Literary Lunch with Alabama Authors

• October 30th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

The Alabama Center for the Book, under the aegis of the University Libraries, and The University of Alabama Press have collaborated in a lunchtime speaker series spotlighting recent works by Alabama writers.

Each hour-long, free session will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from and engage directly with authors whose new books illuminate facets of the University, our state, region and world.

The first session of the series will be on Nov. 7 at noon, in room 205 of the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library. Robert Oliver Mellown, associate professor of art history emeritus, will present the fascinating history and hidden by-ways of Alabama’s campus in his new guide “The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture.”

“The little-known stories and surprising facts Robert presents in his book delighted everyone at the Press involved in the editing and production of his book, even long-time residents and Tuscaloosa natives,” said Curtis Clark, executive director of The University of Alabama Press.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch or purchase lunch in the library’s grab-and-go café, Java City. Limited parking is available in a reserved area on West Capstone Drive. 

The series continues in the new year with the following authors:

• Feb. 6, 2014, Lila Quintero Weaver, “Darkroom: a Memoir in Black and White”

• March 6, 2014, R. Scot Duncan, “Southern Wonder: Alabama’s Surprising Biodiversity”

• April 3, 2014, Philip D. Beidler, “The Island called Paradise: Cuba in History, Literature, and the Arts”

• May 15, 2014, Nimrod Frazer, “Send the Alabamians: World War I Fighters in the Rainbow Division”

“The Press looks forward to presenting UAP authors to the larger University and local communities in such an exciting collaboration with the Center for the Book. Given the Press’s dual mission of furthering scholarship and providing service to the region, it is particularly apt that the inaugural event occurs just days before this year’s University Press Week,” said Clark.

For more information on the series, contact JD Wilson at jdwilson@uapress.ua.edu.

Letters About Literature

• October 30th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

All entries will be accepted until January 21, 2014

Writing Contest for Young Readers
Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress in cooperation with the Alabama Center for the Book and other participating state centers.

For a complete list of guidelines and to get your official contest entry forms visit: www.read.gov/letters.

Attention Students in Grades 4-12!

Take the Letters About Literature writing challenge! Read a book and write a personal letter to an author you admire or inspired you. Your letter must explain how the author’s work changed your view of yourself or your world.
Level 1 – Grades 4-6
Level 2- Grade 7-8
Level 3 – Grades 9-12
One National Winner will receive a $1,000 cash award on each competition level.
One Second Place Winner will receive a $200 cash award on each competition level.

Alabama Center for the Book will award a $100 cash award for first place, $50 cash award for second place, $25 cash award for second place, and a $15 cash award for honorable mention (judge’s discretion) on each competition level. All Alabama semi-finalists will receive a certificate and invitation to the award ceremony, tentatively scheduled for April 2014.
For additional information about the state contest, contact Donna Adcock, dbadcock@ua.edu or 205-348-1416.

Birmingham Author’s Book Selected for 2013 National Book Festival

• June 6th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

Alabama Center for the Book Announces Book Selection for the 2013 National Book Festival.

The Alabama Center for the Book has selected Birmingham author Irene Latham’s book Don’t Feed the Boy to promote at the 2013 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.  Latham’s heart-touching tale is about a lonely eleven-year-old boy, the son of a zoo director mom and elephant keeper dad, who feels trapped by the rules and routine of zoo life. Along comes the Bird Girl who changes his life forever. Ultimately, it’s about the human struggle to find one’s place in the world. It’s rooted in friendship and adventure, and it’s the kind of story that families can read and enjoy.

 

Latham will be at the Alabama Center for the Book’s table in the Pavilion of the States for autographs.

 

Each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U. S. territories will be promoting a children’s or young adult book.  The book will be about their state or territory or the author may be from their state or territory.  Books representing each of the states will be for sale at the National Book Festival.

 

A popular giveaway again this year will be “Great Books and Great Places,” a colorful map of the United States. Representatives from each state will be handing out state stickers or stamps to children of all ages to place on their map. Alabama has designed their 2013 state sticker to represent Latham’s book and will feature a drawing of an elephant.  In addition, visitors will be able to learn about different literacy and reading promotion programs in each state.

 

The National Book Festival is organized by the Library of Congress with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama serving as honorary chairs.

