Cicada Love Songs

The last time Brood X emerged, I was amazed at the change in the landscape—the look, the smell, and most of all, the sound of my Baltimore neighborhood transformed into an eerie alien landscape, something out of an old 1950s bug-eyed monster movie, the sound of aliens hovering on the horizon.

I was inspired to write “Cicadas” shortly after Brood X burrowed back into the ground. “Cicadas” was a short story, and one of my first to be both published in an anthology and featured on the radio.

When East Baltimore’s Patterson Theater hosted a Write Here Write Now reading in 2006, “Cicadas” became the first short story I read aloud to an audience as an author outside an academic setting. “Cicadas” would go on to be read on Baltimore’s NPR station, WYPR, in 2008, and published as the opening story in New Lines from the Old Line State: An Anthology of Maryland Writers (Maryland Writers Association Press, 2008).

Brood X is back. What better time than now to listen to the story they inspired last time they were with us? Take a ten-minute listen below—Cicada sound effects included!

https://yourlisten.com/edgewriter/cicadas