It was a big evening for poetry last night on Wall Street. At the National Book Awards, John Ashbery was honored for his lifetime achievement in the art, Nikky Finney won the award in poetry for her collection Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books), and in nonfiction, Stephen Greenblatt took the prize for The Swerve (Norton), an exploration of Lucretius's poem "On the Nature of Things." As poet Ann Lauterbach put it in her introduction to Ashbery, "I thought I should point out, since nobody else has, that we are occuping Wall Street."

Poets—who Ashbery asserted in his acceptance speech, are very much distinct from writers—weren't the only voices that rose to recognition last night. In fiction, Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward won for her second book, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury). Ward remarked in her acceptance speech that she is only at the beginning of her life's work, to write about "the poor, and the black, and the rural people of the South, so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, as fraught, as lovely, and important as theirs."

In the young adult category, Thanhha Lai won for her Vietnam War–era coming-of-age novel, Inside Out & Back Again (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers).

Each of the winners received ten thousand dollars, and the finalists were awarded one thousand dollars.

In the video below, Finney reads her poem "Penguin Mullet Bread."

Conjure someone from your past with whom you've lost touch, perhaps someone who you never even knew that well or who you don't remember that well. Write a story in which you imagine that they make a sudden appearance in your life. What are the circumstances of their arrival? What do they need to tell you? And how does it relate to your shared past?

P&W-supported poet/activist Kelly Harris, founder of The Literary Lab, a small business that promotes local writers, and member of Melanted Writers NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana), a year-old workshop for writers of color, blogs about the post-Katrina literary happenings in New Orleans.

Talk to many New Orleans writers about the storm and they will raise a hand to show you how high the water rose in their neighborhood and lament about all the books that were washed away. The devastation of 2005 was extensive, but in the years since the literary scene in New Orleans has been thriving!

The New Orleans Chapter of Women's National Book Association formed this year. The group includes local women writers, bookstore owners, publishing professionals, and readers. 

In 2010 Loyola University established the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing. The Center fosters literary talent and achievement and advances the art of writing as essential to a good education. The literary arts is flourishing in the Big Easy... The Pass It On open mic series began in 2008 as an attempt to restore the pre-Katrina open mic scene. Its host Gian Smith was a featured poet in the HBO hit series Treme.

This year brought us the first WriteNola!: Spoken Word & Poetry Festival. WriteNOLA! gathered New Orleans's pre and post Katrina poets together to give readings and conduct workshops. The City of New Orleans supported the event and offered the regal Gallier Hall as the venue. Proceeds from the festival benefited the NOLA Youth Slam Team.

The Peauxdunque Writers Alliance, many of whom are students and alumni from the University of New Orleans MFA program, started a reading series called, Yeah, You Write. As always, 17 Poets, a Thursday night reading at the French Quarter's Goldmine Saloon, continues to anchor the New Orleans poetry community. It was the first poetry reading series held in New Orleans after Katrina on October 13, 2005. 

Even the youth have a place in the literary action. This October marks the 2nd Annual New Orleans Children's Book Festival. Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges, whose lonely walk into William Frantz Elementary School inspired a famous Norman Rockwell painting, and Cheryl Landrieu, wife of the city's mayor, established the free festival to promote local children's book authors, literacy, and provide food and entertainment.

The Scholastic Writing Awards of Southeast Louisiana, an affiliate of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and sponsored by the Greater New Orleans Writing Project, supports seventh-twelfth grade writers. In 2011, its inaugural year, two students were sent to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and one received a $2,500 college scholarship!

Can't keep up with this literary buffet? No worries. Listen to The Reading Life, a show dedicated to all things bookish in New Orleans online. The radio show is hosted by former The Times-Picayune book editor, Susan Larson.

And finally, Louisiana celebrated the opening of the Ernest J. Gaines Center in October 2010 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, just a mere two-hour drive from New Orleans.

It seems new events and writers are emerging every day. Next time you're in town, attend a reading, buy a book. Help the city continue to rebuild its literary community.

Photo: (top) Kelly Harris; (bottom) Melanted Writers Workshop. Credit: Jennifer Williams.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in New Orleans, is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Pick a poetry book off of your shelf and open it to any page. Read the poem you've opened to, then write one of your own, using the same number of lines and stanzas. Choose a fragment from the poem you've read to title your own.

