The Writers' Center of Indiana has undertaken a lot of great projects. Here's an update on one of the finest:

Sitting at the Feet of our Elders: Flanner House Speaks

Flanner House is an African American community center in Indianapolis who serves a senior population, a rich source of local history. Through generous funding provided by Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), Nancy Baxter, Lyn Jones, and a cadre of volunteers are working with the seniors at Flanner House on writing their memoirs.

Volunteers are scribing for those seniors who can't read or write or because of vision, hearing, or stroke impairments. As well, volunteers are serving as an audience, someone for the seniors to talk to and share their stories. Questions presented by the volunteers help cue the seniors' memories. We also use images as cuing mechanisms.

The culmination of this project will be a book of published memoirs and a Podcast session of each senior orally retelling one of their memoirs which will be up on the Internet and linked to the Writers' Center website. This is year two of our project and we have a total of 20 seniors writing every Tuesday and Thursday morning.


Here's just one small example of some of the rich writing we have collected:

I remember goin' to the theater in Memphis, Tennessee, the white theater and they said, "Get that nigger out of there."

(How did that make you feel?)

Makes me feel good when I can look at you now. I'm 90 going on 91 years old.

For more information about this program visit here.

If I know one thing about Sarah Palin, I know this: she loves language (we always hurt the ones we love, right?). But for some reason, her community—other language-lovers—doesn't love her back.

Frigging elitists.

Like Wayne Lawson, executive literary director for Vanity Fair. Could he just bask in the weird glory of her speech like a proper American? He could not. He had to "edit" her, which is Hollywood-speak for scrubbing the family values out of your speech.

Or Conan O'Brien, who bastardized her speech by turning it into a spoken-word performance by the guy who used to invade other galaxies for Priceline.

Disgusting, I say. Why can't you people just leave her alone? While at the same time attending her press conferences and giving her glowingly positive coverage? Is it for the same reason that you keep on insisting that she "make sense?" Or "finish her term?" Or "read a newspaper?"

Politics as usual. Language as usual. You can have it, you unmavericks. As for me, I'm going to follow Sarah north into the future of language, which she is doing for the soldiers, because hunters love America, too, and especially more. Most especially more.

This is literary, right? I mean, it's Shakespeare, for Pete's sake. So hell yes, it counts. The real question is: even though it says "bring the whole family," will two young boys sit through it?

I can't have a repeat of the time we tried the Clermont drive-in movie, when both my boys melted down in the middle of Madagascar, to the point that we had to drive away in the middle of the movie, which involved idling down grass aisles packed with picnickers, lightly tapping my horn and saying, "Sorry, pardon me, sorry," while ignoring the plastic cups of beer crashing against my side windows.

Cannot. Do. That. Again.

The Shakespeare crowd would probably hurl mead. And I bet their goblets could do real damage.

Shakespeare on the Canal at the FREE Family Arts Series

Everyone should experience Shakespeare outdoors! Because we had such a huge response to last year's Shakespeare show, Heartland Actors' Repertory Theatre will perform Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, both Friday, July 31st and Saturday, August 1st.

The show starts at 8:00 PM each night but make sure you get there early for best seats.

The Family Arts Series will feature free shows where the grass grows all summer long! Bring the whole family, your blankets and picnic baskets to the outdoor Celebration Amphitheater at White River State Park. An American Sign Language interpreter will also be at the show on Friday, July 31st. Food and drinks will be available for purchase on site.

For more information and additional dates for the FREE Family Arts Series, visit www.INwhiteriver.com or call 317-233-2432.

For a Monday in late July, the lit scene is hopping. Tonight, you have your choice of readings:

Poet Chris Forhan will celebrate publication of his new book of poems, Black Leapt In, with a reading and signing at the Perk Up Cafe, 6536 Cornell Ave., July 27, 7:30-9 p.m.

And Kelsey Timmerman, author of Where am I Wearing? will read at the Zionsville library at 6:30 (event details in Lit Events calendar, up and to your right).

Or you can pull a Tony Stewart and try to hit both via a quick helicopter commute.

Andrew's Book Club has new mini-interviews with Suzanne Burns and Jean Thompson. Here's a cut from Jean T:

"(It's) true that my first love is stories. Maybe it comes from growing up in the early days of television and its many dramas packed into thirty minute spots. I have a clear memory of turning off an episode of “Captain Midnight” when the action got too suspenseful, and rocking and whimpering in my little chair. I was probably about three years old.

