1.
University of Michigan
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The University of Michigan, frequently referred to simply as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817 in Detroit as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania,20 years before the Michigan Territory became a state, in 1821, the university was officially renamed the University of Michigan. It moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres of what is now known as Central Campus, the University was a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Considered one of the foremost research universities in the United States, Michigans body of living alumni comprises more than 540,000 people, one of the largest alumni bases of any university in the world. Besides academic life, Michigans athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Wolverines. They are members of the Big Ten Conference, the University of Michigan was established in Detroit on August 26,1817 as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, by the governor and judges of Michigan Territory. Judge Augustus B. Woodward specifically invited The Rev. John Monteith and Father Gabriel Richard, Monteith became its first President and held seven of the professorships, and Richard was Vice President and held the other six professorships. Concurrently, Ann Arbor had set aside 40 acres in the hopes of being selected as the state capital, but when Lansing was chosen as the state capital, the city offered the land for a university. What would become the university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 thanks to Governor Stevens T. Mason, the original 40 acres was the basis of the present Central Campus. The first classes in Ann Arbor were held in 1841, with six freshmen, eleven students graduated in the first commencement in 1845. By 1866, enrollment increased to 1,205 students, many of whom were Civil War veterans, Women were first admitted in 1870. U-M also became the first American university to use the method of study. Among the early students in the School of Medicine was Jose Celso Barbosa, who in 1880 graduated as valedictorian and he returned to Puerto Rico to practice medicine and also served in high-ranking posts in the government. In 1920 the university reorganized the College of Engineering and formed a committee of 100 industrialists to guide academic research initiatives. The university became a choice for bright Jewish students from New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of its standards, U-M gained the nickname Harvard of the West. During World War II, U-Ms research supported military efforts, such as U. S. Navy projects in proximity fuzes, PT boats, and radar jamming. After the war, enrollment expanded rapidly and by 1950, it reached 21,000, as the Cold War and the Space Race took hold, U-M received numerous government grants for strategic research and helped to develop peacetime uses for nuclear energy
2.
Avery Hopwood
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James Avery Hopwood was an American playwright, called the most successful playwright of the Jazz Age, having four plays running simultaneously on Broadway in 1920. Hopwood was born to James and Jule Hopwood on May 28,1882, in Cleveland and he graduated from Clevelands West High School in 1900. In 1901, he began attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, however, his family experienced financial difficulties, so for his sophomore year he transferred to Adelbert College. He returned to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1903, Hopwood started out as a journalist for a Cleveland newspaper as its New York correspondent, but within a year had a play, Clothes, produced on Broadway. He became known as The Playboy Playwright and specialized in comedies and farces, Hopwood was asked to write the third act of Mary Roberts Rineharts play The Bat. Hopwood collaborated with Rinehart to then work on the last act of the play in Sewickley, the early sound film The Bat Whispers played an influence on Bob Kanes Batman because the inspiration for Batmans costume came from the mysterious Bat character portrayed in the movie from 1930. In 1906, Hopwood was introduced to writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten, the two became close friends and were sometimes sexual partners. In the 1920s Hopwood had a tumultuous and abusive relationship with fellow Cleveland-born playwright John Floyd. Although Hopwood announced to the press in 1924 that he was engaged to vaudeville dancer and choreographer Rosa Rolanda, Rolanda would later marry caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias. On July 1,1928, while swimming at Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, Hopwood had a heart attack and he was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Cleveland. His mother, Jule Hopwood, inherited a large trust from him, while she was working through the legal issues with his estate, Jule Hopwood fell ill and died on March 1,1929. She was buried next to her son, the terms of Hopwoods will left a substantial portion of his estate to his alma mater, the University of Michigan for the establishment of the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Creative Writing Awards. Jack Sharrar recovered the manuscript for this novel in 1982 during his research for Avery Hopwood, His Life, the novel was published in July 2011 as The Great Bordello. Avery Hopwood, His Life and Plays, Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press. In Harbin, Billy J. Marra, Kim & Schanke, the Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy, A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era. Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press, the Tastemaker, Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, posing a Threat, Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s, by Angela Latham. Hanover and London, Wesleyan University Press,2000, the Splendid Drunken Twenties, Carl Van Vechten Selections from the Daybooks, 1922-1930
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United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Playwright
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A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes plays. The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct, hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form - someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case entirely coincidental, the term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and this view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation, the earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC, such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, the act of making and this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first play-writing manual, in this famous text, Aristotle established the principle of action or praxis as the basis for all drama. He then included a hierarchy of elements for the beginning with plot, character, thought, diction, music. The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was equated with choice as rather than psychology, so that character was determined by action, in tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the individual. Thought had more to do and the imitation of an action that is serious, thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. It provides the basis for the play, a term still held as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. The Poetics, while very brief and highly condensed, is studied today. Perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet, who embraces the idea of character as agent of the action, and emphasizes causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed-the-Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian, in that it observes the unities and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals. The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time
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Nicholas Delbanco
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Nicholas Delbanco is an American writer. Delbanco was born in London, England, the son of German Jewish parents Barbara and Kurt Delbanco, a businessman, art dealer and he was educated at Harvard University, B. A.1963, Columbia University, M. A.1966. He taught at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, 1966–84 and he was director of the MFA Program, and the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, until his retirement in 2015. He has published books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novel is The Years, his most recent work of non-fiction, is The Art of Youth, Crane, Carrington, Gershwin,2015 saw publication of the Omnibus collection, Dear Wizard, The Letters of Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White. This book brings his trilogy of novels between the covers of a single book, shebrookes is not simply a reissue of the three original novels together, but a revised edition of the trilogy without being a complete revision of the original story. Delbanco has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, and as a judge for, among other contests, the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980, and twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. In 1962, while Delbanco was a student at Harvard, he was a student in a writing course at Harvard Summer School taught by John Updike, author. Another student in class was Jonathan Penner. In the 1960s, Delbanco had a relationship with Carly Simon which is alluded to in her song Youre So Vain, delbancos daughter with Elena Greenhouse, Francesca, is married to director Nicholas Stoller. His daughter Andrea is married to the ACLU of New Jersey lawyer, Alexander Shalom, Elena Greenhouses parents were cellist Bernard Greenhouse and Aurora de la Luz Fernandez y Menendez. The collection, About My Table, and Other Stories, publisher—William Morrow & Co,1983 The collection, The Writers Trade, the Sherbrooke Trilogy In the Name of Mercy. Sherbrookes, Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness, champagne, Ill, Dalkey Archive Press,2011. ISBN 978-1-56478-587-9 ISBN 1-56478-587-4 Group Portrait, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, the Lost Suitcase, Reflections on the Literary Life. The Sincerest Form, Fiction by Imitation, anywhere Out of the World, Essays on Travel, Writing, and Death. Lastingness, The Art of Old Age, the Art of Youth, Crane, Carrington, Gershwin and the Nature of First Acts
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Essay
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An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the authors own argument — but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have traditionally been sub-classified as formal and informal, Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays, while brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Lockes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthuss An Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples. In some countries, essays have become a part of formal education. The concept of an essay has been extended to other mediums beyond writing, a film essay is a movie that often incorporates documentary filmmaking styles, and focuses more on the evolution of a theme or idea. A photographic essay covers a topic with a series of photographs that may have accompanying text or captions. An essay has been defined in a variety of ways, one definition is a prose composition with a focused subject of discussion or a long, systematic discourse. It is difficult to define the genre into which essays fall, aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject. He notes that the essay is a device for saying almost everything about almost anything, and adds that by tradition, almost by definition. Furthermore, Huxley argues that essays belong to a species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference. Their art consists of setting forth, passing judgment upon, the abstract-universal, In this pole we find those essayists who do their work in the world of high abstractions, who are never personal and who seldom mention the particular facts of experience. Huxley adds that the most satisfying essays. make the best not of one, the word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, to try or to attempt. In English essay first meant a trial or an attempt, for the rest of his life, he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones. Francis Bacons essays, published in form in 1597,1612. Ben Jonson first used the word essayist in English in 1609, English essayists included Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne. In France, Michel de Montaignes three volume Essais in the mid 1500s contain over 100 examples widely regarded as the predecessor of the modern essay, in Italy, Baldassare Castiglione wrote about courtly manners in his essay Il Libro del oregano. In the 17th century, the Jesuit Baltasar Gracián wrote about the theme of wisdom, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote essays for the general public. In the 20th century, a number of essayists tried to explain the new movements in art, whereas some essayists used essays for strident political themes, Robert Louis Stevenson and Willa Cather wrote lighter essays
7.
Novel
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A novel is any relatively long piece of written narrative fiction, normally in prose, and typically published as a book. The genre has also described as possessing, a continuous. This view sees the novels origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, the latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. The romance is a closely related long prose narrative, Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel, a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, a novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. Most European languages use the word romance for extended narratives, fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion, historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity. Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byrons Don Juan, Alexander Pushkins Yevgeniy Onegin, vikram Seths The Golden Gate, composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel. Both in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations, on the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of Individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, conduct and gallantry spread with novels, the novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella, short story, and flash fiction. However, in the 17th century critics saw the romance as of epic length, the length of a novel can still be important because most literary awards use length as a criterion in the ranking system. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty China led to the evolution of oral storytelling into consciously fictional novels by the Ming dynasty, parallel European developments did not occur for centuries, and awaited the time when the availability of paper allowed for similar opportunities. By contrast, Ibn Tufails Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic philosophy, in this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a philosophical novel, while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological novel. Epic poetry exhibits some similarities with the novel, and the Western tradition of the novel back into the field of verse epics. Then at the beginning of the 18th century, French prose translations brought Homers works to a wider public, longus is the author of the famous Greek novel, Daphnis and Chloe. Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the circles of High Medieval. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love
8.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
9.
Lawrence Kasdan
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Lawrence Edward Kasdan is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known as co-writer of the films The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Kasdan co-wrote the Star Wars sequel trilogy film Star Wars, The Force Awakens, and will co-write the series Han Solo spin-off film. He has been nominated for three Oscars, twice for Best Original Screenplay for The Big Chill and Grand Canyon and once for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Accidental Tourist and he is the father of directors Jake Kasdan and Jon Kasdan, and the father-in-law of musician Inara George. Kasdan was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Sylvia Sarah, an employment counselor, and Clarence Norman Kasdan and his brother is the writer/producer Mark Kasdan. He was raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he graduated from Morgantown High School in 1966 and he graduated from the University of Michigan with an MA in Education, originally planning on a career as an English teacher. He won a Hopwood Award for writing during the time of his studies and he was a student of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. Kasdan made his debut with Body Heat, which he also wrote. Lucas later commissioned Kasdan to write the screenplay for Return of the Jedi, Kasdan is known for both writing and directing his films, which have ranged from Westerns and romantic comedies to thought-provoking dramas. He has received four Academy Award nominations, for screenplays to The Big Chill, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon won the Golden Bear at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival. The exception was 1995s French Kiss, which grossed $100 million, in 2001, Kasdan was the recipient of the Austin Film Festivals Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In 2006, Kasdan received the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America, Kasdan directed the 2012 dramedy Darling Companion, starring Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline. In October 2013, it was announced that JJ Abrams had taken over screenwriting duties for Star Wars Episode VII, working alongside Kasdan, lawrence Kasdan at the Internet Movie Database
10.
