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The University of Alabama Press, founded in 1945 and the largest publisher in the state, announced recently that it has hired John "J.D." Wilson as sales and marketing director. A professional with twenty-four years' experience in publications and marketing, Wilson will contribute his expertise in traditional areas of publicity, advertising, direct marketing, exhibits, and sales as well as in the rapidly growing areas of database and metadata management and social media. He will work in the Press's Tuscaloosa office. Read more…

The Alabama State Council on the Arts held its biannual Celebration of the Arts Awards ceremony on Tuesday, May 21, at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. The event recognizes and honors Alabama artists and individuals for their contribution to the arts in Alabama and beyond. Al Head, executive director of the Council said, "This awards program is an opportunity for the state to recognize special individuals who make the arts happen and bring great credit to our state through their work."

This year’s recipients included a Pulitzer Prize winning author, an internationally recognized poet, a professor emeritus and cultural historian, a university president and his wife, a dance instructor and artistic director, a playwright, a traditional band, a community arts volunteer and arts patron, and a long-time leader in the state legislature. Their contributions to the arts are diverse and far-reaching. Their impact on the entire state has been profound and sustained for many years. Read more…

The Alabama Writers’ Forum is saddened to learn that celebrated author Mary Ward Brown, 95, died this morning in Marion, Ala. A native and longtime resident of Hamburg in Perry County, Brown was a graduate of Judson College. She is survived by her son, Kirtley Ward, his wife, Susannah, and their daughters, Helen and Mary Hays.

"On behalf of the Alabama Writers' Forum I want to express our sorrow over the passing of Mary Ward Brown,” said Kirk Curnutt, Forum board president. “Not only was she an astonishing talent, but her career was comfort to a lot of us knowing that talent blooms later in life." Read more…

“It’s huge and it’s heavy,” exclaimed Sue Brannan Walker as she received the Frank Fleming bronze, symbolic of the Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Alabama’s Literary Scholar of the Year. Walker received the honor during the annual Awards Luncheon at the The Alabama Writers Symposium on April 28 in Monroeville.

Introducing Walker from the dais, Judge John Rochester, Board Chairman of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, said, “Sue is an Alabama original—teacher, writer, poet, publisher.” Read more…

“Show up in person; never use a phone,” said Gay Talese, recipient of the 2013 Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year. “People have admiration for people who have the courtesy to show up in person. Dress well.”

Dressed well in his tailored, double-breasted suit, custom Italian shoes, and Panama hat—“A man is not completely dressed without his hat,” he once said—Talese, the son of a tailor, was concluding an anecdote about getting his first job in journalism as a copyboy at The New York Times. The story also explained this Ocean City, N.J. native’s connection to Alabama.

The creator of “the art of hanging out,” author of the bestsellers Honor Thy Father and Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and longtime contributor to Esquire and other top magazines, Talese was in Monroeville on April 26 to receive the honor at the annual Awards Luncheon during the Alabama Writers Symposium. Read more…

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 Forum board member Dr. Trudier Harris, May 15, 2013, in the McLendon Room of the National Press Club, 52 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C. Harris’ lecture, "Bama Bones: A Black Southerner Talks Place & Creativity," will begin at noon. The one-hour program is free and open to the public. Read more…

Harper Lee Award recipients Sonia Sanchez (2004) and Rick Bragg ( 2009) are among nine outstanding Alabamians to be honored by the Alabama State Council on the Arts at the 2013 Celebration of the Arts awards ceremony on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. The event will take place at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, located at 1 Festival Drive, Montgomery. A reception will immediately follow the awards ceremony in the lobby of the theatre. The event is free and open to the public but reservations and tickets are required.