"In any case, I love the compression of the form, the chance to begin and complete an entire dramatic cycle within a finite space. It can be a little like solving a puzzle to fit all the apparatus of a story (conflict, characterization, resolution, etc.) into a more or less finite space."

When Hunter S. Thompson was good, he was good.

Playboy: Do you think a smarter politician could have found a man to cover it up after the original break-in? Could Lyndon Johnson have handled it, say?

H.S.T.: Lyndon Johnson would have burned the tapes. He would have burned everything. There would have been this huge wreck out on his ranch somewhere - killing, oddly enough, all his tape technicians, the only two Secret Servicemen who knew about it, his executive flunky and the presidential tapemeisters. He would have had a van go over a cliff at high speed, burst into flames, and they’d find all these bodies, this weird collection of people who’d never had any real reason to be together, lying in a heap of melted celluloid at the bottom of the cliff. Then Johnson would have wept - all of his trusted assistants - “Goddamn it, how could they have been in the same van at the same time? I warned them about that.” …

You know, I was actually in the Watergate the night the bastards broke in. Of course, I missed the whole thing, but I was there. It still haunts me.

Playboy: What part of the Watergate were you in?

H.S.T.: I was in the bar.

Playboy: What kind of a reporter are you, anyway, in the bar?

H.S.T.: I’m not a reporter, I’m a writer.

New book of interviews out now. More cuts here.

So Sad

July 20, 2009

Frank McCourt, Whose Irish Childhood Illuminated His

Prose, Is Dead at 78

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in

Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,”

died in Manhattan on Sunday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn.

The cause was metastatic melanoma, said Mr. McCourt’s brother, the writer Malachy McCourt.

Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his

writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his

own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he

described as “a modest book, modestly written.”

In it Mr. McCourt described a childhood of terrible deprivation. After his alcoholic father

abandoned the family, his mother — the Angela of the title — begged on the streets of Limerick to

keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed and housed in a basement flat with

no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin. The book’s clear-eyed look at childhood

misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable

chord with readers and critics.

“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,” the book’s second paragraph

begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is

hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish

childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can

compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious

defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and

all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”

“Angela’s Ashes,” published by Scribner in 1996, rose to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed

there for more than two years, selling four million copies in hardback. The next year, it won the

Pulitzer Prize for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Two more installments of his life story followed: “ ’Tis” (1999), which described his struggle to

gain a foothold in New York, and “Teacher Man” (2005), an account of his misadventures and

small victories as a public-school teacher. Both, although best sellers, did not achieve anything

like the runaway success of Mr. McCourt’s first book, which the British director Alan Parker

brought to the screen in 1999.

Not to be outdone, Mr. McCourt’s younger brother Malachy, an actor, brought out two volumes of

his own memoirs: “A Monk Swimming” (1998), which also made the best-seller list, and “Singing

Him My Song” (2000). Then, when it seemed that the McCourt tale had been well and truly told,

Conor McCourt, Malachy’s son, gathered the four brothers, got them talking and filmed two

television documentaries, “The McCourts of Limerick” and “The McCourts of New York.”

It was “Angela’s Ashes” that loomed over all things McCourt, however, and constituted a

transformative experience for its author.

Speaking to students at Bay Shore High School on Long Island in 1997, he said, “I learned the

significance of my own insignificant life.”

Born in New York

Francis McCourt was born Aug. 19, 1930, on Classon Avenue on the edge of the Bedford-

Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where his Irish immigrant parents had hoped to make a better

life. It was not to be, largely because his father, Malachy, usually spent his scant laborer’s

earnings at the local bar. Beaten, the family returned to Limerick when Frank was 4, and the

pattern repeated itself.

Three of Mr. McCourt’s six siblings died in early childhood. The family’s circumstances were so

dire, he later told a student audience, that he often dreamed of becoming a prison inmate so that

he would be guaranteed three meals a day and a warm bed. At home, the staple meal was tea and

bread, which his mother jokingly referred to as a balanced diet: a solid and a liquid.

When Frank was 11, his father went to work in a munitions factory in Britain and disappeared

from the picture. Frank stole bread and milk, which became the family’s principal means of

support. After dropping out of school at 13, he delivered telegrams and earned extra income

writing letters for a local landlady.

