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Amélie director takes rights for T. S. Spivet adaptation; Kafka's The Metamorphosis gets gory; Madoff takes on Michener in prison; New York City libraries avoid budget cuts; and other news.
In this clip the Miami New Times follows artist Agustina Woodgate as she sews poetry tags into clothes at local thrift shops.
Open your medicine cabinet and choose something from it that one character will use to kill another in a story.
Amazon Publishing promises to promote authors who blurb their new titles; an anthropologist wants to exhume Shakespeare's bones to test for drug use; Nick Laird reviews poetry apps; and other news.
In this book trailer for Carolyn Parkhurst's novel The Nobodies Album, recently published in paperback by Anchor Books, the author introduces The Carolyn Parkhurst Collection.
A Virginia writer treatens kidnapping as part of a promotional stunt; the final hours of the celebrated writer Federico García Lorca; Monica Ali reimagines Princess Diana; and other news.
Earlier this year actor James Franco and biographer Paul Mariani fielded questions at the Boston College premiere of The Broken Tower, a film directed by and starring Franco, based on Mariani's 1999 biography, The Broken Tower: The Life of Hart Crane.
Kore Press, whose mission is to publish diverse works by women writers, has temporarily suspended its eight-years-running poetry book competition for 2011. The nonprofit publisher will resume the contest in 2012, following a period of restructuring that, according to the press's business and marketing manager, necessitates a hiatus.
The short fiction contest will go on as planned this year, and the winner of last year's poetry book contest will see her debut published, as well. Michelle Chan Brown's Double Agent will be released in the fall.
In the video below, Brown reads from her chapbook, Clever Little Decoys, published by Love Among the Ruins last year.
Poet Kelly Norman Ellis, author of Tougaloo Blues and longtime P&W-supported writer and presenter of literary events, dotes on Chicago's South Side and the Neighborhood Writing Alliance.
I’ve lived and worked on Chicago’s South Side for almost thirteen years. As an educator and writer, I am attracted to organizations that express a commitment to writing and art outside the academic community. Our writing program at Chicago State seeks to coalition build with community organizations so that our students realize the benefits and necessity of teaching outside of the academy.
The Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA) located on the South Side of Chicago fills this need. NWA runs writing workshops for adults in low-income neighborhoods throughout Chicago, and publishes selected pieces from those workshops in its quarterly award-winning publication, Journal of Ordinary Thought (JOT). Founded in 1996 by Hal Adams, Deborah Epstein, and Sunny Fischer, NWA grew out of JOT, which was founded by Hal Adams in 1991.
Hundreds of Chicago adults have participated in NWA writing groups in a range of settings—from public libraries and public schools (where parents participate) to social service agencies and public housing projects. Workshops are conducted across ethnic lines. In one workshop, I taught African Americans born in Chicago, Mississippi, and Jamaica; Polish immigrants; fourth generation Irish Americans and second generation Mexican Americans. Participants in these workshops write primarily from their own experience, but through writing and discussion make connections between their personal experiences and broader social issues.
Workshop leaders are Chicago-based professional writers and arts educators such as Krista Franklin, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Parneshia Jones, Tony Lindsay, Carlos Flores, and Valerie Wallace, to name a few. NWA also has an impressive Writer’s Advisory Council, which includes Achy Obejas, Alex Kotlowitz, television journalist Bill Kurtis. The legendary Studs Turkel also served on the council before his death.
Our MFA program at Chicago State believes in the connection of writing and social justice. NWA demonstrates this principal at work by providing internships to our writing students on the graduate and undergraduate level, allowing them to experience the successful marriage of art and activism.
Photo: Kelly Norman Ellis. Credit: Natasha Marin.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Chicago is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
FBI looks into explosives planted at Borders store; Philip Roth gives up fiction; author Esther Broner remembered; U.K. Poetry Society shaken up after budget increase; and other news.
