Natasha Trethewey to Recieve Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award

Two authors to win at NLCC

By Special to The Democrat | The Natchez Democrat
Saturday, February 14, 2009

NATCHEZ — Two prominent authors with Southern roots are slated to win major writing awards at the 20th annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration. The event takes place Feb. 19-22.

4Best-selling novelist Carolyn Haines, a native of Lucedale, now of the University of South Alabama, Mobile, Ala.

4Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, now of Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.

Both will be present to receive the awards and make remarks at a free public ceremony at 6:15 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 21, in the Grand Soleil Hotel ballroom.

Haines and Trethewey will each win a Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award, given annually as a way to honor the internationally acclaimed author Richard Wright, Natchez’s own “native son.”

Read the entire article here:
http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/feb/14/two-authors-win-nlcc/

Dan Albergotti Reviewed at "The Rumpus"

A Questioning Faith

A Review of Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads

Brian Spears bio ↓ · February 12th, 2009

I have a special place in my heart for literature that juxtaposes the sacred and profane, that challenges perhaps the most successful meme ever to spring from the human brain: the belief that God is unwaveringly good.

That’s the matter at the heart of Dan Albergotti’s first collection of poems, The Boatloads, winner of the 2007 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. The one constant in The Boatloads is doubt—doubt about God’s benevolence, about His existence, about the speaker’s worthiness of the blessings he has received—and in a world where certainty is fleeting, doubt plays an increasingly pivotal role.

Which is not to say that Albergotti isn’t searching for the transcendent in the universe. It’s in the clash between the sacred and the profane where he most often finds it. For instance, the opening poem, “Vestibule,” reflects on the speaker’s experience of sex in a university chapel. He wants to thank his partner, not so much for giving him a winning story, but “for the truth of it. / For knowing that the heart is holy even when / our own hearts were so frail and callow.” His speaker is a pilgrim much as Dante was, looking for guidance through a darkened wood. Even the direct statement, “What I know is what is sacred,” is undercut by the line that follows, the plea to the “Lord of this other world, let me recall that night,” as though the speaker really isn’t sure of what is sacred on his own, as though he needs permission from another to recognize the superlative.

Read the entire review here:

http://therumpus.net/2009/02/a-questioning-faith/

Spring Garden Press at AWP 2009

Spring Garden Press & The Greensboro Review will be sharing Table 455 in the Northwest Hall of the Book Fair.

Members of the Spring Garden Press Editorial Board will be reading at the following events:


Thursday- February 12, 2009
1:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m.

Waldorf, 3rd Floor. R170. New England Review 30th Anniversary Reading. (Keith Lee Morris, Shannon Cain, Brock Clarke, Natasha Trethewey, Carl Phillips, Jennifer Grotz) New England Review's anniversary reading highlights the diversity of talent that has characterized this quarterly for thirty years. Literary magazines are often fleeting enterprises, but New England Review has been publishing new and established writers since 1978. Three poets and three fiction writers who have appeared recently in our pages will read from their work. Come hear some of the voices that have distinguished and sustained this publication through the past three decades.

4:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.

Lake Erie, 8th Floor.R201. University of Michigan MFA Program Alumni Reading. (Sean Norton, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Tung-Hui Hu, Nami Mun, Patrick O'Keeffe, Jason Bredle, Tung-Hui Hu) This reading will feature several notable alumni from the U-M MFA Program and will focus on the varied approaches to aesthetics that have traditionally been a hallmark of the program.

Friday- February 13, 2008
3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m.

Boulevard Room A,B,C, 2nd Floor. F171A. Poetry and Comix. (Tony Barnstone, Bryan D. Dietrich, A. Van Jordan, Stephen Burt, Chad Parmenter) Writers whose work adapts to comic books (and their movie adaptations) will discuss how poetic form relates to the intrinsic narrative and visual form of comix, how to and whether one can unironically approach "low" culture material without risking bathos, ways in which comic book poems can be adapted to new media, and how comic books provide the mythos for our time, a common frame of reference, a manifestation of philosophical and religious themes, and psychological wish-fulfillment and dreams.

Saturday, February 14th, 2009
11:00 a.m.-11:45 a.m.
BOA Editions, Tables 361-362, Book Fair. Dan Albergotti book signing.

6:30PM

"Love on the Line" Poems About Love
Location: Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Cost: Free admission
Website: http://poetrycenter.org
Poets Cynthia Atkins, Frank Bidart, Kurt Brown, A. Van Jordan, Paul Muldoon, Elise Paschen, and Robert Polito read selections from their work. Co-sponsored by The Poetry Center of Chicago, The Writing Program, and The Department of Exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.