In 1949, Mr. McCourt, at 19, gathered his savings and boarded a ship for New York and a new

life, which began unpromisingly. Finding a job at the Biltmore Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, he

was put in charge of the 60 caged canaries in the public rooms. Thirty-nine of them died,

whereupon Mr. McCourt taped the lifeless bodies to their perches. The ruse did not work.

A series of laboring jobs followed, interrupted by the Korean War. Drafted into the Army, Mr.

McCourt served as a dog trainer and later a clerk in West Germany.

A Career as a Teacher

Despite his lack of formal schooling, Mr. McCourt won admission to New York University, where

he earned a degree in English education in 1957. A year later he began teaching at McKee

Vocational High School on Staten Island, an eye-opening experience that he recalled, in often

hilarious detail, in his third volume of memoirs, “Teacher Man.”

In his first week, an unruly student threw a homemade sandwich on the floor, an act that

astonished Mr. McCourt not so much for its brazenness as for the waste of good food. After

appraising the sandwich with a connoisseur’s eye, he picked it up and ate it.

Mr. McCourt developed an idiosyncratic teaching style that found a somewhat more receptive

audience at the elite Stuyvesant High School, where he taught creative writing after earning a

master’s degree in English from Brooklyn College in 1967. He had students sing Irish songs to

break down their resistance to poetry. After discovering a sheaf of written excuses from past

years, he recognized an unexplored literary genre and asked students to write, say, an excuse

letter from Adam or Eve to God, explaining why he or she should not be punished for eating the

apple.

He even had students test themselves. “When they wrote their own tests, they asked questions

they wanted answers to and then they answered them,” Mr. McCourt told the journal Instructor.

“It was grand.”

Testing Literary Waters

On the side, Mr. McCourt made fitful stabs at writing. He contributed articles on Ireland to The

Village Voice. He kept notebooks. But at the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village, where he became

friends with Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, he felt like an interloper, he said. They were writers.

He was just a teacher.

“I had no idea he had the ambition, much less the ability to carry it off in such spectacular

fashion,” Mr. Hamill, who first met Mr. McCourt at the Lion’s Head in the 1960s, said in a

telephone interview.

In 1977, Mr. McCourt and his brother Malachy, who was acting and bartending in New York,

cobbled together a series of autobiographical sketches into a two-man play, “A Couple of

Blaguards,” which opened off Off Broadway at the Billymunk Theater on East 45th Street. They

performed a revised version at the Village Gate in 1984 and again at the Billymunk in 1986 and

took their show to several other cities.

This excursion into the past, along with his nagging sense that a writing teacher should write,

motivated Mr. McCourt to undertake his childhood memoirs after he retired from teaching in

1987. An early attempt, when he was studying at New York University, had fizzled out, but three

decades later, he said, he had worked through his awkward, self-conscious James Joyce phase

and had gotten beyond the crippling anger that darkened his memories.

“After 20 pages of standard omniscient author, I wrote something that I thought was just a note

to myself, about sitting on a seesaw in a playground, and I found my voice, the voice of a child,”

he told The Providence Journal in 1997. “That was it. It carried me through to the end of the

book.”

Still, his plans were vague. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I had to write it

anyway,” he said in another interview. “I had to get it out of my system.”

A persistent friend demanded to see what Mr. McCourt was writing, then turned the pages over to

a literary agent, Molly Friedrich, who submitted the incomplete manuscript to Scribner. It was

bought immediately.

Critics, enchanted by Mr. McCourt’s language and gripped by his story, delivered the kind of

reviews that writers can only dream of. But the book was ultimately a word-of-mouth success.

An instant celebrity, Mr. McCourt did his utmost to resist becoming the designated spokesman

for all things Irish, “from agriculture to the decline in the consumption of claret in the West of

Ireland,” as he once joked.

In Ireland itself, the reaction was mixed. “When the book was published in Ireland, I was

denounced from hill, pulpit and barstool,” he told the online magazine Slate in 2007. “Certain

citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the

church, that I had despoiled my mother’s name and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely

be found hanging from a lamppost.”

Time healed at least some wounds. Mr. McCourt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Limerick

University, and curious tourists can now take “Angela’s Ashes” tours of the city.

A Translation to Film

In 1999, the British director Alan Parker translated the memoir to the screen, with Emily Watson

as Angela (who died in 1981), Robert Carlyle as Malachy Sr. (who died in 1985) and three actors in

the roles of Mr. McCourt as a small, medium-size and grown boy.

