Everything And Nothing

Jesmyn Ward to read at Millsaps

Jesmyn Ward, whose novel Salvage the Bones won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction, is scheduled to read from her works at 4 p.m. Thursday in room 215 of the Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex at Millsaps College.

The reading is free and open to the public.

Ward, now a faculty member at Tulane University, has won five Hopwood Awards, been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and served as the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. All three of her books — two novels (“Salvage the Bones” and “Where the Line Bleeds”) and a memoir (“Men We Reaped”) — are set on the Gulf Coast where she grew up. Shortly after Ward received her master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, and Ward and her family were forced to evacuate. Later, as a professor at the University of New Orleans, Ward drove to and from work through neighborhoods leveled by the storm.

Ward’s memoir confronts five years of her life in which she lost five young men to death. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, it has been named one of the Best Books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, NPR, Kirkus Review, New York Magazine and Time Magazine. 

Welty books stolen

Millsaps College officials are seeking information about the theft of five rare Eudora Welty works.

Someone stole the works - two copies each of Eye of the Story and Fairy Tale of the Natchez Trace and a copy of The Ponder Heart - from a display case in the campus library's Welty Room. According to a recent article in the campus newspaper, The Purple & White, someone pried the case open.

The works, given to the college by Welty, are valued at more than $1,000, but officials say their historic value is much higher. Welty, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Jackson native, died in 2001.

Library leaders are asking for any information about the books' whereabouts, hoping to get them back unharmed. The Library can be reached at 601-974-1073 or [email protected].

[ via The Clarion-Ledger ]

Hurling words into the darkness and waiting for an echo

Richard Wright on writing Native Son:

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."

Broadcast to honor Eudora Welty's legacy

Eudora Welty’s mastery of the short story will be saluted in a special broadcast 2 p.m. Sunday on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the Eudora Welty Foundation announced.

Eudora Welty: A Tribute in Stories, features Nashville author and PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ann Patchett as emcee and Welty scholar, biographer and friend Suzanne Marrs, sharing thoughts on Welty’s writing and work.

The radio program was produced for Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts.

Patchett discusses three Welty stories and introduces actors who read them. Marrs puts the pre-1937 stories in the context of Welty’s early creative process.

The program also may be heard online at www.mpbonline.org.

[ via The Clarion-Ledger ]

The Writers' Web Site Gallery

Books Written By is a gallery of author Web sites. Authors and designers can use the gallery to gain inspiration for their own sites - and everyone just might discover some interesting writers.

If you’re an author and have a Web site or are a designer of author websites, then use this submission form to let Jeff know about your site.

Paradise Remembered

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton. The anniversary is being celebrated by an exhibition at his alma mater, Cambridge, for the next six months.

Gavin Alexander, a fellow of Milton's college, Christ's, argues that his contribution to the language as a creator of new words and new word forms is greater than any other writer in the language, including Shakespeare, according to World Wide Words. He points out in an article that's available online that the Oxford English Dictionary credits Milton with adding some 630 words. Shakespeare has only 229.

Without Milton's multilingual background and powers of invention, we might not now have such words as love-lorn, far-sighted, liturgical, exhilarating, debauchery, cherubic, padlock, besottedly, unhealthily, depravity, dismissive, embellishing, fragrance, terrific, didactic, irresponsible, or unprincipled.

Head on over to the Milton Reading Room to read a lot more of Milton's words online.

Burns Night

Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Kipling...all incredible poets whose work will undoubtedly live forever. But how many of them have an annual feast dedicated to them? It was nearly 250 years since Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire yet once again supermarkets from Liverpool to Los Angeles were stocking up on haggis as people got ready to celebrate Burns Night.

And be sure to check out Burns Interactive.

How To Be A Writer

First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/ missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age — say, 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire.
~ Lorrie Moore, How To Be a Writer

The Shakespeare Test

It was pretty humbling for someone with a master's degree in literature - I only got 6 out of 10 right. But it was a long time ago. I guess I need to dust off my Collected Works of Shakespeare and start all over again. (You know...whenever I get those five volumes of Proust finished. Sheesh.)

Take the Shakespeare quiz here.

By day, they're authors

remainders - n., a booksellers' term, used for books that languish on the shelves so long they have to be dumped at a discount

Rock Bottom Remainders - n., By day, they’re authors. Really famous authors. But once a year they shed their pen-and-pencil clutching personas and become rock stars, complete with roadies, groupies and a wicked cool tour bus.

''We play music about as well as Metallica writes novels."
~ Dave Barry

''We're a band that specializes in meeting low expectations.''
~ Scott Turow

"It's 'hard listening.'"
~ Roy Blount, Jr. (who demands grits in the dressing room)

''There's no other group of people I spend this much time with. Writing is a pretty solitary activity to begin with, and, you know, once you get to be a certain age, once the kids are grown up, you just don't make that many new friends. But it's really intense here. It's like camp for grown-ups. I'd kill the whales to do this.''
~ Amy Tan

''I used to play in an Irish bar about 30 blocks from here. It was called McSomething's, and it used to be just me and the drunks. I'd get about $10 a night. Now look at me. I'm in a band where they have people to carry our stuff for you.''
~ Mitch Albom

[ via Charles McGrath, The New York Times ]