Welcome to WORDTheatre's Saturday Stories! I’m your host Cedering Fox and we're here every week to share recordings of stories from our 20 year archive of live performances in Los Angeles, New York and London..

Please note that WORDTheatre holds the copyright to these recordings so no portion of anything you hear may be reproduced without permission.

We have just rebranded The WORDTheatre® Short Story Podcast of three years as WORDTheatre's Saturday Stories and you can count on us each week to release something new from our treasure trove! If you like what you are hearing, please tell your friends and feel free to shoot us an email at admin@wordtheatre.org with comments, suggestions and requests!

Today we’re sharing one of my favorite stories, "By Love Possessed," by Lorna Goodison. It is the title story from her first collection of short fiction and it was performed live in Los Angeles by the phenomenal CCH Pounder. We are kicking off Black History Month with one hell of a love story. Please welcome author Lorna Goodison, who will introduce her Pushcart Prize winning, “By Love Possessed.”

LORNA GOODISON
"The story, "By Love Possessed, is set in Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1950s. In those days the city of Kingston posted over 20 active movie theaters, and everyone, including me and my eight siblings, went to the theater regularly. This story is shaped by my early experiences as an avid movie-goer, a child who wept copious tears as she sat in the theater at age seven and watched Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer in a movie named Lily. 'A song of love is a sad song,' ran the theme song. By Love Possessed is a love story about what happens when an unlikely pairing takes place between an older woman and a handsome, younger man. It is one of the very first stories that I ever wrote, though storytelling has always been a feature of my poetry, and I feel honored that it won a Pushcart Prize, and I am absolutely delighted to have it read by the brilliant CCH pounder."

CCH Pounder performs "By Love Possessed' by Lorna Goodison.
PLEASE NOTE: WORDTheatre® does not have permission to share a transcript of the story, nor does any person or any company, without penalty. WORDTheatre only has permission to share our recording of the live WORDTheatre® performance of the story on this podcast. If you want to read the story you must purchase it from a bookseller.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you loved CCH 's performance as much as we do. Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist with twenty books to her name, many accolades and numerous literary honors. Don't forget you can pick up books by our esteemed authors at Bookshop.org and you'll be helping two non-profits.

We truly love what we do here and to bring these stories to life for you all means everything to us. Not only do we put out Saturday Stories but we hold live events throughout the year in Los Angeles, New York and London and for our friends all over the world, we are bringing back our Live Zooms where an actor reads a story followed by a Q & A with actor and author. And these Zooms are free for our Patron and Enthusiast Members! Special thanks to Glass Animal for our theme music, to philanthropist/benefactor Ola Strom and the LA County Department of Arts and Culture for their ongoing support. Thank you to our interns, our executive assistant Scout Riley, and our podcast editor Jason Lee! We encourage you to visit WORDTheatre.org where you can learn more and join the WORDTheatre family! Until next week this is Cedering Fox signing off!