For the Irish Repertory Theater, Mr. McCourt devised a history lesson disguised as an evening of

storytelling and singing, titled “The Irish ... and How They Got That Way.” It opened in 1997 to

less than rapturous reviews. His second volume of memoirs, “ ’Tis,” which began with his arrival

in New York, also encountered rough weather from critics still giddy from the memory of

“Angela’s Ashes.” Although his storytelling gifts were in full evidence, Mr. McCourt was taken to

task by many critics for being bitter and self-pitying, a marked contrast to the stoic tone of

“Angela’s Ashes,” putting off many readers.

With “Teacher Man,” Mr. McCourt rallied. Although criticized as lumpy and episodic, the book

was praised for its humane inquiry into the role of the teacher and the possibilities of education.

Mr. McCourt’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In 1994 he married Ellen Frey McCourt. She

survives him, as do his brothers Malachy and Alphie, both of Manhattan, and his brother Mike, of

San Francisco; his daughter, Maggie McCourt of Burlington, Vt.; and three grandchildren.

“I think there’s something about the Irish experience — that we had to have a sense of humor or

die,” Mr. McCourt once told an interviewer. “That’s what kept us going — a sense of absurdity,

rather than humor.

“And it did help because sometimes you’d get desperate,” he continued. “And I developed this

habit of saying to myself, ‘Oh, well.’ I might be in the midst of some misery, and I’d say to myself,

‘Well, someday you’ll think it’s funny.’ And the other part of my head will say: ‘No, you won’t —

you’ll never think this is funny. This is the most miserable experience you’ve ever had.’ But later

on you look back and you say, ‘That was funny, that was absurd.’ ”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map

Nature Awakens Creativity (Creativity Begs for Five More Minutes While Swiping Around Nightstand, Searching for Snooze Button)

The Central Indiana Land Trust is pleased to announce an artist call-out for a unique project entitled Nature Awakens Creativity.

Fine artists, writers and musicians are invited to submit work inspired by a visit to one or more of the nature preserves. The Land Trust will provide two organized excursions (July 18 and August 15) for artists and the general public to visit selected preserves in order to immerse themselves in Central Indiana's natural beauty. Artists may also visit our preserves on their own, as they are open to the public.

The exhibition of this project will be part of the Indianapolis Spirit & Place Festival this November and will be displayed at the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple October 1 through November 23, 2009.

The Land Grant Trust will begin accepting applications on July 1. Artists will be considered on a first come, first serve basis, so apply early, as space is limited.

For more information and an application visit here.

Butler Visiting Writers' Series Announced: Fall 2009

Acclaimed mystery writer Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins series, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham are among the highlights of the fall Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series at Butler University.

The 21^st annual series begins with Butler Professor Andy Levy (Sept. 9), whose new book, “A Brain Wider Than the Sky,” earned rave reviews from both Time and Newsweek. He’ll be followed by Mosley (Sept. 15), Graham (Sept. 23), C.J. Hribal (Oct. 6), Katie Ford (Oct. 19), Michelle Huneven (Oct. 28) and Nick Flynn (Nov. 11).

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are necessary. For more information, call (317) 940-9861.

Times, locations and more information about each writer here.

Robert Olen Butler's next book, "Hell," comes out in September. To lay some publicity groundwork (and, I imagine, for the sheer wicked joy of it), he's been tweeting. As the devil.

July 11: Dick Cheney & Beelzebub secretly talk strategy for No. 2 guy to control No. 1, while Satan & G.W. Bush boohoo over disapproving fathers

July 4: A. Lincoln & J.W. Booth dissolve wailing as one in sulfur rain & share nights at the theatre: forgotten lines & shooting pains & bad reviews

He's @TweetsFromHell if you want to follow this devilishness.

Indiana Authors Awards Announced

Well, one of them anyway. The big one, the National one, the one with the ten-thousand dollar award attached to it, went to James Alexander Thom. Finalists were announced in the other categories. Winners will be presented on September 26th, in the big Indiana Authors Shindig. Here's a rundown on the categories and the finalists:

• National Author - $10,000 prize: a writer with Indiana ties, but whose work is known and read throughout the country. National authors were evaluated on their entire body of work.

Winner: James Alexander Thom; Finalists: Scott Russell Sanders and Margaret McMullan

• Regional Author - $7,500 prize: A writer who is well-known and respected throughout the state of Indiana. Regional authors were evaluated on their entire body of work.

