Voices From the Past

In his latest interview, Frank Reiss sits down with Kathryn Stockett to talk about her latest novel. He gives us this preview.

Kathryn Stockett's new book The Help was described in its New York Times review as a "soon to be wildly popular novel." Well, happily for the self-effacing, mild-mannered Atlanta resident, the paper of record knows what they're talking about. Earlier this year the debut work made it to Number 15 on the Times' bestseller list.

The book was a long time in the works, and as Stockett tells us in our Cover to Cover interview, it was rejected over 40 times before finding its way to the desk of Putnam's new star editor, Amy Einhorn.

The novel is the story of Skeeter Phelan, who, like Stockett is a native of Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter, a white daughter of priviledge, sets out to tell the stories of the town's black domestic workers, whose lives, in 1960s Mississippi, were for the most part not even considered by the families who employed them.

Stockett's inspiration for writing the book was the very voice of the black woman who largely raised her, and in her book, she channels that voice as well as several others in creating not only the novel's dialogue, but also the "book within a book," which Skeeter manages to publish as a kind of a field study.

The Help is resonating with a lot of readers who probably recognize voices in their past in Stockett's work. In Stockett's own voice, I think listener's will her a private, shy and somewhat vulnerable young woman who has now exposed a bit of herself in this work of fiction. It is not autobiographical, but it reveals something very personal to her: a deep love for the woman who raised her.

Tune in this Sunday night at 8 to hear the interview.

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A Homecoming of Sorts for a Georgia Native

Myriam Farrero, the newest member of our Cover to Cover team, just sent in this preview of her upcoming show with author Leslie Walker Williams. Tune in this Sunday to hear the interview, about which Myriam writes:

In 2009, the debut novel of Savannah native Leslie Walker Williams received the Peter Taylor Prize and the Morris Hackney Literary Award.

The Prudent Mariner is set on the Georgia coast in the 1960’s.

It’s a story of a young girl’s journey into the past secrets of her family, or truths buried underground and the proximity of a distant, shameful past.

Nine year old Ridley Cross discovers disturbing photographs of a lynching among her family’s possession. The Prudent Mariner unfolds through Ridley’s eyes as she uncovers her grandmother’s connection to the horrific past events.

Leslie Walker Williams dives headfirst into the complexities of a southern town haunted by its violent and horrific past, and the complex relationships of a family that reflects this past.

Williams was raised in Savannah, Georgia and has done extensive archival research on lynchings. It was a visit to the Detroit Museum of African American History which inspired her to write The Prudent Mariner.

A resident of Vancouver, Canada, her short stories have been published in numerous publications including The Iowa Review, The Madison Review, Harvard Review and American Fiction.

Her collection, Taxidermy, was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award.

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Happy Birthday, Eudora!

Some authors manage to exist on the periphery for all of us; I mean we know their name and know that they are important, but we haven’t quite gotten around to actually reading their work. For me, Eudora Welty has been one such author for quite a while now. Thankfully, that Dark Age is over.

Welty is a masterful writer perhaps best known for her short stories “A Worn Path” and Why I Live at the P.O.” She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1973 for the short meditative novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, which came late in her career.

I mentioned Dr. Pearl McHaney in this blog before, but to refresh, she is a Welty scholar and professor at Georgia State University. Dr. McHaney recently gave a series of free public lectures at the Decatur Library, and she joins us this Sunday on Cover to Cover to talk about Welty. Dr. McHaney visited with Welty a few times at her home in Jackson, and has edited several volumes of Welty’s fiction, as well as public letters and literary criticism from the Belle of Belhaven.

Fresh of the presses at the University Press of Mississippi come two new edited volumes, Occasions: Selected Writings and Eudora Welty as Photographer. Both books are edited by Dr. McHaney, and the titles pretty well sum up the contents. Welty was not a WPA photographer (though she wanted to be), but her photographic work is very much identified with those proletariat pictures of the dusty south (and dusty New York). Occasions is a sizeable collection for Welty enthusiasts who want to delve deeper into the life of the woman who is perhaps as mysterious as she was charming.

We welcome Dr. McHaney to the show this Sunday, April 12 on the eve of what would be Welty’s 100th birthday. We talk about Dr. McHaney’s meetings with her beloved subject, the author’s strident support of the artists she loved, and of course, Welty’s inimitable writing.

And for those of you Welty fans near the Atlanta area, Dr. McHaney will dish the details on a birthday party downtown. It will be Monday evening at the Rialto on the campus of GSU and will feature dramatic readings from Tom Key and Brenda Bynum as well as champagne, coconut cake and the launch of The Eudora Welty Review, an annual publication that Dr. McHaney will edit. The event begins at 6 PM, but if you can make it down to GSU by 4:30, you can hear a free lecture by Dr. Daniele Pitavy-Souques, Profesor Emerita, at the University of Burgundy.

Hope to see you there!

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A Convergence at Kennesaw State

This in from Frank Reis:
Just as Hemingway once said all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn, many of us interested in Georgia literature would say that a good starting point would be the work of Flannery O'Connor.

In the more than 40 years since her early death, the Savannah native's work, already considered among the absolute first rank of mid-century American fiction, has only grown in reputation. Never out of print and widely anthologized, O'Connor's short stories and novels are read and studied around the world, recognized for their distinctive regional flavor as well as the universality of their themes.

Inspiring as it is, though, O'Connor's work has not been widely interpreted into other media. With a stage adaptation of several of her stories, approved by the O'Connor estate, that situation has begun to change in recent years. In April, 2009, the Department of Theatre at Kennesaw State University presents "Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "A View of the Woods," two stories from late in O'Connor's short life.

The director of that production, Karen Robinson, discussed this exciting project with Cover to Cover.