Twenty-nine-year-old Mexico City fiction writer Majo Ramírez has been awarded the second biennial Aura Estrada Prize, an honor that affords a young Spanish-language writer money, publication, and up to eight months of time at writers colonies in Italy, Mexico, and the United States.

Named for the late Mexican writer Aura Estrada, who was a student at both Columbia University and Hunter College in New York City when she died at the age of thirty, the prize is given specifically to a woman prose writer, of either U.S. or Mexican citizenship, under thirty-five.

Ramírez receives ten thousand dollars and publication of her work in Spanish Granta, as well as invitations to four residency programs. She is offered retreats of up to two months each at Ledig House in Omi, New York; Santa Maddalena in Tuscany, Italy; Ucross in Wyoming; and Villa Guadalupe in Oaxaca, Mexico.

This year's prize jury included authors Daniel Alarcón, Jorge Luis Boone, Carmen Boullosa, and Cristina Rivera Garza. The founder of the award is Estrada's husband, the author Francisco Goldman, whose most recent novel, Say Her Name (Grove Press, 2011), centers on their marriage and the aftermath of Estrada's death.

For information on the requirements for entry into the competition, visit the Aura Estrada Prize website.

P&W-supported poet Ann Lynn, author of the chapbook In the Butterfly House, published by Finishing Line Press, blogs about facilitating writing workshops with women veterans in Atlanta, GA.

In October 2005, I began a series of writing workshops with women veterans in Atlanta. The women in the group had served in war zones during the Vietnam and the Gulf Wars. One woman drove a truck and was trained to work with hazardous materials. Another worked with the wounded. Some experienced scud missile attacks. All witnessed firsthand the atrocities of war and suffered personal traumas themselves. For the participants, the workshops weren't just an exercise in learning to write better... the workshops served as a lifeline. I was blown away by what these women were writing and sharing, and realized how hungry they were for the healing power of writing.

One of the first assignments I gave was to write about a place where they felt safe and comfortable, an exercise that could be appropriate for anyone, but especially so for people who have experienced trauma. I will never forget what one woman wrote:

My truck is a safe place. In it there is no sound, no music, no talking, just listening to the wind as it hits my windows. My mind can be free there, and I can drive away all the tears, fears, as long as I got gas.

Another time I asked them to pick an object from a bunch I set out on the floor and describe that object with concrete and sensory details. I then  told them to write about one of their parents in terms of that object. One woman wrote:

Mother is like a rock,not a mother,
except in its true instinctual self of how it became,
beginning as loose powder then pressed together,
hardened and roughed-up (tossed, turned, hurt).

I was stunned by the beauty and power of this poem. And, for the writer, it seemed as though the metaphorical language with which she'd chosen to describe her mother had somehow turned on a light in her head, as she began to talk about her life in a deeper way.

For these women, writing, sharing, and the group itself formed a safe space. The group met for three and a half years, and for me it was a life-changing experience. I wrote when they wrote, read when they read, and sometimes cried when they cried. I am so grateful that Poets & Writers believes that art is important for all people, and is willing and eager to fund programs that can make such a difference in people's lives.

Photo: Ann Lynn. Photo Credit: Roby Lynn.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Atlanta is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Up against competition that included debut novels by Benjamin Hale, who recently won the Bard Fiction Prize, and Orange Prize winner Téa Obreht, Irish author Lucy Caldwell won this year's Dylan Thomas Prize for her second novel, The Meeting Point (Faber and Faber, 2011). The author, born in 1981, whose first book, Where They Were Missed (Viking, 2006), was shortlisted for the award in 2006, received a prize of thirty thousand pounds (approximately $47,700).

"The Meeting Point is a lyrical modern day parable set in Bahrain depicting the crises in the faith and marriage of an Irish woman, and her relationship with a troubled Muslim teenager," judge and prize founder Peter Stead said of Caldwell's novel, the Guardian reported. "It is a beautifully written and mature reflection on identity, loyalty, and belief in a complex world. We have no doubt that this is yet another significant step in what will undoubtedly be a striking career."

