Beaufort’s Doris E. Wright will be reading from and talking about her novel, Cabbagehead, at The Beaufort Bookstore, 2127 Boundary Street, from 3- 5 pm on Saturday, December 7.
Cabbagehead is the story of Bradley Peterson’s friendship with a large, wise, philosophical weed. Bradley is fifty, reclusive, happiest when alone gardening. His beautiful, domineering wife, Calley, runs things; his grown children barely know him. While Calley is away, Bradley finds a cabbage-like plant that speaks to him. His talks with the wise and funny Cabbagehead engage Bradley and bring him to realize he has long suppressed his real self.
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 less conventional reader describes it as “Walter Mitty meets Kafka’s cockroach.”
Born in the Panama Canal Zone, Doris Wright has lived and traveled throughout the world. After careers as a teacher and a journalist, and raising three children, she turned to writing.
Her story, “A Glitch in Time,” won second place and was published in the anthology Short Story America: Volume 7, July 2022. Other of her award-winning stories in Sea Island Spirit Writer’s short story contests include “A Mother and Son have a Friendly Conversation,” “Quit It!” and “Buried Along with Her Name,” all published in Lowcountry Weekly. Her non-fiction work “Mobile Summer”” and her poem “Stars” were published in the Catfish Stew anthologies (April 19, 2020, and May 31, 2021), and several of her flash pieces were runners up in Women on Writing contests. An undergraduate English major, philosophy minor, at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Al, and she took graduate level English classes and participated in writers’ workshops, including the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College and Colgate University’s novel, short story, and poetry workshops. “Broken Down,” is her novel in progress about the misadventures of academics at a conference in Africa, based on an actual trip she took with her academic husband.