A native Californian and lifelong theater person, Robinson brought to the production a particularly fresh pair of eyes and ears to the Southerner's enigmatic fiction. Robinson is now an enthusiastic proponent of O'Connor's "Shakespearean" language, not a word of which was allowed to be changed in her staging.

Our conversation delved into the philosophical and religious meaning of O'Connor's work and also the artistic challenges in presenting such complex stories in dramatic fashion, putting such masterful language in the voices of today's students.

Kennesaw's production and Robinson's enthusiasm--along with the much-ballyhooed new O'Connor biography by Brad Gooch--have already had the effect on at least one longtime O'Connor fan (yours truly) that all literary interpretation should: it has sent me back to the stories, with, if possible, an even greater appreciation for the brilliance of the work.

The interview airs on Sunday, March 29 at 8 p.m.

For more information about Kennesaw State's production of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "A View of the Woods" visit http://www.kennesaw.edu/theatre/EverythingThatRises/place.html.

Launches, lunches and lectures...and other fun free stuff

This has been a busy and exciting week for the Georgia Literary Community. On Tuesday, David Bottoms and Coleman Barks were inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, along with posthumous inductees Robert Burch and Raymond Andrews. I’ve written about all four of these artists in this space before, so let me only add that it was wonderful to see the inductees and their families take in the honor, which is presented by the UGA Library.

I made it back to the Decatur Public Library main branch by Tuesday evening for the last of Dr. Pearl McHaney’s free public lectures on the work of Eudora Welty. The charming and sublimely genius Welty would turn 100 on April 13, and though she is no longer with us, there will be a big birthday party at Georgia State’s Rialto Center anyway. Rumor has it there will be readings by Tom Key and Brenda Bynum, and cakes made from recipes featured in some of Welty’s characters’ cookbooks. If everything goes well, expect to hear a special edition of Cover to Cover devoted to Welty and featuring Dr. McHaney (one of the leading Welty scholars in the world) just before the occasion. So pull out your copy of The Optomist’s Daughter and brush up!

Finally, it was a great pleasure to witness the launch of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University. The scholarly institute is the brainchild of distinguished scholar of American and African-American culture, Dr. Rudolph P. Byrd. Visiting scholars are already studying, exploring and writing under the organization’s auspices and Dr. Byrd has recently edited a new volume of Johnson’s work. The event featured pledges of cooperative commitment from key leaders in the community, including Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall from Spelman, Douglass Shipman from the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and others. Mayor Shirley Franklin was spotted at the ceremony, which featured performances by the wonderful Vega String Quartet and the vocal spectacle Elder Delesslyn Kennebrew, as well as a beautiful Occasional poem by Pulitzer winner Natasha Trethewey. Dr. Byrd insists the Institute will not be only an organization of scholarship but also one of activism, and we wish him continued success in his endeavor.

FutureProof on Cover to Cover

From Frank Reiss:

N. Frank Daniels is an extremely serious writer and, seemingly, a very grounded young man. He acknowledges that his novel--about a group of young people mixed-up in Atlanta's drug culture in the 1990s--is largely autobiographical. It's a pretty jarring experience to be sitting down with such a gentle-seeming soul and knowing, after reading Futureproof, the brutal reality that was his young life.

He is now sober, and, in addition to having his first novel published, has completed a second novel, is working on a memoir , is raising two children and seems, after a long, arduous process, to have found his place in the world, among fellow writers (now friends) like Jay McInerney, Jerry Stahl and James Frey.

Daniels talked about his literary lineage, citing Richard Wright and Hubert Selby, Jr. among his influences, and he shared his fascinating account of how his book, originally posted online and then self-published, eventually found its way to a major publishing house, HarperPerennial, whom Daniels calls "the Grove Press of the new milennium." Grove, incidentally, published Selby's masterpiece of drug-addiction, Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Futureproof is not for everybody. But for a terrifyingly real portrait of an easily ignored subculture that exists right in our midst, among truly lost souls--and mere children at that, you couldn't ask for a better guide than N. Frank Daniels.

Join Frank Reiss as he interviews N. Frank Daniels on this weekend's Cover to Cover, Sunday at 8PM. Only on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Georgia Writers Hall of Fame 2009

The University of Georgia Library has announced the 2009 inductees for the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Coleman Barks, who taught poetry and creative writing at UGA for more than 30 years, and Georgia poet laureate David Bottoms, whose honors include the Walt Whitman Award, will be inducted at the ceremony in March, along with two posthumous honorees: Raymond Andrews and Robert Burch.

Barks received worldwide acclaim for his translations of the work of the Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. He has also published six collections of his own poetry.

Bottoms first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was chosen by Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren from more than 1,300 submissions as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. He teaches at Georgia State University where he co-founded the literary journal Five Points.

Raymond Andrews was born into a sharecropping family in rural Georgia in 1934. He won the James Baldwin prize for his first novel, Appalachee Red, and went on to publish two more novels in what would become known as his Muskhogean Trilogy. Walter Cronkite called Andrews’ first memoir, The Last Radio Baby, “One of the truest and best pieces of writing I have ever come across.” Andrews died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Athens, GA, in 1991.

Robert Burch is the author of 19 books and is best known for his children’s stories, including Queenie Peavy and Ida Early Comes Over the Mountain. Burch’s stories frequently focus on rural life during the Great Depression. Burch died Christmas Day, 2007.

The ceremony takes place at 10:30 AM March 24 in the Frank Daniel Foley, Jr. Rotunda of the Miller Learning Center. There will also be an Author’s Discussion on March 23 at 4 PM at the Reading Room of the Miller Center. Both events are free and open to the public. Join in, and be a part of Georgia literary history.