This year's recipients are:

Lyndra Daniel, Birmingham - Jonnie Dee Little Lifetime Achievement Award
Rick Bragg, Piedmont – Alabama’s Distinguished Artist Award
Dr. Wayne Flynt, Auburn - Governor's Arts Award
Gordon & Geri Moulton, Mobile - Governor's Arts Award
Jean Prescott Pierce, Birmingham - Governor's Arts Award
Sonia Sanchez, Birmingham - Governor's Arts Award
Kitty Seale, Montgomery - Governor's Arts Award
Excelsior Band, Mobile - The Alabama Folk Heritage Award
Sen. J. T. “Jabo” Waggoner, Vestavia Hills - The Special Council Legacy Award

Read more…

Some 45 authors have accepted the invitation to attend the 8th Annual Alabama Book Festival
in Montgomery, April 20, in Old Alabama Town. During the daylong festival the authors will read excerpts, answer questions, and be on hand to sign books. The festival concludes with the Alabama Readers Theatre performing Now Is the Time for All Good Men, a play by Harper Lee. A list of all the authors, brief biographies, schedules, and other information is posted on the ABF website. Read more…

This April for National Poetry Month and in the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s iconic book, Letters to a Young Poet, the Academy of American Poets will encourage students throughout the United States to engage with poetry by handwriting letters to the distinguished poets serving on the Academy’s Board of Chancellors. Selected letters submitted to the Dear Poet Project will receive a reply from the poet and will be displayed on Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website. The Academy of American Poets created National Poetry Month in April 1996, and today it is the largest literary celebration in the world, reaching over 10 million Americans. Read more…

The eighth annual Alabama Book Festival will be held in historic downtown Montgomery at Old Alabama Town on Saturday, April 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The free public event is the state’s premier book festival, with more than 4,000 people from around Alabama and the South converging on the capital city to meet and mingle with celebrated authors. Read more…

The Alabama Writers’ Forum will again offer outreach to teachers and students in conjunction with the eighth annual Alabama Book Festival. On Friday, April 19, three Book Festival poets will visit G.W. Carver High School to read from their work and discuss the importance of poetry writing in their lives. The same day, teachers will gather at Troy University Montgomery Campus for a day of workshops and interaction with several Book Festival authors. Read more…

From a competitive field of over 6,000 students from across the state, Sabria White, a student from New Century Technology High School in Madison County, was selected as the 2013 Alabama Poetry Out Loud State Champion on Monday, February 18, during the Statewide Finals at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF). The event was held in partnership with the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Alliance for Arts Education, ASF, and the Alabama Writers’ Forum.

White recited “Calling Him Back from Layoff” by Bob Hicok, “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, and “The Way It Sometimes Is” by Henry Taylor. White will advance to the National Finals to compete with fifty-two other champions from the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She will receive an all-expense paid trip (with a chaperone) to compete in the National Recitation Contest that will take place in Washington, D.C., on April 29-30, 2013. The honor also carries a $200 cash award. New Century Technology High School will receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books.

Alabama has added its own unique element to the program, providing an opportunity for students to recite their own poetry. This year’s winner in the Original Poetry Competition—underwritten by the Alabama Writers’ Forum—was Bonny Chen, a senior at Auburn High School. She recited her original poems “Legs” and “The Virtue of Triangles.” The honor carries a $200 cash award. Read more…

Literary innovator Gay Talese has been named the 2013 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year. A University of Alabama (UA) alumnus, Talese will receive the award at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville on April 26 at the annual luncheon. The conference will meet April 25-27.

In his letter of nomination, Don Noble, UA Professor of English Emeritus and host of the Alabama Public Television literary talk show Bookmark, wrote, “Gay Talese has strong Alabama connections. He graduated from UA in 1953; covered the civil rights movement in Alabama in the 1960s; returns often to visit, read, speak, and sign; and he has written of his experiences in Alabama in the 2006 book, A Writer’s Life.” Read more…

The 2013 Alabama Poetry Out Loud (POL) State Championship will be held Monday, Feb. 18 at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, 1 Festival Drive, Montgomery. The event will include two rounds of powerful student poetry recitation, including an original poetry competition. This event is free and open to the public. Read more…

The Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA) awards Artists Fellowships of $5,000 to individual artists working in literature, crafts, dance, design, media/photography, music, theatre, and visual arts. An applicant applying for an Artist Fellowship must provide work samples of the highest quality that have been completed within the last five years.

