Carleen Brice is getting recognized.
Sure, the smattering of freckles splashed across her honey complexion paired with her thick mane of light- brown dreadlocks lend to the writer’s significant presence.
But 12 years after buying her one-story, two-bedroom house in Park Hill, and a decade after publishing her first book, the Denver author is now spotted by strangers for her work, not her memorable looks.
“I was in Borders one day getting coffee, and this woman in front of me turned around and said, ‘Oh my God. Aren’t you Carleen Brice?’ “
“That is starting to happen more,” she says, “which is funny.”
Even more funny? Not long ago, Brice, 46, actually worked in Denver bookstores — The Tattered Cover and West Side Books — as opposed to dropping into them to shop, read, speak or snoop around her own book display.
But few other aspects of the life and home of this rising literary star have changed since her 2008 debut novel, “Orange Mint and Honey,” made Essence magazine’s recommended-reading list and was optioned by the Lifetime Movie Network. Lifetime recently moved forward with turning Brice’s coming-of-age story about the daughter of an alcoholic into a movie featuring one of the author’s own muses, singer and poet Jill Scott.
Brice’s second novel, “Children of the Waters,” came out earlier this year. And now she is working on her third.
Still, as many an artist can attest, prizes and praise in the arts rarely translate into fortune. This author’s down-to-earth home is proof.
“I’m still broke,” Brice says in a low, quiet tone to emphasize the truth of the matter. “But I live very humbly.”
Framed posters and photographs adorn the walls of her living room, which is punctuated by a quasi- Mission-style leather club chair purchased through Craigslist, and an old sofa adorned with a brown slipcover and African-fabric throw pillows.
When she needed a coffee table, Brice turned over a big planter and topped it with a piece of flagstone. Nearby, hundreds of books are housed primarily on makeshift cinder-block-and-lumber shelves.
“This is the longest I’ve lived any place in my entire life,” Brice, an Omaha native, says of the house she shares with her husband, musician Dirk Dickson, and their two cats, Vishnu and Hazel.
Twelve years ago, she bought this corner property across from Stedman Elementary School because it’s on a diverse block and the house was very affordable — priced back then at well under $100,000. That meant Brice could go for long periods without a day job, which was crucial to being able to write.
“I walked in and immediately was like, ‘This is the house,’ ” Brice recalls. She followed the same sort of gut instinct when she decided to make Denver her home.
“I just got a good feeling about it,” she says of her little house, where neighbors can often spot her seated with her netbook on a front porch big enough for just one chair.
“There were a few things wrong with it but I thought it was fine,” Brice adds. “My Realtor was horrified.”
What exactly were this house’s aesthetic offenses? The yellow-and-maroon tile in the kitchen, the pink tile in the bathroom and the peculiar placement of a crystal chandelier in the cramped hallway.
“The house was built in 1950,” Brice says, “and not much has changed.”
But the author now knows that this was meant to be her place because of the uplifting quality of the light streaming through a bank of glass blocks near her front door, and the equally sweet cacophony of kids singing during music class at the elementary school.
Brice’s house stands in a neighborhood where faces and places inspire scenes and characters in her novels. This is also a neighborhood where folks knew the writer by name long before she was a published novelist.
A published, black female novelist from Colorado, no less — a characterization that stumps Brice’s readers who are unfamiliar with Denver and its cosmopolitan evolution.
“Mostly what I get is, ‘Wow I didn’t know Denver is like that,’ ” she says. Out-of-state fans rarely view Denver as diverse as the city Brice characterizes in her novels. They tend to miss that this capital city of a state known globally for Coors, cows and high-class ski resorts has people of different races interacting in the way they do in Brice’s novels. And they never realized that Denver is a place that fosters the arts and boasts numerous cultural attractions, the author adds.
“And that” type of place, Brice says, “appeals to my readership.”
