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2003 
December:
Affectionately known as the "Yiddish Martha Stewart," Marlyn Kallet reads from her latest book One for
Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes. Rugalach and other baked goodies from
Kallet's recipe book will be available for guests to taste.Kallet will also read some new and selected poetry. Her next book of poems has just been accepted for publication by BkMk Press, which is the imprint of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Named Outstanding Woman of the Arts by the Knoxville YWCA in 2000, Kallet is author of nine books, including poetry, essays, translations and criticism. Since 1986, she has directed the University of Tennessee's Creative Writing Program. The Knoxville Writers' Guild will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday, December 4, at the Laurel Theatre, 16th and Laurel, off Cumberland Avenue. The public is invited. A $1 donation is requested.
November:
Jeanne McDonald
will read from her new novel Water
Dreams. McDonald has published fiction in magazines,
journals, and anthologies, including American Fiction, Special Report:
Fiction, Memphis Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Poets & Writers,
Phoebe, Amelia, Kentucky Writing, and River City Review.
Her work has been anthologized in Homewords: A Book of Tennessee Writers
and Homeworks; Lovers: Stories by Women; Love's
Shadow: Writings by Women; Worlds in our Words: Contemporary Women Writers;
and Christmas Blues. A recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission/Alex
Haley Fellowship and the Washington Prize for Fiction, McDonald is a contributor
to Metro Pulse. She is also
a featured writer in the recently published collection, Listen Here:
Women Writing in Appalachia. McDonald has co-written
Growing Up Southern: How the South Shapes Its Writers
and The Serpent Handlers: Three Families and Their Faith with
her journalist husband Fred Brown.Fred Chappell, Poet Laureate of North Carolina calls Water Dreams “one of the strongest first novels I have ever come across and one of the strongest novels of any ordinal that I've read in months and months. This really is a masterly piece of work." Nationally known novelist Lee Smith writes that readers will be “swept away” by McDonald’s work, a “meditation upon chance, fate, love, and responsibility.” In Water Dreams, a random natural occurrence -- the drowning of a young man -- changes forever the life of Miller Sharp, who tries to intervene. Following the incident, Sharp loses his family, his job, and his self-respect. In this dark aftermath, he discovers what is really important in life. After the reading, Jeanne McDonald will answer questions on the novel, her other work, and the writing process
October:
(Note: The Guild will meet on October 9, the second Thursday of the month.) 2002 Peter Taylor Prize winner Sarah Van Arsdale will read from her winning
novel Blue. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia, was
published by Riverhead/Putnam in 1996. Her articles, fiction, and poetry
have appeared in local and national publications, including Publishers Weekly,
The San Francisco Chronicle, Columbia Review, Oxford Magazine, San
Francisco Magazine, Barnard Magazine, Lilith, and The Jewish
Forward, and she has a regular book review column in Middlebury
Magazine. She has served as a judge for the Ferro-Grumley Awards,
the Lambda Literary Awards, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is
a member of the National Writers Union, the Publishing Triangle, and the
NewYork Writers Workshop. Ms. Van Arsdale has taught at colleges and universities from Vermont to California. She currently teaches at the Jewish Community Center with the New York Writers Workshop, the Gotham Writers Workshop, and the 92nd Street Y. She is senior staff writer at Designer Monthly Magazine, and she is a coordinator of the BJ Reads Program, a collaboration of Congregation B¹nai Jeshrun and PS 166 in New York City, helping children learn to read. Raised in northern New Jersey, Ms. Van Arsdale comes from a family of artists; her mother, Nancy Van Arsdale, is a photographer, her sister, Laura Summer, is a painter, and her brother, Peter Van Arsdale, is a violin maker. Ms. Van Arsdale has lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, San Francisco, and Vermont. She currently divides her time between northern Vermont and New York City. She is working on a collection of short stories and on a fourth novel. Ms. Van Arsdale¹s first novel, Toward Amnesia, is about a woman who tries to induce amnesia in herself in an attempt to heal her broken heart. Her new book, Blue, looks at amnesia from the perspective of a character who truly does have the condition. Ms. Van Arsdale says that she finds amnesia fascinating as it provides a lens through which an author can examinequestions of identity and origin.
Jack Mauro will read selections from Enola's Wedding and Spite Hall and will answer questions from the audience.
Bathanti, who is an associate professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, has won many awards for his books of poetry, fiction and for his plays. East Liberty received the 2000-2001 Carolina Novel Award. He is the author of four books of poems; This Metal won the 1997 award from the North Carolina Poetry Council for best book of poems by a Carolina writer. His play, Afomo, won the Wachovia Playwrights Prize as well as the Playwrights Fund of North Carolina Prize. In addition, he has won the coveted Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry Prize, the 2002 Sherwood Anderson Award and many others. Bathanti holds a master of arts degree in literature from the University of Pittsburgh and a master of fine arts from Warren Wilson College. He came to North Carolina as a VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) volunteer in 1976 to work with prison inmates. His visit is co-sponsored by the University of Tennessees creative writing program in association with UTs John C. Hodges Better English Fund and by the UT Theatre Department. The Knoxville Writers'
Guild will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 6, at the Laurel Theatre,
16th and Laurel, off Cumberland Avenue. The public is invited. Refreshments
will be served. And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne!" The January 2 meeting of 2003
will feature the winner and runners up of the Third Annual Robert
Burns Poetry Award. Established in 2000 by Guild member Marybeth
Boyanton in memory of her late husband, Terry Semple. The contest
is for poetry on the subject of heritage, broadly defined. Winners
will also be recognized at the KWG Gala Awards in April. |
Tennessee Book
Award - Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel