A season for the strange: tales of mystery tantalize the spirit and the intellect, staging Sowa's stories.

As long as there have been Africans in America, spirits have spoken to them in one form or another. From Nat Turner to Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, the connection of inspiring spirits to the continent that gave birth to humankind has always been pushed in to the consciousness of writers, painters, sculptors and .just about any artist with the talent to quiet his or her soul and simply listen.

Such seems to he the case for Diane Richards, the author of Sowa's Red Gravy Stories (1stBooks Library, August 2002, ISBN 0-759-64269-9), a collection of ruminations and reflections from the perspective of a "witch living in the spirit" who happens to call 125th Street and Manhattan Avenue, in Harlem, her home. The legendary producer Woodie King Jr. plans to stage a few of the stories this coming fall in a play that takes its title from the book.

Just how this witch came to speak through Richards seems not so much a matter of mystery as it is of expediency. "She knows that I can write my ass off," Richards exclaims during a phone conversation from her home. "She knows I can suspend myself and not interfere with her." That particular talent is evidenced in the way Richards, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, captures the voice of this Harlem witch/spirit who passes out advice and wisdom with all the alacrity of a balloon shaper passing out creations al a children's party.

Sowa (as in "so what") is a complicated entity, apparently born in the South but practicing her craft in Harlem. She is, according to Richards, about 110 years old but has been known to conjure up some magic to make her appear to be a good-looking 50 to seduce a visiting deacon.

"Everybody has a Sowa," says a raspy-voiced Richards, who was battling a cold when we talked. "She's (Sowa) a black woman who has been through everything. My grandmother used to sing in the choir, and my grandfather was a deacon in the church. My grandmother used to talk about everybody in that church." And so does Sowa--but always from the perspective of one trying to right a wrong, or add credence to the fixing of herbs and teas to cure a particular ill or solve a personal problem, especially if that problem involves a man. Many of the stories revolve around the latter and there are times when the tone and attitude of Sowa are such that it appears she has little regard, respect or need for men. Taken individually, says Richards, the stories may give that impression, but it's important to look at the whole Sowa and what she represents as opposed to any one tale.

"Still, today, women have no power," says Richards. "Especially the black woman. So she's got to reach out |'car some spiritual, extraordinary things. She's (Sowa) not a man hater. You have to think about the black woman with three children, man left her, and she wants to do the right thing." Sowa, she says, embodies the strength, essence and power of these women who keep it together on a daily basis. From that perspective, Sowa works well.

Richards, a member of the Harlem Writer's Guild, which has included such folks as Maya Angelou and lames Baldwin, has assembled an impressive collection of stories that manage to advise, anger, move, unnerve and even make you blush at times.

The characters are no less interesting than those in the play Lackawanna Blues, written and performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and both have the same sense of musical quality to their essence.

Perhaps that is one reason why King has agreed to bring the stories to the stage. Richards met King at an African American writer's workshop in upstate New York two years ago.

"Woody was in front of the writers saying. 'I have never met anyone who can write a jazz musical," she says. "I told myself, 'I can do that.' I have a background in music. I can do it to voodoo, black magic and all kinds of mess. I had some sheets of the (Sowa) story and I handed them to Woody the next day. I told him this could be the basis of your jazz musical.

"The next day he came and he looked at me and he sat down in front of me and looked at me strange," she continues. "'Diane, I have not seen anyone write urban dialogue like this in a long time. You have captured something.' After that, I kept in touch with him," she says. "I also kept running into circles with him and Ruby Dee. Six months later he called to do it (Sowa) as a musical. He said to pick some of the stories you think would work, and it only took me a day and a half to send them to him."

The vision, says Richards, is to place the voice and character of Sowa center stage with accompanying jazz music and a mood to present a performance that is not only moving and warm but also funny and down-to-earth. There is precedence lot such a vision, as witnessed in Lackawanna Blues and Trazana Beverly's The Spirit Moves, a one-woman show that left the audience inspired and in awe of the power of its dialogue and Beverly's performance.

Sowa has the makings of an engaging kind of musical because it has a strong writer and a great character from which to draw. Also, having King in the mix certainly can't hurt.

Joseph P. Blake is a former reporter and editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer & Daily News. He's also a published playwright whose latest work, The Cooling Board, will be presented in Philadelphia in September.