Happy holidays! Or, if this is trite to you, like it can be for me, as the holidays are actually quite a grief-filled time, I wish you tenderness this time of year and hope you are with loved ones.

My year was extremely difficult; I was laid off in the midst of grad school, unemployed for some time, now working part-time at school with full-time course work, had deaths in my family, learned a lot of lessons…whew. But, when I did a year in review, A Year in Charlene, if you will (my partner coined that), I realized I have so much to celebrate and be proud of myself for even amongst the turbulence of the year.

So here are the highlights and accomplishments of my year and some hopes for the next!

Here are a few ways you can support me and my art!

Buy a digital copy of FIYAH: Saints, Sinners, and Haints which features my short story “Lost & Found” and many other Southern gothic stories ($3.99).

Read my review of the Playwrights Horizons production of Practice by Nazareth Hassan in Culturebot.

Mark your calendars for my free, second year production of Lil Sis and the Furies at Columbia University, April 3-4, 2026. Lil Sis and the Furies is a musical following closeted Lil Sis from age seventeen to her early twenties who falls for her butch rock camp counselor, Melody. An ode to and a reckoning with feminist punk, Lil Sis and the Furies navigates the up- and downbeats of queer coming-of-age.

Happy New Year!