THIS SUNDAY (9/15)! Arts and Culture series features Secrets of an Old Typewriter author and her cabaret singer son

Additional coverage!

• From Ann Arbor Journal/Saline Reporter - click here.
• From Pride Source/Between the Lines - click here.
• Susie's latest Homeward Angle column - click here.
• Susie's essay "This Happily Haunted House" in the latest edition of Our USA Magazine by clicking here (pages 96-98).

ANN ARBOR –  THIS Sunday, Sept. 15, from 1-2:30 p.m., author Susie Duncan Sexton will read from her book “Secrets of an Old Typewriter” as part of the Ann Arbor Arts and Culture Series.

She will be joined by son Roy Sexton who, accompanied by pianist Rebecca Biber, will offer a selection of his mom’s favorite show tunes.

This presentation will be held at the Ann Arbor Senior Center at 1320 Baldwin Avenue. Cost is $5 general admission or $4 for guests 60 years and older. To reserve tickets, please call 734-794-6250, and for more info, including maps to the center, visit www.a2gov.org/government/communityservices/ParksandRecreation/seniors/. 

Anyone who has ever lived in a small town certainly knows that secrets are sometimes not so secret. Susie Duncan Sexton of Columbia City/Fort Wayne, Indiana has tickled the keys of her trusty old typewriter for nearly five decades, and now that venerable machine is ready to reveal its secrets.

“Secrets of an old Typewriter” may be about small-town life, but the ideas contained within it are expansive.

“My husband and I adore Ann Arbor,” Duncan Sexton says. “I am so jealous that my son gets to live here. This town with its progressive sensibility, thoughtful approach to life, and love of nature and animals is my ideal, so I can’t begin to describe how honored it is for this Hoosier to be invited to participate in this Arts and Culture program.

“My son has lived in Michigan since 1999 and in the Ann Arbor area since 2007, and, while we always wanted him to live with us forever, now I want to come live with him! I want to thank Pam Simmons and the whole team there for their support and encouragement. I can’t wait to meet up with my Michigan friends, to share anecdotes and some ‘secrets’ from my book, to hear my son sing, and to help spread the word about a cause near and dear to my heart ... the welfare of our animal friends.”

Duncan Sexton will have copies of her book on hand to sell and autograph. Find her book in advance at www.susieduncansexton.com, www.open-bks.com or www.amazon.com.

In a recent review of “Secrets” by fellow author Kandy Kay Scaramuzzo (“Pie: An Old Brown Horse”), Scaramuzzo writes, “This book is a true testament to what it like to live in a small town. The author starts the story a few years before I was born, but in small towns things don’t change very rapidly. Since I grew up in a small town, I can totally relate. ... If you have never lived in one, you might find it hard to believe that so many people would get worked up over minor things like movies, but it is so true. The author attacks …with gusto.”

Local resident Roy Sexton — Duncan Sexton’s son — is known throughout Michigan for his cabaret style performances. He will be singing some classic musical theatre tunes (and a surprise or two), including compositions by Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, and Stephen Schwartz.

Sexton co-founded Ann Arbor’s Penny Seats Theatre Company and recently completed a run as Noble Eggleston (and six other characters!) in the musical “Little Me” at the West Park Band Shell this summer and as Professor Callahan in “Legally Blonde the Musical” at Farmington Players this past spring. He has had leading roles in local productions of the musicals “Oklahoma!,” “Company,” “The Pajama Game,” “Rags,” “Bells are Ringing,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” and “Side by Side by Sondheim,” among others.

He will be accompanied by music director and local teacher Rebecca Biber, who just completed a stint helming the music duties for “Little Me.” She has worked extensively with other local theatre groups as well, including Spotlight Players, Farmington Players, and Encore Theatre. She holds degrees from The University of Michigan.

About the author

Susie Duncan Sexton grew up in a very small town, Columbia City, Indiana. After graduating 12th in her class at Ball State University (winning the first ever John R. Emens award for “most outstanding senior”), she returned to her hometown where she has worked as a teacher, a publicist and a health lecturer.

She currently writes monthly columns “Old Type Writer” for a popular local blog “Talk of the Town” and “Homeward Angle” for the “Columbia City Post and Mail” newspaper. She has been a frequent contributor to the literary journal “Moronic Ox,” and her poetry was selected by Wayne State professor M.L. Liebler to be featured in “Poetic Resonance Imaging: Behind the Door.”

She also has been featured in “Our USA,” “Writing Raw,” “Where Writers Write,” and “InD’tale” magazines. Her first book, “Secrets of an Old Typewriter,” is available now as a paperback (as well as download formats) at www.open-bks.com, www.amazon.com, and www.susieduncansexton.com.

Describing her work, Duncan Sexton says, “I willingly share nostalgic trips to the past as I have now achieved such an old age that no one remains who can question the authenticity of my memory of places, people and events that were very much never what they were cracked up to be.”