is a city girl; he prefers a bison ranch. She grew up in her father's Greek restaurant; he dances at powwows. Ava and Jesse travel life together in a turquoise pickup truck, feasting along the way. They settle, raise children, cheat, gamble, and fight with great gusto.