 

Make plans to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D. C. September 21 and 22, 2013. To learn more about the 2013 National Book Festival and the schedule of events visit http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/

 

The Alabama Center for the Book is the Alabama Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is housed in the University of Alabama Libraries at The University of Alabama.

 

Photographs from Dr. Trudier Harris’ Presentation on May 15, 2013

• May 30th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

The Alabama Center for the Book co-sponsored Dr. Trudier Harris’ lecture at the National Press Club on May 15, 2013, in Washington, D.C. The presentation was part of the American Women Writer’s National Museum’s 50-state project to showcase women writers from each state.

 

2013 Letters About Literature National Winners

• May 3rd, 2013
• by admin
• in News

Letters About Literature

2013 Competition National Prizes

2013 Letters About Literature State Winners

• April 26th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

Congratulations to the 2013 Letters About Literature State Winners:

For more event photos please visit our photo gallery.

Dr. Trudier Harris to Speak May 15, 2013

• April 26th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

The Alabama Center for the Book, The University of Alabama Libraries and the American Women Writers National Museum cordially invites you to the presentation “Bama Bones: A Black Southerner Talks Place & Creativity” Dr. Trudier Harris University of Alabama English Professor.

 May 15, 2013
McLendon Room – National Press Club
52 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
11:30 a.m. – Noon Social
Noon- 1:00 p.m. Presentation

State’s people, traditions compel writer

“Alabama has dominated everything I’ve done and written. Greene and Tuscaloosa County farmers influenced my poetry. My mother’s work as a domestic led to my first scholarly book. Alabama’s weather, landscape, family tradition, and crop cultivation served as reference points, including in my memoir Summer Snow,” said Alabama writer Dr. Trudier Harris.

She credits that invisible tether with inspiring her “even more” since she came back to Alabama in 2009, to serve as an English professor at the University of Alabama. Her specialty is African American literature and folklore on which she has written or edited 24 volumes, as well as numerous scholarly articles.

Her last book, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South, was published by LSU Press in May 2009. Choice designated it one of the “Outstanding Academic Titles” for 2009 in its “best of the best” listings. It also won The College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for 2010. She just completed a book manuscript entitled Martin Luther King, Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature, which is forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press.

As part of American Women Writer’s National Museum’s 50-state project to showcase women writers from each state, the Alabama Center for the Book will co-sponsor a presentation by Dr. Harris, May 15, 2013, in the McLendon Room of the National Press Club, 52 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Harris’ lecture, “Bama Bones: A Black Southerner Talks Place & Creativity” will begin at noon. The one-hour program is open to the public, and there is no charge to attend.

Dr. Harris will be introduced by Dana A. Williams, chair and professor of African American Literature in the Department of English at Howard University. “I met Dr. Harris when I was a graduate student at Howard. She has been a wonderful mentor and teacher for so many of us. My grandparents are from Jackson, Alabama,” Dr. Williams said.

Before retiring and returning to her home state of Alabama, Harris was the J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There she taught courses in African American literature and folklore at undergraduate and graduate levels. In her thirty-six years of full-time teaching, she also served on the faculties of The College of William and Mary and Emory University.

She has received numerous teaching awards including the William C. Friday/Class of 1986 Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000), the Eugene Current-Garcia Award for selection as Alabama’s Distinguished Literary Scholar(2002), the UNC System Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching (2005), the John Hurt Fisher Award of the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English (2005) for the outstanding contributions she has made to the field of English scholarship throughout her career, and the inaugural George H. Johnson Prize for Distinguished Achievement by an Institute for the Arts and Humanities Fellow at UNC (2008).

Dr. Harris was born in 1948 on a farm near Tuscaloosa, the sixth of nine children of Terrell and Unareed Harris. She holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

The Alabama Center for the Book is the Alabama Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is housed in the University of Alabama Libraries at the University of Alabama.

Don DeLillo Awarded American Fiction Prize

• April 26th, 2013
• by admin
• in News

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has announced that Don DeLillo, author of such critically acclaimed novels as “Underworld,” “Mao II” and the National Book Award-winning “White Noise,” will receive the first Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction during the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sept. 21-22.

To read the full Press Release from the Library of Congress, please visit this link:
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-079.html

Letters About Literature 2012-2013

• October 24th, 2012
• by admin
• in News

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Letters About Literature (LAL) invites young readers in grades 4 – 10 to enter the 21st Annual LAL letter writing competition. The contest challenges young readers to write a personal letter to an author explaining how that author’s work somehow changed the readers’ view of their world.

