Speaker at the Center Spring 2012 Line Up of Authors Announced
Columbia, S.C. – The South Carolina State Library’s Center for the Book, in cooperation with USC Press, is pleased to announce its spring 2012 author line up. The Speaker @ the Center program will hold free lunchtime author talks on the following dates:
Thursday, January 12 – Sara C. Arnold and Stephen G Hoffius, The Life and Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock to Charleston – A celebration of paintings and prints by one of the principal artists of the Charleston Renaissance.
Thursday, February 16 – Paul Matheny III and Josephine Humphreys, Palmetto Portraits Project – A rich compendium of portraits from two dozen photographers depicting everyday South Carolinians.
Tuesday, March 13 – Jack Shuler, Blood and Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town – A fresh perspective on the Orangeburg Massacre and its legacy.
Thursday, April 26 – Charlene Spearen, A Book of Exquisite Disasters – Deeply felt verses espousing resilience, belonging, and artistry in the face of the challenges of the everyday.
Tuesday, May 15 – Jim Harrison, The Palmetto and Its South Carolina Home – A beautiful collection of paintings exploring the beauty and strength of South Carolina’s state tree.
Books will be available for purchase and autographing. All programs will take place from noon to 1pm in the Administration Building at the SC State Library located at 1430 Senate St., Columbia. Speaker @ the Center is FREE and open to the public. Bring your lunch and enjoy learning more about South Carolina.
The South Carolina Center for the Book is the South Carolina Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is a cooperative project of the South Carolina State Library, the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science, and The Humanities CouncilSC.
Apply for a Big Read grant today!
Application submission deadline: February 1, 2012
The Big Read is accepting applications from non-profit organizations to develop community-wide reading programs between September 2012 and June 2013. The Big Read is a national program designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment. Organizations selected to participate in The Big Read receive a grant, access to online training resources and opportunities, and educational and promotional materials designed to support widespread community involvement and participation. Approximately 75 organizations from across the country will be selected.
Questions? Call Arts Midwest at 612.238.8010 or email TheBigRead@artsmidwest.org.
S.C. Native, Nikki Finney, Wins National Book Award for Poetry
Poet Nikki Finney, a South Carolina native and daughter of a legal pioneer, has won the National Book Award for poetry. The winners were announced Wednesday evening.
Finney, 52, is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky but returns home frequently to South Carolina. Before this year’s S.C. Book Festival, she talked about one of her poems, created after witnessing defance by homeowners facing a hurriance in the Gulf of Mexico.
Read more at TheState.com.
SC Arts Commission Calls for First Novel Prize Submissions
The South Carolina Arts Commission, Hub City Press and their literary partners announce a call for submissions for the biennial South Carolina First Novel Prize. The application deadline is March 19, 2012; a winner will be announced in October. The competition judge is Josephine Humphreys, a Charleston novelist whose latest book is Nowhere Else on Earth.
The winning author will receive a book contract with the Hub City Press, an award-winning independent press in Spartanburg, S.C. The winner will also receive a $500 advance against royalties, and Hub City will publish at least 1,500 paperback copies of the book.
Matt Matthews of Greer was the winner of the most recent First Novel Competition and his book, Mercy Creek, was published in 2011. The book sold out two hardback editions and will be released in December in paperback and e-book format. Publishers Weekly called the book “an enticing full-blown whodunnit … a first-rate effort displaying skill, sensitivity, and grace.”
“Working with Hub City Press has been exhilarating,” Matthews said. “I really appreciate the relationships that I have begun with libraries around the state and the S.C. Arts Commission, which does such a great job supporting the arts statewide.”
Brian Ray of Columbia was the winner of the inaugural competition. His book, Through the Pale Door, was published in June 2009 and was widely and favorably reviewed across the Southeast. Booklist gave it a starred review and called Ray “a talent to watch.”
Partnering again with the SC Arts Commission and Hub City Press for this competition are The Humanities CouncilSC and the South Carolina State Library.
For information about First Novel Competition eligibility requirements and application guidelines, visit www.SouthCarolinaArts.com/firstnovel or call (803) 734-8696.
Bookin’ It On Main: A Celebration of Black Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2011, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. in and around the Columbia Museum of Art – Main and Hampton in Columbia, SC
Events will include readings, a slam poetry performance, writing workshops for teens and adults, informal talks, a poster workshop for kids on the theme ‘Get Real – Read!’, ‘Bring Your Own Book’ storytelling for children, live music, short films, vendors, tie-ins with local stores, and so much more.
Visit http://lingolit.wordpress.com/slw/bookin-it-on-main/ for more information.