Max Apple
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Max Apple is an American short story writer, novelist, and professor at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Apple was born to a Jewish family in Grand Rapids, Michigan and received his B. A. Apple taught creative writing at Rice University in Houston, Texas for 29 years, where he held the Fox Chair in English. After retiring from Rice University, Apple moved to Philadelphia, where he teaches at The University of Pennsylvania. Along with his novels and short story collections, he has written the screenplays for The Air Up There starring Kevin Bacon. History of the Jews in Houston Links to three of Max Apples stories published in Harpers Magazine
11.
John Ciardi
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John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, at the peak of his popularity in the early 1960s, Ciardi also had a network television program on CBS, Accent. Ciardis impact on poetry is perhaps best measured through the younger poets whom he influenced as a teacher, Ciardi was born at home in Bostons North End in 1916. His father, an Italian immigrant, died in an accident in 1919. In 1921, his family moved to Medford, Massachusetts, where he attended public schools and his family members saved enough money to send him to college. He entered Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, before transferring to Tufts University in Boston to study under poet John Holmes and he graduated from Tufts in 1938, and the following year completed his MA at the University of Michigan. UMich awarded him their Hopwood Prize for his Homeward to America and he was discharged in October 1945 with the rank of Technical Sergeant and with both the Air Medal and Oak Leaf Cluster. Ciardis war diary, Saipan, was published posthumously in 1988, after the war, Ciardi returned to UKC for the spring semester 1946, where he met and married Myra Judith Hostetter on July 28. John Ciardi was a resident of Metuchen, New Jersey. Ciardi had published his first book of poems, Homeward to America, in 1940, before the war and his third book, Live Another Day, came out in 1949. Ciardi had begun translating Dante for his classes at Harvard and continued with the work throughout his time there and his translation of The Inferno was published in 1954. The translation is used at universities. Ciardis translation of The Purgatorio followed in 1961 and The Paradiso in 1970, Ciardis version of The Inferno was recorded and released by Folkways Records in 1954. Two years later, Ciardi would have his work featured again on an album titled, As If, Poems, New and Selected and he was popular enough and interesting enough to warrant a pair of appearances in the early 1960s on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He was the editor of the Saturday Review from 1956 to 1972. He wrote the 1959 poetry textbook How Does A Poem Mean, Ciardi was a fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member and former president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, the weekly three-minute spot on etymology was called Word In Your Ear. He also taught at the University of Florida, among 20th-century American men of letters, he maintained a notably high profile and level of popularity with the general public, as well as a reputation for considerable craftsmanship in his output
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Christopher Paul Curtis
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Christopher Paul Curtis is an American writer of childrens books. He is known for the Newbery Medal-winning Bud, Not Buddy, the latter was adapted for a TV movie of the same name, which aired on the Hallmark Channel in 2013. Christopher Paul Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan, on May 10,1953, to Dr. Herman Elmer Curtis, a chiropodist and factory worker/supervisor, and Leslie Jane Curtis and he has set many of his books in Flint. Curtis attended Dewey Elementary, Clark Elementary, Pierce Elementary, Whittier Junior High School and he graduated from Flint Southwestern High School in 1972 at the age of 19. Returning to college after working for years, he graduated from the University of Michigan–Flint in 2000, the summer after graduating from high school, Curtis became a member of a Lansing-based theatrical/musical group called Suitcase Theater. The group was directed by Powell Lindsay and performed musical numbers, the group performed in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Canada, and the United States. Curtis spent 13 years after school working on the assembly line of Flints Fisher Body Plant #1. His job entailed hanging car doors on Electra 225s and LeSabres and he later claimed his experience left him with an aversion to getting into large cars, particularly Buicks. After quitting Fisher Body, he took a series of low-paying jobs and he started writing childrens books, publishing his first book in 1996, The Watsons Go to Birmingham –1963. But the events that shake Birmingham in the summer of 1963 will change Kennys life for ever, the Watsons Go to Birmingham –1963 was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal and was selected as a top book of the year by many publications and organizations. In 2013, it was named as one of the New York Public Library’s 100 Great Childrens Books of the Last 100 Years, Bud, Not Buddy – It is 1936 in Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a boy on the run. Bud goes to find who he believes is his father, a man named Herman E. Calloway and he meets a few friends on the way, and stays determined to achieve his goals. Bud, Not Buddy won the 2000 Newbery Medal and it also won the Coretta Scott King Award, and was chosen as the best book of the year by the School Library Journal. Bucking the Sarge – Luther T. Farrell has got to get out of Flint and he just needs to escape the evil empire of the local slumlord, The Sarge, aka his mother. Bucking the Sarge was selected as one of the best childrens books of the year by publications and organizations. Mr. Chickees Messy Mission – When Russells dog, Rodney Rodent, jumps into a mural to chase a demonic-looking gnome and disappears, the Flint Future Detectives are on the case. Mr. Chickees Funny Money – Mr. Chickee, the blind man in the neighborhood, gives 9-year-old Steven a mysterious bill with 15 zeros on it
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Mary Gaitskill
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Mary Gaitskill is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, Gaitskill was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She has lived in New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan and she sold flowers in San Francisco as a teenage runaway. Gaitskill has also recounted becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 and she married the writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. Gaitskill lives in Pennsylvania and teaches for the MFA program at Temple University, Gaitskill made her book debut in 1988 with the short-story collection Bad Behavior, having been trying to publish her work since the age of 23. The first four stories are written in the third point of view from the perspectives of male characters. The remaining five stories are written from the perspectives of female characters, Secretary is the only story in the book written in the first person point of view. Several of the stories have themes of sexuality, romance, love, sex work, sadomasochism, drug addiction, being a writer in New York City, a Romantic Weekend and Secretary both explore themes of BDSM and psychological aspects of dominance and submission in sexual relationships. The story Connection is about a female friendship, Gaitskill says that she herself had worked as a stripper and call girl. She showed similar candor discussing her being raped in her essay On Not Being a Victim for Harpers, Gaitskills 1994 essay in Harpers also addresses feminist debates about date rape, victimization, and responsibility. She describes ways that individual subjectivity influences all experiences, making it impossible to come to universally agreed-upon conclusions, the film Secretary is based on the short story of the same name in Bad Behavior, although the two have little in common. The novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin follows the childhood and adult lives of Justine Shade, Justine works through her sadomasochistic issues while Dorothy works through her up-and-down commitment to the philosophy of Definitism and its founder Anna Granite. When journalist Justine interviews Dorothy for an exposé of Definitism, a relationship begins between the two women. In an interview, Gaitskill discussed what she was trying to convey about Justine via her sadomasochistic impulses and it seems like self-contempt, but its really an inverted contempt for everything. Thats what I was trying to describe in her and that inadequacy can make you implode with a lot of disgust. It can become the gestalt of who you are, so the masochism is like Im going to make myself into a debased object because that is what I think of you. This is what I think of your love, the novel The Mare, published in 2015, is written from the perspectives of several different characters. The primary characters are named Ginger and Velvet, Ginger is a middle aged woman who meets Velvet, a young adolescent, through The Fresh Air Fund
14.