Also shortlisted for the 2011 award, given annually for a work of poetry or fiction by a writer age thirty or younger, were poet Jacob McArthur Mooney and debut novelist Annabel Pitcher. Stead was joined on the judging panel by Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, poets Kurt Heinzelman and Mererid Hopwood, fiction writer and inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize winner Rachel Trezise, and cultural broadcasters Kim Howells and Allison Pearson.

In the video below, Caldwell reads from her winning book at San Francisco's Litquake festival last month.

Choose a specific place and a time in the past: the North Shore of Staten Island before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was built; the Back Bay area of Boston in the 1850s; Phoenix before air conditioning was invented; Seattle in the 1970s. Research this location, gathering as much information as you can about how it once was and how it has changed. Review public records, read newspaper articles, and peruse archival images. Local chamber of commerce sites and the Library of Congress's website are good places to start. Write a story set in the past in your chosen location, using the details you've uncovered to make it as authentic to that time as possible.

Twenty-eight-year old novelist Benjamin Hale adds the Bard Fiction Prize to his list of honors. Author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, the story of a self-aware and morally-engaged chimpanzee published last January by Twelve, Hale will receive thirty thousand dollars and a semester-long appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Hale was awarded a provost's fellowship from the University of Iowa to complete his first novel. The manuscript was awarded a Michener-Copernicus Award, and, after publication, was selected for a number of "best of" lists including Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers roundup.

Among the past winners of the Bard Fiction Prize, given annually to a fiction writer under forty, are Samantha Hunt, Fiona Maazel, Salvador Plascencia, and Peter Orner. Last year's recipient was thirty-year-old Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! (Knopf, 2011) and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Knopf, 2006).

Applications for the 2013 award will be accepted until July 15, 2012. Visit the Bard website for more details.

In the video below, Hale discusses his ideal writing spaces, his unintentional pet word, and the importance of confidence for a (capital w) writer.

P&W-supported poet/activist Kelly Harris, founder of Poems & Pink Ribbons, a poetry workshop for breast cancer patients, survivors, and their loved ones, blogs about Daughters of Domestics, a poetry reading she initiated and participated in in New Orleans.

There's a special relationship in New Orleans between the community and its artists. Go to the French Quarter and watch artists infuse themselves into the daily lives of New Orleanians and tourists alike. Even if you're minding your own business, a singer, dancer, mime, trumpeter, tambourine player, or visual artist can suddenly make you take a detour from your day's plans.

I have been fortunate to have organized several events in New Orleans that create unique intersections between poetry and non-traditional audiences. Most recently, Daughters of Domestics: Poets & Academics Respond to "The Help," featured Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Kysha Brown Robinson, and myself. The Help, both the book and film, have created much conversation in New Orleans. In fact, a 1982 documentary about black domestics in New Orleans titled Yes Ma'am showed for a limited run in September.

Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black college known for graduating more African American pharmacists than any other university in the country, hosted the event. Daughters of Domestics attracted an audience of over one hundred people including Xavier University students and faculty, clergy, local writers, bookstore owners, and even nuns. 

Poems read by the featured poets underscored the struggle of Hattie McDaniel, the first African American actress to win an Academy Award, black women domestic labor, sexism, and Jim Crow. My final poem of the evening, "For All the Times in School I Left Mother's Occupation Blank," was dedicated to my mother who cleaned white people's homes in the late '80s and early '90s for extra income.

Following the poets, Dr. Kimberly Chandler, assistant professor of communications at Xavier, moderated a panel that included Professor Theresa Davis, Dr. Denese Shervington, and Dr. Brenda Edgerton-Webster. The three nationally respected African American scholars discussed the contradictions, complexities, and contentions of the film from the black female perspective. Dr. Davis began her comments by quoting Langston Hughes's poem "Note on Commercial Theatre." The panel provided a lively conversation that ended with a call to action.

Before the close of the event, Dr. Chandler turned the audience's attention to a black-and-white photo of a black woman, who was a domestic worker, on display in the auditorium. The photo was brought in by an audience member who wanted to bring his grandmother's spirit to the event. I believe she was there.

Later that evening, I received an e-mail from a woman thanking me for organizing the event and requesting a bibliography of all the authors and books that had been mentioned. Her call demonstrates the ways in which poetry can have a profound impact. She said, "I need those books on my shelf."

Photo: (top) Kelly Harris; (bottom, left to right) Kelly Harris and Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes. Credit: Jarvis DeBerry.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in New Orleans, is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.