NEA The Big Read Grant Application Information
Application Process
75 organizations in communities of varying sizes across the country will be selected to participate in The Big Read from September 2012 through June 2013.
Applicant organizations for The Big Read must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; a division of state, local, or tribal government; or a tax-exempt public library. Eligible applicants include such organizations as literary centers, libraries, museums, colleges and universities, art centers, historical societies, arts councils, tribal governments, humanities councils, literary festivals, and arts organizations.
Community organizations participating in The Big Read develop and produce a well-planned, well-attended, community-wide read with innovative, diverse programming, and widespread community involvement and participation. Activities last approximately one month and focus on one book or poet from The Big Read Library.
Questions about the application process?
Contact Arts Midwest at 612.238.8010 or TheBigRead@artsmidwest.org.
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Invites Entries From Creative Teens
The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recognizing the most talented teen artists and writers in the United States and Canada, has launched its call for entries for the 2012 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.
Creative teens in grades 7-12 are invited to submit work in twenty-eight categories of art and writing, including film and animation, video game design, sculpture, photography, fashion design, poetry, journalism, humor, dramatic script, and science fiction.
Student submissions are judged on the regional level by the alliance’s affiliates, with the top winning works then presented to national panels of creative leaders to determine which will receive the highest honors. Fifteen graduating high school seniors will be awarded with Portfolio Gold Medals, which include a $10,000 scholarship. Additional scholarships are made available to Portfolio Silver Medalists and through sponsored awards and stipends to summer arts programs. The alliance will offer more than $270,000 in direct scholarships and awards this year. High school senior award winners are also eligible for nearly $4 million in scholarships through a network of more than sixty colleges and universities.
To be eligible, students must be in grades 7-12 in a public, private, parochial, home-school, or out of school program in the U.S. or Canada, or in an American school abroad.
Deadlines for submitting work vary by region and generally range from December 15, 2011, through January 15, 2012.
For complete program information, entry guidelines, and regional deadlines, visit the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Web site.
Contact:
USC Fall Literary Festival 2011 Starts November 3
2011
All events will be held in the program room of the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library (Enter through Thomas Cooper Library) and will be followed by a book signing. All events are free and open to the public.
Maggie Dietz
Thursday, November 3, 6:00 p.m.
Maggie Dietz’s book of poems Perennial Fall won the 2007 Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. For many years she directed the Favorite Poem Project, an undertaking of Robert Pinsky during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate. She co-edited three anthologies related to the project: Americans’ Favorite Poems, Poems to Read, and An Invitation to Poetry. Her work has appeared widely in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, Literary Imagination, Harvard Review, and Salmagundi. Dietz teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is assistant poetry editor for Slate.
“[Her] lippy candor is invigorating in a wish-I’d-thought-of-that way…”- New York Times Book Review
Junot Díaz
Tuesday, November 8, 6:00p.m.
Junot Díaz is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, The National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize XXII, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. He is currently the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“…one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices”- New York Times
David Gessner
Thursday, November 17, 6:00p.m.
David Gessner is the author of eight books, including Sick of Nature, The Prophet of Dry Hill, and Return of the Osprey, which the Boston Globe called a “classic of American Nature writing” and cited as one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year. His work has appeared in magazines and journals including the New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Outside, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, and Orion. Gessner is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the national literary journal Ecotone. His latest books, My Green Manifesto and The Tarball Chronicles, were published earlier this year.
“Raw and honest…there’s a lilt in his jig that many will find invigorating.”- Los Angeles Times
For directions and parking information, visit: http://www.sc.edu/library/tcllocate.html
All events are free and open to the public.
SC Native Nikky Finney Named 2011 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry
Nikky Finney
Head Off & Split
TriQuarterly, an imprint of Northwestern University Press
ABOUT THE BOOK
The poems in Nikky Finney’s fourth collection, Head Off & Split, sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African-American life: from Civil Rights matriarch Rosa Parks, to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning, to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Her poet’s voice is defined by an intimacy, which holds a soft yet exacting-eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother’s wedding waltz with S.C. Senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heart-breaking hilarity of an American President’s final state of the union address. Artful and intense, Finney’s poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nikky Finney is professor of creative writing at the University of Kentucky and the author of three previous volumes of poetry, The World Is Round (winner of the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry), Rice (winner of a PEN America Open Book Award in 1995), and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Recipient of the Kentucky Foundation for Women Artists Fellowship Award, Finney is also the author of Heartwood, a collection of stories, and edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.
For more information, visit http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2011.html.