Robert Hayden
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Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976–78 and he was the first African-American writer to hold the office. Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, to Ruth and Asa Sheffey and he was taken in by a foster family next door, Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden, and grew up in a Detroit ghetto nicknamed Paradise Valley. The Haydens perpetually contentious marriage, coupled with Ruth Sheffey’s competition for her sons affections, witnessing fights and suffering beatings, Hayden lived in a house fraught with chronic anger, whose effects would stay with him throughout his life. On top of that, his severe visual problems prevented him participating in activities such as sports in which nearly everyone else was involved. His childhood traumas resulted in debilitating bouts of depression that he called my dark nights of the soul. Because he was nearsighted and slight of stature, he was ostracized by his peers. In response, Hayden read voraciously, developing both an ear and an eye for transformative qualities in literature, leaving the Federal Writers Project in 1938, Hayden married Erma Morris in 1940 and published his first volume, Heart-Shape in the Dust. He enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1941 and won a Hopwood Award there, raised as a Baptist, he followed his wife into the Baháí Faith during the early 1940s, and raised a daughter, Maia, in the religion. Hayden became one of the best-known Baháí poets, Erma Hayden was a pianist and composer and served as supervisor of music for Nashville public schools. In pursuit of a degree, Hayden studied under W. H. Auden, who directed his attention to issues of poetic form, technique. Audens influence may be seen in the pith of Haydens verse. As a supporter of his religions teaching of the unity of humanity and he died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1980, age 67. In 2012 the U. S. Postal Service issued a pane of stamps featuring ten great Twentieth Century American Poets and his refusal to revamp himself as indicated by the pictures of the 1960s earned him feedback from a few scholars and analysts. Haydens beliefs about the relationship of the artist to his poems likewise had impact in his refusal to compose emotionally determined protest sonnets, Haydens practice was to make separation between the speaker and the movement of the poem. On 7 April 1966, Haydens A Ballad of Remembrance was awarded, by unanimous vote, the festival had over ten thousand people from thirty-seven nations in attendance. Hayden was elected to the American Academy of Poets in 1975 and his most famous poem is Those Winter Sundays, which deals with the memory of fatherly love and loneliness. It ranks among the most anthologized American poems of the 20th century and he was awarded successive honorary degrees by Brown University and Fisk
15.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
16.
Laura Kasischke
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Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and poet. She is best known for writing the novels Suspicious River, The Life Before Her Eyes and White Bird in a Blizzard and she was born at Grand Rapids, Michigan. Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University and she lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son. She is also currently Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, kasischkes literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series. Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the name, directed by Vadim Perelman. Kasischkes work is well received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours was published by Christian Bourgois, Kasischke was awarded the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for Space, In Chains. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes, in 2005 she was The Frost Place poet in residence and in 2009 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts - Poetry Kasischke, Laura. Fire and Flower What It Wasnt Dance and Disappear, the Infinitesimals ISBN1556594666 Kasischke, Laura. Made In Michigan Writers, Eden Springs, if a stranger approaches you, stories
17.
National Book Critics Circle Award
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The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English. The first NBCC awards were announced and presented January 16,1976, There are six awards to books published in the U. S. during the preceding calendar year, in six categories, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues, nor does the NBC Circle consider cookbooks, self help books, reference books, picture books or childrens books. They do consider translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March. Award for a best first book in any genre, Ivan Sandrof was one founder of the National Book Critics Circle and its first President. The Sandrof Award has also presented as the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing. It honors Nona Balakian, who was one of three NBCC founders, for 43 years, Balakian was an editor on the staff of the New York Times Book Review. Five finalists are announced each year, one of whom is selected as the winner of the citation, the award has been called the most prestigious award for book criticism in the country. Award year is for the publication year, currently January 1 to December 31. The finalists were announced on January 17,2017, the winners were announced March 17,2016 at the New School in New York. J. The winners were announced March 12,2015, lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not Biography Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown, An African American Life S. C. The winners were announced on March 13,2014, powers Ruth Franklin James Marcus Roxana Robinson Alexandra Schwartz The finalists were announced January 14,2012. The winners were announced on Feb.28,2012, Fiction Laurent Binet, HHhH tr. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys A. E. Stallings, Olives Autobiography Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us Maureen N. Pugliese, Bitter Spring, A Life of Ignazio Silone Martha A. A, herring, From Colony to Superpower, US Foreign Relations Since 1776. Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Autobiography Rick Bass, Why I Came West, Helene Cooper, The House on Sugar Beach, Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter, Andrew X. S. Naipaul, Paul J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions, complete list of NBCC winners and finalists
18.
Jane Kenyon
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Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant. Kenyon was the wife of poet, editor, and critic Donald Hall who made her the subject of many of his poems. Kenyon was born in 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and she earned a B. A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an M. A. in 1972. She won a Hopwood Award at Michigan, Kenyon was New Hampshires poet laureate when she died Saturday April 22,1995 from leukemia. Four collections of Kenyons poems were published during her lifetime, Constance, Let Evening Come, The Boat of Quiet Hours, and From Room to Room. She spent some years translating the poems of Anna Akhmatova from Russian into English, when she died, she was working on editing Otherwise, New and Selected Poems. In 2004, Ausable Press published Letters to Jane, a compilation of letters written by the poet Hayden Carruth to Kenyon in the year between her diagnosis and her death, Kenyons poems are filled with rural images, light streaming through a hayloft, shorn winter fields. She wrote frequently about wrestling with depression, which plagued her throughout her adult life, Kenyons poem Having it out with Melancholy describes this struggle and the brief moments of happiness she felt when taking an MAOI, Nardil. The essays collected in A Hundred White Daffodils reveal the important role came to play in her life once she. However, two visits to India in the early 1990s led to a crisis of faith, as Hall, Alice Mattison, and her biographer John Timmerman have described. Her poem Let Evening Come was featured in the film In Her Shoes, Kenyon was also a contributor to Columbia, A Journal of Literature and Art. Bright Unequivocal Eye, Poems, Papers and Remembrances from the First Jane Kenyon Conference, Let It Grow in the Dark Like a Mushroom, Writing with Jane Kenyon. Timmerman, John H. Jane Kenyon, A Literary Life
19.
Elizabeth Kostova
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Elizabeth Johnson Kostova is an American author best known for her debut novel The Historian. Elizabeth Johnson Kostova was born Elizabeth Johnson in New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville and she received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she won the 2003 Hopwood Award for her Novel-in-Progress. She is married to a Bulgarian computer programmer, kostovas interest in the Dracula legend began with the stories her father told her about the vampire when she was a child. The family lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1972, while her father was teaching at a university, during that year. According to Kostova, It was the experience of my childhood. She was fascinated by because they were, from history in a way, even though they werent about real history, but I heard them in these beautiful historic places. Kostovas interest in books and libraries began early as well and her mother, a librarian, frequently took her and her sisters to the public library—they were each allowed to check out 30 books and had a special shelf for their library books. As a child, she listened to recordings of Bulgarian folk music, as an undergraduate at Yale, she sang in and directed a Slavic chorus. In 1989, she and some friends traveled to Eastern Europe, specifically Bulgaria and Bosnia, the recordings they made will be deposited in the Library of Congress. While Kostova was in Europe, the Berlin Wall collapsed, heralding the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, what if Dracula was still alive. She immediately scratched out seven pages of notes into her writers notebook, two days later, she started work on the novel. At the time she was teaching English as a language, creative writing. She then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and finished the book as she was obtaining her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Michigan, in order to write the book, she did extensive research about Eastern Europe and Vlad Țepeș. Kostova finished the novel in January 2004 and sent it out to a literary agent in March. Two months later and within two days of sending out her manuscript to publishers, Kostova was offered a deal—she refused it, the rights to the book were then auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company bought it for US$2 million. Publishers Weekly explained the high price as a war between firms believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp. Little, Brown, and Co. subsequently sold the rights in 28 countries, the book was published in the United States on 14 June 2005. Kostova was intent on writing a work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style
20.
The Historian
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The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula, Kostovas father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style. Although based in part on Bram Stokers Dracula, The Historian is not a horror novel and it is concerned with historys role in society and representation in books, as well as the nature of good and evil. As Kostova explains, Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history, the evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme, and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East. Little, Brown and Company heavily promoted the book and it became the first debut novel to become one on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale. As of 2005, it was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in U. S. history, in general, the novel received mixed reviews. While some praised the description of the setting, others criticized its structure. Kostova received the 2006 Book Sense award for Best Adult Fiction, Sony has bought the film rights and, as of 2007, was planning an adaptation. The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts, that of Pauls mentor in the 1930s, that of Paul in the 1950s, the tale is told primarily from the perspective of Pauls daughter, who is never named. Part I opens in 1972 Amsterdam, the narrator finds an old vellum-bound book with a woodcut of a dragon in the center associated with Dracula. When she asks her father Paul about it, he tells her how he found the book in his study carrel when he was a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul took the book to his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, as a result, Rossi researched Țepeș, the Dracula myth surrounding him, and the mysterious book. Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul, however, the appearance of characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation. Rossi gives Paul his research notes and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive, the bulk of the novel focuses on the 1950s timeline, which follows Pauls adventures. After meeting with Paul, Rossi disappears, smears of blood on his desk, certain that something unfortunate has befallen his advisor, Paul begins to investigate Dracula. While in the university library he meets a young, dark-haired woman reading a copy of Bram Stokers Dracula and she is Helen Rossi, the daughter of Bartholomew Rossi, and she has become an expert on Dracula. Paul attempts to convince her that one of the librarians is trying to prevent their research into Dracula, later, the librarian attacks and bites Helen
21.
Arthur Miller
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Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist, and figure in twentieth-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and he also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits. The drama Death of a Salesman has been numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century alongside Long Days Journey into Night, Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, in 1980, Miller received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. He received the Prince of Asturias Award and the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2002, Miller was born on October 17,1915, in Harlem, in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the second of three children of Augusta and Isidore Miller. His father was born in Radomyśl Wielki, Galicia, and his mother was a native of New York whose parents arrived from that town. Isidore owned a clothing manufacturing business employing 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community, the family, including his younger sister Joan Copeland, lived on West 110th Street in Manhattan, owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens, and employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, as a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at menial jobs to pay for his college tuition. At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism and worked for the student paper and it was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain. Miller switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, the award brought him his first recognition and led him to begin to consider that he could have a career as a playwright. Rowe provided realistic feedback along with much-needed encouragement, and became a lifelong friend, in 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award. After his graduation in 1938, he joined the Federal Theater Project and he chose the theater project despite the more lucrative offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox. However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project in 1939, Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS. In 1940, Miller married Mary Grace Slattery, the couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Miller was exempted from service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap. 1940 was also the year his first play was produced, The Man Who Had All the Luck won the Theatre Guilds National Award, the play closed after four performances with disastrous reviews
22.
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
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The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes and it recognizes a theatrical work staged in the U. S. during the preceding calendar year. The drama jury, which consists of one academic and four critics, attends plays in New York, in 1955 Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Edward Albees Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama by that awards committee. However, the selection was overruled by the awards advisory board. Had Albee been awarded, he would be tied with Eugene ONeill for the most Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, in its first 98 years to 2013, the Drama Pulitzer was awarded 82 times, none were given in 15 years and it was never split. Many of the prizes were won by people for their collaboration. * Star marks winners of the annual Tony Award for Best Play or Best Musical,1917, no award 1918, Why Marry. – Jesse Lynch Williams 1919, no award Nine musicals have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and they are, George and Ira Gershwins Of Thee I Sing, Rodgers and Hammersteins South Pacific, Bock & Harnicks Fiorello. Of Thee I Sing, Sunday in the Park with George, however, Of Thee I Sing opened when the Tony Awards did not exist, and Next to Normal won the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations. The award goes to the playwright, although production of the play is taken into account. In the case of a musical being awarded the prize, the composer, lyricist, the reason given was that the Pulitzer Prize for Drama is a dramatic award, and not a musical one. Additionally, since 1983, when the identity of finalists was first disclosed and they are, Lee Breuer and Bob Telsons The Gospel at Colonus, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes In the Heights, and Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Krons Fun Home. The latter two shows, however, each won the Tony Award for Best Musical, ¹All listed dates are Prize years. Generally, the musical in question opened in New York during either the preceding year or the preceding Broadway season. Eugene ONeill won the Pulitzer for Drama four times, three in the 1920s, several people have won two or three. Media related to Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners at Wikimedia Commons
23.
Howard Moss
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Howard Moss was an American poet, dramatist and critic. He was poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1948 until his death, Moss was born in New York City. He attended the University of Michigan, where he won a Hopwood Award and he is credited with discovering a number of major American poets, including Anne Sexton and Amy Clampitt. W. H. Moss died of a heart attack related to AIDS, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop disagreed with much of Mosss editorial policy. M. Allen Shearer composed his cantata King Midas on the set of poems with addition of ancient texts
24.
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
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The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1922 for a volume of original verse by an American author. Finalists have been announced from 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner, the 1918 and 1919 Pulitzers included Special Citations for poetry books, made possible by a special grant from The Poetry Society, which the Pulitzer program now lists as Poetry prizes. 1918, Sara Teasdale 1919, Carl Sandburg 1919, Margaret Widdemer In its first 92 years to 2013, two were given in 2008, none in 1946. Robert Frost won the four times and several others won it more than once. 1922, Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson 1923, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, A Few Figs from Thistles, merwin,1971,2009 Carl Sandburg won one of the special prizes for his poetry in 1919 and won the Poetry Pulitzer in 1951. American poetry List of poetry awards Media related to Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners at Wikimedia Commons
25.
Chelsea on the Edge
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Chelsea on the Edge, The Adventures of an American Theater is a book by Davi Napoleon about the onstage triumphs and the offstage turmoil at the Chelsea Theater Center of Brooklyn. It includes biographies of the three co-directors, Robert Kalfin, Michael David, and Burl Hash, and anecdotes about behind-the-scenes activities at the Chelsea and it is also a history of the funding crisis for the arts in America. It explores the theaters socioeconomic milieu in the 1970s, there are stories about attempts to censor the arts and describing increasing anti-arts sentiment in this country. The book features a foreword by Broadway director and producer Harold Prince, Prince discusses the problems of maintaining an art theater in a commercial society. It is written in the style of a novel, even though it is a non-fiction work, the model for the book is Voltaires Candide. This book was one of a handful on the forefront of the field of creative non-fiction, three years after its publication, in 1994, the Creative Nonfiction Foundation was established. She did so in order to get her doctorate, but submitted the draft to publishers. The chapter titles, listed below, were particularly controversial, the Chelsea Theater Center was founded in 1965 and closed in 1986. It was in residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from 1968 to 1978, before and after that time, it worked in theaters in Manhattan, mainly the Westside Theater. Glenn Close, Frank Langella, Christopher Lloyd and Meryl Streep were among the actors who worked at the Chelsea, directors included Des McAnuff, Hal Prince, John Hirsch, and Alan Schneider. In 1965, when Robert Kalfin founded the Chelsea, there were few nonprofit theaters in New York, during the next ten years, new theaters opened, funding sources decreased, and costs rose. Many nonprofit theaters started to do work that would attract audiences. Kalfin and his partners, David and Hash, continued to do innovative work, critics often said that the Chelsea stretched the boundaries of theater. Spectators subscribed to seasons before they knew what the Chelsea would produce the following year, on the other hand, there were many clashes behind the scenes. 1 Wherein Robert Kalfin uses his salary to pay for Chelseas first off-Broadway contract production in order to attract attention and funding and thereby loses his partners. 2 How Chelsea finds an ideal, inexpensive space in a cultural institution which rarely attracts Manhattan audiences. 5 How Chelsea soars on borrowed wings,6 Wherein Chelsea creates a Manhattan annex to house Brooklyn successes. How it opens shows, books shows, and rents spaces to other producers at the Westside Theater while continuing to move Brooklyn productions to inappropriate,7 In which commercial interests rally for art while artists sabotage a revolutionary production
26.
Booker Prize
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The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language and published in the UK. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured international renown and success, therefore, from its inception, only Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize, in 2014, however, this eligibility was widened to any English-language novel. A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with great anticipation and it is also a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or even to be nominated for the longlist. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd. In 1970, Bernice Rubens became the first woman to win the Booker Prize, the rules of the Booker changed in 1971, previously, it had been awarded retrospectively to books published prior to the year in which the award was given. In 1971 the year of eligibility was changed to the same as the year of the award, in effect, this meant that books published in 1970 were not considered for the Booker in either year. The Booker Prize Foundation announced in January 2010 the creation of an award called the Lost Man Booker Prize. Alice Munro has a place in Booker Prize history, The Beggar Maid is the only short story collection to have been shortlisted. Before 2001, each years longlist of nominees was not publicly revealed, John Sutherland, who was a judge for the 1999 prize, has said, There is a well-established London literary community. Rushdie doesnt get shortlisted now because he has attacked that community and that is not a good game plan if you want to win the Booker. Norman Mailer has found the thing in the US – you have to be a citizen if you want to win prizes. The real scandal is that Amis has never won the prize, in fact, he has only been shortlisted once and that was for Times Arrow, which was not one of his strongest books. He pissed people off with Dead Babies and that lodged in the culture. There is also the feeling that he has looked towards America. In 1972, the winning writer John Berger, known for his Marxist worldview and he blamed Bookers 130 years of sugar production in the Caribbean for the regions modern poverty. Berger donated half of his £5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement, because they had a socialist, in 1980, Anthony Burgess, writer of Earthly Powers, refused to attend the ceremony unless it was confirmed to him in advance whether he had won. His was one of two books considered likely to win, the other being Rites of Passage by William Golding, the judges decided only 30 minutes before the ceremony, giving the prize to Golding. Both novels had been seen as favourites to win leading up to the prize, 1983s judging produced a draw between J. M. Coetzees Life & Times of Michael K and Salman Rushdies Shame, leaving chair of judges Fay Weldon to choose between the two
27.
The Guardian
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The Guardian is a British daily newspaper, known from 1821 until 1959 as the Manchester Guardian. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, the Scott Trust became a limited company in 2008, with a constitution to maintain the same protections for The Guardian. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than to the benefit of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian is edited by Katharine Viner, who succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. In 2016, The Guardians print edition had a daily circulation of roughly 162,000 copies in the country, behind The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper has an online UK edition as well as two international websites, Guardian Australia and Guardian US, the newspapers online edition was the fifth most widely read in the world in October 2014, with over 42.6 million readers. Its combined print and online editions reach nearly 9 million British readers, notable scoops include the 2011 News International phone hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered English teenager Milly Dowlers phone. The investigation led to the closure of the UKs biggest selling Sunday newspaper, and one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, in 2016, it led the investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing the then British Prime Minister David Camerons links to offshore bank accounts. The Guardian has been named Newspaper of the Year four times at the annual British Press Awards, the paper is still occasionally referred to by its nickname of The Grauniad, given originally for the purported frequency of its typographical errors. The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle and they launched their paper after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they better than those that do. When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, the prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty. Warmly advocate the cause of Reform, endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and. Support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, in 1825 the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828. The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian the foul prostitute, the Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labours claims. The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators –, if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. CP Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised and he was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylors son in 1907. Under Scott, the moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting William Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886
28.
Frank O'Hara
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Francis Russell Frank OHara was an American writer, poet and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, OHaras poetry is personal in tone and in content and has been described as sounding like entries in a diary. OHaras writing sought to capture in his poetry the immediacy of life, the Collected Poems of Frank OHara edited by Donald Allen, the first of several posthumous collections, shared the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry. Frank OHara, the son of Russell Joseph OHara and Katherine, was born on March 27,1926, at Maryland General Hospital, Baltimore and grew up in Grafton and he attended St. Johns High School. He grew up believing he had born in June, but in fact had been born in March. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944 and served in the South Pacific, with the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where artist and writer Edward Gorey was his roommate. OHara was heavily influenced by art and by contemporary music. His favorite poets were Pierre Reverdy, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, while at Harvard, OHara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love of music, OHara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English and he then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While at Michigan, he won a Hopwood Award and received his M. A. in English literature in 1951 and that autumn OHara moved into an apartment in New York City with Joe LeSueur, who would be his roommate and sometime lover for the next 11 years. It was during this time that he began teaching at The New School, known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, OHara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after arriving in New York, he was employed at the Museum of Modern Art, selling postcards at the admissions desk, and began to write seriously. OHara was active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Artnews and he was also a friend of the artists Willem de Kooning, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers and Joan Mitchell. In the early morning hours of July 24,1966, OHara was struck by a jeep on the Fire Island beach and he died the next day of a ruptured liver. OHara was buried in Green River Cemetery on Long Island, the painter Larry Rivers, a longtime friend and lover of OHaras, delivered one of the eulogies, along with Bill Berkson, Edwin Denby and René dHarnoncourt. While OHaras poetry is generally autobiographical, it tends to be based on his observations of New York life rather than exploring his past. In his introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, Donald Allen says that Frank O’Hara tended to think of his poems as a record of his life is apparent in much of his work. ”OHara discussed this aspect of his poetry in a statement for Donald Allens New American Poetry, What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time, immersed in regimented daily routine, first Catholic school then the Navy, he was able to separate himself from the situation and make witty and often singular studies
29.