LAL is a national reading and writing promotion program for young readers sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and presented in partnership with participating affiliate state centers for the book including the Alabama Center for the Book.

Students may enter the contest individually or through their school as a class project. The 2013 entry guidelines and entry coupons may be found on the Alabama Center for the Book’s website:

Alabama Center for the Book

Submission deadline is postmark January 11, 2013.

Teachers, librarians, and parents can download free teaching materials, including lesson plans, assessment checklists, and student writing samples by visiting the LAL website.

LAL awards prizes on both state and national level in three competition levels: Level 1 for children in grades 4 – 6; Level 2 for children in grades 7 – 8; and Level 3 for children in grades 9 – 10.

The Alabama Center for the Book will announce the state winners in April 2013. All semi-finalists, their families, and teachers will be invited to the Alabama Letters About Literature awards ceremony and reception to be held at The University of Alabama in the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library. The three first place winners’ letters will be submitted for national judging.

National winners will receive a cash award of $1,000 and will be announced in May 2013.

The Alabama Center for the Book is the Alabama Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is housed in the University of Alabama Libraries at the University of Alabama.

Slash Pine Press Fourth Annual Festival

• September 27th, 2012
• by admin
• in News

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — More than two dozen poets will read from their work during the Slash Pine Press’s fourth annual festival Friday, Oct. 12, and Saturday, Oct. 13, in venues at The University of Alabama and in downtown Tuscaloosa.

The events are free and open to the public.

Among the poets reading at the festival are Ethan Saul Bull, author of “In the Hour and a Bedroom Later” (Slash Pine Press, 2012); William Burke, author of “The World is Full of Peasants” (Slash Pine, 2011); and Cindy St. John, author of “Be the Heat” (Slash Pine, 2011).

Also featured are Dr. Mark Yakich, associate professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans; and Carol Lynne Knight, co-director of Anhinga Press.

Invited faculty poets are Carolyn Hembree instructor at the University of New Orleans; Bryn Chancellor, assistant professor of English at the University of Montevallo; Dr. Randy Blythe of the University of Alabama-Birmingham; Dr. Norman Golar, assistant professor at Stillman College; and Ashley McWaters, instructor of English and coordinator of undergraduate creative writing at UA.

Also featured are 25 undergraduate creative writers from these institutions.

“The festival mirrors most closely what we do at our press and in our internship program: foster and promote the work of rising writers at all levels, from those who are engaged in undergraduate creative writing programs to those published by nationally significant presses,” said Dr. Patti White, director of Slash Pine Press. “We want to invite everyone in the community to join us as we celebrate the way words bind us together, not only intellectually but in deep and lasting ways that alter the way we see the world.”

The first Slash Pine reading will be at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12, on the lawn in front of Gorgas House and feature poets Summer Upchurch, Alex Munster, Kyle Dennan, Monica Marie Linam, Alexandra Franklin and Riley Patrick.

The second will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, at 205 Gorgas Library and feature Carol Lynne Knight, Lindsay Hodgens, JM Gamble, Judah Martin, Debra Logan, Bryn Chancellor, Robert Conditt, Amber Brown and Ethan Saul Bull.

The third will be at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Green Bar, 2350 Fourth St. in Tuscaloosa, and feature Dr. Mark Yakich, Jasmine McElwee, Nadia Barksdale, Evan B. Patton, Ashley McWaters, Laurie Christolear, Dr. Norman Golar, Blake Posey and William Burke.

The fourth will be at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13 at Mellow Mushroom, 2230 University Blvd. in Tuscaloosa, and feature Cindy St. John, Ethan Taylor, Dr. Randy Blythe, Lauren Howton, Dani Langone, William Gillette and Carolyn Hembree.

For details, go to http://slashpinepress.com/ or contact White at patti.white@ua.edu or Joseph Wood at josephpatrickwood@gmail.com.

Founded in 2009, Slash Pine Press publishes chapbooks of poetry and mixed-genre work. Slash Pine Press is housed in UA’s English department, part of The College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.

Support for Slash Pine Press comes from the Alabama Writers Forum, the Alabama Center for the Book, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the University of Alabama English department and its creative writing program and UA’s College of Arts and Sciences.