Arts Administration Fellowships of $5,000 are awarded to administrators to improve their skills and ability to serve their organization and community. The application deadline is March 1, 2013. Read more…

The Forum is saddened to report that poet and former Gadsden resident Jake Adam York, 40, passed away this afternoon in a Denver hospital after suffering a stroke. The author of three volumes of poetry and a literary history, he was an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Colorado Denver. Read more…

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently announced the recipients of the 2013 Creative Writing Fellowships. Elizabeth Hughey of Birmingham and Jake Adam York, a Gadsden native, were among the forty writers honored. The annual grants, given in alternating genres, were awarded this year to poets. Read more…

In the early morning hours of January 23, 2012, an EF3 tornado roared down Old Springville Road in Clay. Its widespread path of destruction included the Alabama Department of Youth Services (DYS) Chalkville Campus. Though the students and staff there suffered no serious injuries, many of the campus buildings sustained irreparable damage. The young women there were transferred to group homes or other programs for troubled teens. Thus ended Writing Our Stories’ fourteen-year run at Chalkville’s Sequoya School. Read more…

“A few months before he signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act,” said Governor Robert Bentley at the commissioning ceremony for Andrew Glaze on November 5 at the Alabama State Capitol, “President (Lyndon) Johnson spoke before a gathering of artists at the White House, saying, ‘No people can afford to neglect the creative minds among it. They enrich the life of the nation. They reveal the farthest horizons of man’s possibilities.’

“Alabama offers so much, whether it’s our national resources, our industries, or our contributions to literature and the arts. Today I am honored to commission Andrew Glaze as our new Poet Laureate.” Read more…

“I’m a huge fan,” said Jeh Jeh Pruitt, Fox 6 broadcast journalist and co-founder of The Dannon Project, addressing a group of newly published student writers. Holding his copy of From Darkness to Light high, he said, “When I read this book I felt every word.”

Pruitt gave the keynote address at the November 1 Writing Our Stories book release event in the Chapel of the Department of Youth Services (DYS) Vacca Campus in Birmingham. From Darkness to Light is an anthology of poems and short stories from the students there. Read more…

Governor Robert Bentley will commission Andrew Glaze as the eleventh Poet Laureate of Alabama in a ceremony in the Old Archives Chamber in the Alabama State Capitol on November 5 at 10 a.m. A reception will follow at the NewSouth Bookstore, 105 South Court Street, Montgomery, AL 36104. The event is open to the public. Read more…

“You guys have a great future ahead of you,” said former Crimson Tide and Steelers cornerback Anthony Madison, addressing the newly published writers from the Writing Our Stories (WOS) program at the Lurleen B. Wallace School on the Department of Youth Services (DYS) Mt. Meigs campus. “I read your book, and you are intelligent.”

Held in the campus chapel, the October 24 event marked the release of Open the Door 15, an anthology of poems and stories from the student writers. Students, guests, and DYS faculty, staff, and administrators filled the chapel to capacity. “Optimism” was the theme of the day.

“When I played ball at the University of Alabama I had my doubts because of my size, and I had naysayers who said I couldn’t make it,” said Madison. “Well, I made it. Same naysayers at the Steelers, and I played for seven years.” Read more…

Monroeville’s community theatre troupe, the Mockingbird Players, has traveled to Hong Kong to stage Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The group will present five performances at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center, October 12-14.

The play breaks traditional conventions of space, movement, and the role of the audience by placing audience members inside the play. The all-male jury, ultimately convicting Tom Robinson, is chosen from the audience of each performance. Read more…

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman presented Al Head, Executive Director of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, with the 2012 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship Award on October 4 in Washington, D.C. The fellowship is the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Read more…

The Alabama Writers’ Forum invites nominations for the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year 2013. The award will be made to a living, nationally recognized Alabama writer who has made a significant, lifelong contribution to Alabama letters. The honor recognizes those who primarily write creative nonfiction, drama, fiction, memoir, poetry, or a combination of these. This is not an award for journalistic, historical, nor scientific writing, nor is it an award for service, scholarly research, nor teaching. Nominations must be received by November 1, 2012. Read more…

The Forum invites Alabama high school students to submit their work for the 2013 High School Literary Arts Awards and Scholarship Competition (HSLAA). The postmark deadline date is January 11, 2013. Read more…

Join the Alabama Center for the Book as it celebrates the 12th annual National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, September 22 from 10:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. The Alabama Center along with centers from the other 49 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands will be located at the Pavilion of the States. Read more…

Edward O. Wilson, a native Alabamian and one of the past century’s most distinguished scientists, will be the featured speaker and main honoree at Alabama Humanities Foundation’s annual Alabama Humanities Awards Luncheon on September 10 at The Club in Birmingham.

Recognized as one of the planet’s most articulate authorities on the interrelatedness of knowledge disciplines and of life systems, Wilson is University Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology at Harvard University. Read more…

Armand DeKeyser began his tenure as the new executive of the Alabama Humanities Foundation on June 1, 2012. A native of Mobile and a graduate of Auburn University, DeKeyser returned to his home state after a number of years working in Washington, DC, most notably as Chief of Staff to Alabama’s Senator Jeff Sessions. DeKeyser’s experience across Alabama fits with the AHF’s recently renewed commitment to offer programming in every county in the state. Read more…

Andrew Glaze was selected as the eleventh Poet Laureate of Alabama during the Alabama Writers’ Conclave’s annual meeting in Huntsville, July 20-22. Glaze will be officially appointed by Governor Robert Bentley during a ceremony in November. His four-year term will begin in 2013.

Glaze is the author of eight books of poetry, and has published two collections of selected works. Glaze initially won critical acclaim with the publication of his first book, Damned Ugly Children: Poems (Trident Press, 1966). Read more…

Editor’s note: This obituary was first published in The Opelika-Auburn News on July 11, 2012.

Madison P. Jones Jr. was born in Nashville in 1925. The distinguished novelist began writing at Vanderbilt where he lettered in football and met prominent teachers of literature who helped start his career. . During his time at Auburn University, he received many awards and prizes, including the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama Writer, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The T.S. Elliot Prize for Fiction, and The Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. Among his novels, An Exile was made into the movie, I Walk the Line. Read more…

The National Endowment for the Arts recently announced its 2012 NEA National Heritage Fellowship Recipients. Alabama State Council on the Arts Executive Director Albert B. “Al” Head is the recipient of the Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellowship award. The award recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to the preservation and awareness of cultural heritage. The fellowships are the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Read more…

The Alabama Historical Association (AHA) has announced the first two programs in its new AHA Podcast Series. These inaugural podcasts include interviews with popular Alabama writers, Dan Haulman and Mary Ann Neeley. Read More…

At its June meeting in Montgomery, the Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA) announced recipients of its 2013 fellowships. Chantel Acevado and Adam Vines were named Literary Fellows for FY 2013. Read More…

Editor’s Note: Natasha Trethewey once served on the English faculty at Auburn University and received an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in 2000.

From the Library of Congress:

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today (June 7, 2012) announced the appointment of Natasha Trethewey as the Library’s Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2012-2013.

Trethewey, the 19th Poet Laureate, will take up her duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary season with a reading of her work on Thursday, September 13 in the Coolidge Auditorium. Her term will coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center and the 1937 establishment of the Consultant-in-Poetry position, which was changed by a federal law in 1986 to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Read More…

Editor’s Note : This article originally appeared in part on poetryoutloud.org.

From a competitive field of some 365,000 students nationwide, Kristen Dupard, a senior at Ridgeland High School in Ridgeland, Mississippi, won the title of 2012 Poetry Out Loud (POL) National Champion at the National Finals held in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 15, 2012. With her achievement, Dupard also received a $20,000 award and her high school, Ridgeland High School, received a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books. She was also interviewed on thePBS Newshour. Read More…

Rick Bragg, Professor of Writing at UA, delivered the 2012 Last Lecture to a packed house on April 23. Bragg received this year’s Last Lecture Award. The Last Lecture features a University of Alabama faculty member nominated and selected by students to answer one question in the form of a highly engaging lecture: “If this were your last time to address a group of students, what would you say to them?” Read More…

Writing Our Stories, a partnership program of the Alabama Writers’ Forum and the Alabama Department of Youth Services, won the State/Regional Government Program Innovation Award at a luncheon on May 10, 2012, at the sixth annual Innovative Alabama Governments Awards at the Renaissance Montgomery. Sponsored by the Auburn University at Montgomery Center for Government, the awards honor select recipients for their use of new and innovative methods to help state, county, and municipal government agencies in Alabama that reach new levels of efficiency and responsiveness. Read More…

Attendees at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville, Alabama, were joined at the annual Harper Lee Award luncheon by an unexpected guest. Nelle Harper Lee, long- time resident of Monroeville and author of the international bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird, attended the conference for the first time in its fifteen year history. Lee came to see Alabama-born author Fannie Flagg receive the award named in honor of the Pulitzer Prize winner and Monroeville native. Read More…

*or not — free, formal, blank, rap, hip-hop, it’s all good

In celebration of National Poetry Month and in anticipation of the 2012 Alabama Book Festival, a 24-hour poetry marathon will be held April 19-20 in downtown Montgomery. Any interested poet may participate by reading her/his own work or that of another poet, or both. Get on the list to read by calling 334-834-3556. Read More…

The Speak Peace: American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children’s Paintings exhibit will be on display in the Old Supreme Court Library on the first floor of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery April 11-30. Three of the Forum’s Writing Our Stories students have work in the exhibit.

An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, April 11, 2-4 p.m. Public officials will offer opening remarks at 2:15. The public is invited to attend. Read More…

On Friday, April 20, 2012, the day before the 7th annual Alabama Book Festival, Alabama teachers, grades 7-12, are invited to join three Book Festival authors, Randall Horton, Frank X Walker (pictured), and Patti White, for an exciting day of writing workshops free of charge at Troy University, Montgomery Campus. Courtesy of Vulcan Materials Company, the Support the Arts Car Tag, Troy University, and the Alabama Writers’ Forum, these workshops are designed to introduce teachers to new strategies for integrating creative writing into language arts and English curricula.

To register, send your name, school, and e-mail address to: writersforum@bellsouth.net, Subject line: teacher workshop. Participation by pre-registration only. Read More…

Thirty-four students representing eleven high schools gathered in the Old Archives Chamber in the State Capitol on March 21 to receive their honors in the 18th annual Alabama High School Literary Awards and Scholarship Competition. This year, the Alabama Writers’ Forum, sponsor of the competition, presented a total of ninety-four awards to students at twenty-five high schools. The schools also received certificates of merit. Read More…

The Alabama Writers Symposium will celebrate its fifteenth anniversary in Monroeville, Alabama, Thursday, April 26 through Saturday, April 28, 2012. Exploring the theme Write Out of Place, the 2012 Symposium examines the ways in which Alabama writers are affected by their “placehood,” the ways in which Alabama as a place informs their literary efforts. Some of Alabama’s most celebrated writers and scholars will lead discussion sessions, readings, and workshops. Symposium highlights will include the presentation of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year to Fannie Flagg and a keynote address by Eli Gold. Read More…

The seventh annual Alabama Book Festival will be held in historic downtown Montgomery at Old Alabama Town on Saturday, April 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The free public event is the state’s premier book festival, with more than 5,000 people from around Alabama and the South converging on the capital city to meet and mingle with forty-five celebrated authors. Read More…

Influential Southern novelist Bobbie Ann Mason has been named the latest recipient of the Hall-Waters Prize presented by Troy University. Mason will be honored by Troy during events at the Montgomery and Troy campuses March 28-29.

The Hall-Waters Prize is endowed by Troy alumnus Dr. Wade Hall as a memorial to his parents, Wade Hall Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters Hall. Read More…

James H. “Jimmy” McLemore, a Montgomery attorney, was recently elected to the Alabama Writers’ Forum’s board of directors. He will serve through fiscal year 2014.

“To be joined with AWF is an honor for sure,” said McLemore. “More, it is a beautiful means by which I look forward to help us make neighbors and to help all grow into the fullness of humanity.” Read More…

On February 20, a group of twenty-two highly dedicated students traveled from all over the state with their teachers and supportive family members to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery to participate in the state finals of Poetry Out Loud. Alabama’s new State Champion is Margaret “Peggy” Payne from St. Peter’s Academy in Limestone County. Last year’s Alabama champion, Youssef Biaz from Auburn High School, traveled to Washington, D.C., to become the National Poetry Out Loud Champion. Payne said that she hopes to follow Biaz as 2012 National Champion.

Doris-Anne Darbouze of Auburn High School placed first in the Original Poetry category. The Alabama Writers’ Forum underwrites two cash awards – First Place for $150 and First Runner-up for $75. First Place, First Runner-up, and Honorable Mention winners in Original Poetry receive a complementary one-year student membership in the Forum. All eight top winners in Poetry Out Loud receive contemporary poetry collections. Read More…