Story Prize
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The Story Prize is an annual book award established in 2004 that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up receives $5,000, eligible books must be written in English and first published in the United States during a calendar year. The founder of the prize is Julie Lindsey, and the director is Larry Dark and he was previously series editor for the annual short story anthology Prize Stories, The O. Henry Awards from 1997 to 2002. Publishers, authors, or agents may enter a short story written in English by a living author. Three finalists are announced in January and these authors participate in an award event at the New School in New York City in early March at which they read from their work and have an on-stage discussion with Dark. At the end of the event, Julie Lindsey announces the winner,2016 The winner for books published in 2016 was announced at an event at The New School University in New York City on March 8,2017. Winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award might be promising works by authors, collections in alternative formats
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Theodore Roethke
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Theodore Huebner Roethke was an American poet. He published several volumes of award-winning and critically acclaimed poetry, Roethke is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation. Roethkes work is characterized by its introspection, rhythm and natural imagery, in the November 1968 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, former U. S. Poet Laureate and author James Dickey wrote Roethke was, in my opinion the greatest poet this country has yet produced, Roethke was also a highly regarded poetry teacher. He taught at University of Washington for fifteen years and his students from that period won two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and two others were nominated for the award. He was probably the best poetry-writing teacher ever, said poet Richard Hugo, Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan and grew up on the west side of the Saginaw River. His father, Otto, was a German immigrant, a market-gardener who owned a large local 25 acre greenhouse, much of Theodores childhood was spent in this greenhouse, as reflected by the use of natural images in his poetry. In early 1923 when Roethke was 14 years old, his uncle committed suicide, Roethke noted that these events affected him deeply and influenced his work. Roethke attended the University of Michigan, earning B. A. and M. A. degrees and he briefly attended law school before entering Harvard University, where he studied under the poet Robert Hillyer. In 1940, he was expelled from his position at Lafayette, prior to his return, he had an affair with established poet and critic Louise Bogan, one of his strongest early supporters. While teaching at Michigan State University in East Lansing, he began to suffer from manic depression and his last teaching position was at the University of Washington, leading to an association with the poets of the American Northwest. Some of his best known students included James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, Jack Gilbert, Richard Hugo, the highly introspective nature of Roethkes work greatly influenced the poet Sylvia Plath. So influential was Roethke’s poetry on Plath’s mature poetry that when she submitted “Poem for a Birthday” to Poetry magazine, in 1953, Roethke married Beatrice OConnell, a former student. Like many other American poets of his generation, Roethke was a drinker and susceptible, as mentioned. He did not initially inform OConnell of his episodes of mania and depression, yet she remained dedicated to him. She ensured the publication of his final volume of poetry, The Far Field, as well as a book of his collected childrens verse, Dirty Dinky and Other Creatures. From 1955 to 1956 he spent one year in Italy on a scholarship of the U. S. -Italy Fulbright Commission, in 1961, The Return was featured on George Abbes album Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry on Folkways Records. The following year, Roethke released his own album on the entitled, Words for the Wind
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Betty Smith
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Betty Smith, née Elisabeth Wehner, was an American author. Born on December 15,1896, in Brooklyn, New York, to German immigrants, she grew up poor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in her youth, Smiths family lived in various tenements on Stagg Street, Montrose Avenue and Hopkins Street. These experiences served as the framework to her first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, after marrying George H. E. Smith, a fellow Brooklynite, she moved with him to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he pursued a law degree at the University of Michigan. At this time, she gave birth to two girls and waited until they were in school so she could complete her higher education, although Smith had not finished high school, the university allowed her to enroll in classes. There she honed her skills in journalism, literature, writing and she was a student in the classes of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. In 1938 she divorced her first husband and moved to Chapel Hill, there she married Joseph Jones in 1943, the same year in which A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published. She teamed with George Abbott to write the book for the 1951 musical adaptation of the same name, throughout her life, Smith worked as a dramatist, receiving many awards and fellowships including the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship for her work in drama. Her other novels include Tomorrow Will Be Better, Maggie-Now and Joy in the Morning, on January 17,1972, she died in Shelton, Connecticut, at the age of 75. She is buried in Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (novel)
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a 1943 novel written by Betty Smith. The book was an immense success, the main metaphor of the book is the hardy Tree of Heaven, native to China. The novel is split into five books, each covering a different period in the characters lives, Francie relies on her imagination and her love of reading to provide a temporary escape from the poverty that defines her daily existence. The family subsists on Katies wages from cleaning apartment buildings, pennies from the childrens junk-selling and odd jobs and his alcoholism has made it difficult for him to hold a steady job, and he sees himself as a disappointment to his family as a result. Francie admires him because he is handsome, talented, emotional, Katie has very little time for sentiment, since she is the breadwinner of the family who has forsaken fantasies and dreams for survival. Book Two jumps back to 1900, with the meeting of Johnny and Katie, kate resents Francie because the baby is constantly ill, while Neeley is more robust. Kate makes a promise to herself that her daughter must never learn of her preference for Neeley, the Nolans then arrive at the apartment introduced in Book One. In Book Three, the Nolans settle into their new home, Francie enjoys learning, even in these dismal surroundings, and gets herself transferred to a better school in a different neighborhood with Johnnys support. When Johnny learns that Katie is pregnant once again, he falls into a depression that leads to his death from alcoholism-induced pneumonia on Christmas Day 1915, the new baby, Annie Laurie, is born that May, and Francie graduates from grade school in June. Graduation allows Francie to finally come to terms with the reality of her father’s death, at the start of Book Four, Francie and Neeley take jobs, since there is no money to send them to high school. Francie works first in a factory, then gets a better-paying job in a press clipping office after lying about her age. Once the United States enters World War I in 1917, the office rapidly declines and closes. After she finds work as an operator, she makes a new plan for her education, choosing to skip high school. She passes with the help of Ben Blake, a friendly and determined high school student, but she fails the colleges entrance exams. A brief encounter with Lee Rhynor, a soldier preparing to ship out to France, leads to heartbreak after he pretends to be in love with Francie, when he is in fact about to get married. In 1918, Katie accepts a proposal from Michael McShane. As Book Five begins in the fall of same year, Francie, now almost 17. She is about to start classes at the University of Michigan, having passed the exams with Bens help