Finalists: Jared Carter, James H. Madison and Susan Neville

• Emerging Author - $5,000 prize: A writer with only one published book. Emerging authors were evaluated on their single published work.

Finalists: Kathleen Hughes, Christine Montross and Greg Schwipps

Award finalists in all three categories will be honored on September 26, 2009 at the Central Library in downtown Indianapolis. The day's events will include free public programming such as author lectures, "how to get published" workshops for aspiring writers, and more. An award dinner/fund raiser benefiting the Library Foundation will follow that evening where the winner of the Regional Author and Emerging Author categories will each be named. Thom will serve as the dinner's keynote speaker. Ticket information for the award dinner is available by contacting the Library Foundation at

(317) 275-4700 or by visiting here, for more details, and bios on all the finalists.

Sunday morning, and I'm running late for church because I'm caught up in reading this article about the future of print. What? A future? But everybody else told me print was dead. . .

Some more contests & awards:

Call for Entries, Songwriting, Poetry & Spoken Word Contest, Artbeat (Indianapolis, IN)

Artbeat is a grassroots partnership dedicated to creating new outlets for artists and participants in the arts in areas such as music, dance, poetry, and the spoken word. Each entry must include a completed entry form with original signature; song lyrics or poem recorded on CD or tape; two copies of lyrics for each song or poem entered, typed or printed clearly; and an entry fee of $20 for each entry. Entries must be received by July 31, 2009. Winners will receive cash prizes. Entries may be sent to 3815 River Crossing Parkway, Suite 100, Indianapolis, IN 46240. For more information, please visit www.artbeatcontest.com, call (317) 627-8514 or email artbeatcontest@runbox.com.

Call for Artists, Midwest Voices and Visions Award (Midwestern States)

The Midwest Voices and Visions (MWV&V), an initiative of the Alliance of Artists Communities and in partnership with The Joyce Foundation, is accepting applications for seven artist residency programs. The MWV&V celebrates, supports, and promotes the work of highly talented, yet under-recognized artists of color and broadens awareness of and support for the opportunities available at Midwestern residency programs for artists of diverse backgrounds.

Seven artists will be selected on October 7-8 to be in residence in 2010.

The length of each residency will vary from one to three months, depending on which residency program with which the artist is paired. The seven participating programs are Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Red Wing, Minnesota; Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska; John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan; Prairie Center of the Arts in Peoria, Illinois; and Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois. Selected artists will also receive an unrestricted $4000 stipend, have their work featured in the MWV&V project book, and participate in a group exhibition at the conclusion of the project.

Artists may apply online at www.midwestvoicesandvisions.org or by mail to Midwestern Voices & Visions, Alliance of Artists Communities, 255 South Main Street, Providence, Rhode Island, 02903. Applications are due by August 15, 2009. For more information, please contact Russ Smith at rsmith@artistcommunities.org or (401)351-4320.

(Writers qualify. I checked)

BOOTH LIVES!

Finally, friends, the moment you have been waiting for: the first issue of the national literary magazine sponsored by Butler's M.F.A. program has LAUNCHED.

We've got Michael Martone, David Shumate, and a very saucy list by Kim Addonizio, among other delights . . . so what are you still doing here? Go! Read! Enjoy!

Some grants, contests, opportunities, etcetera:

Nature Awakens Creativity

The Central Indiana Land Trust is pleased to announce an artist call-out for a unique project entitled Nature Awakens Creativity. Fine artists, writers and musicians are invited to submit work inspired by a visit to one or more of the nature preserves. The Land Trust will provide two organized excursions (July 18 and August 15) for artists and the general public to visit selected preserves in order to immerse themselves in Central Indiana's natural beauty. Artists may also visit our preserves on their own, as they are open to the public. The exhibition of this project will be part of the Indianapolis Spirit & Place Festival this November and will be displayed at the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple October 1 through November 23, 2009.

The Land Grant Trust will begin accepting applications on July 1. Artists will be considered on a first come, first serve basis, so apply early, as space is limited. For more information and an application visithttp://www.conservingindiana.org/spiritandplace.html

Garden Verse Poetry Competition
Sponsored by Horticulture magazine

First Place: $250 each
Second Place: $100 each
Third Place: $50 each

The poems of the first place winner will be published in an upcoming issue of Horticulture magazine. The names and poem titles of all winners and honorable mentions will be posted on www.hortmag.com

For details and application visit http://www.hortmag.com/gardenversecomp
Entry Deadline: September 1, 2009

Fellowship Opportunity: 2010 Robert D. Beckmann, Jr. Emerging Artist Fellowship
The Robert D. Beckmann, Jr. Emerging Artist Fellowship Program awards two $3,500 fellowships each year to qualified and talented artists in music, dance, theatre, literature, or the visual arts. The program consists of two distinct components. The first component, a monetary award in the amount of $3,500, will be awarded for supplies, instruction, workshops, studio or rehearsal space, or other uses specifically related to the growth and development of the fellow's artistic work. The second component of the program involves a unique professional experience opportunity to which many artists may not have access until later in their careers. The Robert D. Beckmann, Jr. Emerging Artist Fellowship program seeks to introduce and provide experiences, connections, and relationships with professional arts institutions and professional artists in central Indiana. For detailed eligibily requirements and to download an application, visit the Grants for Individuals on www.artscouncilofindianapolis.org. Application deadline is July 24, 2009.

Call for Entries to the Aesthetica Annual Creative Works Competition 2009

Aesthetica is looking for entries to the 2009 International Aesthetica Creative Works Competition in Artwork, Photography & Sculpture, Fiction and Poetry. Three winners will be awarded £500 each. Entry to the 2009 Aesthetica Creative Works Competition is £10

This allows you to submit up to 5 images, 5 poems or 2 short stories. Deadline, August 29, 2009. For competition guidelines, visit www.aestheticamagazine.com

Fourteenth Annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize
Named after the distinguished poet who taught for many years at Ohio University, this competition invites writers to submit unpublished collections of original poems. It is open to those who have not published a book-length collection and those who have. The winning manuscript will be published by Ohio University Press in 2010 and will be awarded a cash prize of $1,000. Deadline: Manuscripts must be postmarked by October 31, 2009.

For information, visit www.ohioswallow.com/poetry_prize

Much to look forward to in the fall of 2009. School will start back up, the Chicago Bears will take the field with an actual quarterback, I can put tombstones and skeletons in my yard without looking like a crazy person, and all these books will hit the market.

Lorrie Moore, Dan Chaon, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, William T. Vollman . . . the list goes on. What a season.

___________________________________________

Also, the Lit Events calendar (up and to your right) has been updated with new classes from the Writers' Center. One of their regular series is "Evening with the Muse," a Sunday evening poetry reading. Coming up on July 12th is Jim McGarrah:

Jim McGarrah's first book of poems, Running the Voodoo Down won a book prize from Elixir Press in 2003. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a finalist twice in the James Hearst Poetry Contest. Home Again: Essays and Memoirs from Indiana, was published in August of 2006 by Indiana Historical Society Press and his novel, Going Postal, in April, 2007. A memoir entitled A Temporary Sort of Peace, which reflects his experiences as a combat Marine in Vietnam was published by Indiana Historical Society press in August, 2007. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from the University of Southern Indiana. He has worked as a janitor, horse trainer, carpet layer, mechanic, schoolteacher, hod carrier, hay baler, and recreational therapist. Occasionally, he drinks.

Me too, Jim. Me too.

Come on, this will be fun!

Two of these books represent the selections for Andrew's Book Club for July. One is from the blog called "Awful Library Books." Bet you'll never guess which book that is . . .

Go ahead. Take your time.

State Budget Cuts the Arts by 20%

But it's not as bad as it could have been. Mitch Daniels' initial budget looked to slash the arts budget by something like 80%, a proposal that was just hateful. In that light, 20% looks a little like a victory. From the Indiana Coalition for the Arts:

Despite the efforts of many arts advocates, the new state budget for the biennium beginning July 1, 2009 resulted in a 20% cut to the Indiana Arts Commission. Because the House Democrats accepted the Senate Republicans' budget, the final figures for the IAC are the same as those in the Senate's special session budget bill.

For each year of the biennium:
$418,557 personal services (personnel)
$2,783,811 other operating expenses (grants and services)
TOTAL $3,202,368

The good news is that the National Endowment for the Arts is slated for an increase in the federal budget that begins October 1, 2009. The U.S. House has passed a $15 million increase, and the federal budget bill goes next to the U.S. Senate. Forty percent of all NEA funds go directly to the state arts agencies.

Now would be a great time to contact Senators Bayh and Lugar: http://capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=13627991