Book Awards for Atlanta Writer-Photographer and Wisconsin Poet

Atlanta-based writer and photographer David Kaufman has won the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment for his book PEACHTREE CREEK. The award is given every year by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to writers who most effectively tell their stories about the South’s environment.

Contest judge and Orion magazine editor-in-chief, H. Emerson Blake, says of the book: "Wallace Stegner said that a place is not a place without a poet. Peachtree Creek has found its poet in David Kaufman. PEACHTREE CREEK describes how profoundly we are shaped by our surroundings and how profoundly, and destructively, we are able to modify those surroundings. This is the kind of story that really makes one stop and think about what kind of world we want to live in."

Kaufman received an award plaque and a $1,000 prize. He read from his book at an award ceremony on March 28, at SELC’s headquarters, as part of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. Another University of Georgia Press book, John Lane’s CIRCLING HOME, was a finalist for the award.

In other award news, Paul Zimmer, author of CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED, has received the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers (CWW). The Posner Award is one of several given out every year by the CWW to Wisconsin residents who shows literary excellence in their work. Geeta Sharma-Jensen, book critic for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had details on all of this year's winners in a recent column.

Ted Kooser, 2004-2006 Poet Laureate of the United States, has said, "I can't remember when I've read a book of poems I enjoyed as much as Paul Zimmer's CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED. Here is an entire life, distilled to a lovely, celebratory essence." Zimmer will be honored at the Council for Wisconsin Writers annual awards banquet on Saturday, May 10, 2008, in Milwaukee.

Images:
Top left: Book jacket of Peachtree Creek
Bottom left: Book jacket of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited
Top right: David Kaufman, author of Peachtree Creek
Bottom right: Paul Zimmer, author of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited

Poet Named Finalist for Literary Award

Dawn Lundy Martin has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the category of Poetry for her book A GATHERING OF MATTER / A MATTER OF GATHERING. The Lambda Awards recognize writers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender literature. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in West Hollywood on May 29.

A GATHERING OF MATTER / A MATTER OF GATHERING was chosen by Carl Phillips for the 2006 Cave Canem Poetry Prize; the UGA Press published the book in 2007. Martin is the author of one other poetry collection, The Morning Hour, chosen by C. D. Wright for the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship.

Martin cofounded the Third Wave Foundation a feminist, activist foundation that supports young women and transgender youth working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice. She is also coeditor of The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Photo of Dawn Lundy Martin by Stephanie Hopkins
Technorati Tags: Lambda Literary Award

Short Story Writer Recognized

Margot Singer has received an honorable mention for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her short story collection THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT. One of the most prestigious literary awards for first books of fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award is given by PEN New England and the JFK Presidential Library. In addition to this year's winner, Joshua Ferris for the novel Then We Came to the End, two finalists and one other honorable mention were recognized.

Read an interview with Margot Singer in Next Book.

Check out reviews of THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT in NewPages.com, the Miami Herald, Columbus Dispatch, and Venus.

Photo of Margot Singer by Tim DeGenero

Short Takes

Interviews:
Peter LaSalle, author of TELL BORGES IF YOU SEE HIM, in Bookslut.

Major Jackson, author of LEAVING SATURN, on NPR's New Letters on the Air.

Authors in the news:
Mary Jo Bang, author of THE DOWNSTREAM EXTREMITY OF THE ISLE OF SWANS, has won the 2007 National Book Critics Award for Poetry for her collection titled Elegy.

David Crouse, author of COPY CATS, has won the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction for a short story collection that will be published in August by Sarabande Books.

Sue William Silverman, author of the memoir BECAUSE I REMEMBER TERROR, FATHER, I REMEMBER YOU, is also author of the novel Love Sick, which has been made into a movie by the Lifetime Network.

Awards:
SOUTHERN COMFORTS by Sudye Cauthen has won the bronze in Florida Nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards. Winning books and their authors will be featured in the July issue of the Florida Humanities Council's Forum magazine.

Three UGA Press titles have been named finalists for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award: THE RINGING EAR (Anthologies category), DOUGH (Autobiography/Memoir category), and PROPHET FROM PLAINS (Political Science category).

Reviews:
DOUGH in Jbooks.

SPRAWLING PLACES is part of a feature on modern architecture in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The spring issue of the Jewish Book World features a great review of THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT: "Singer writes clearly, succinctly, and effectively. The characters are believable, and the stories uplifting but realistic. Modern issues—terrorism and the second Lebanon war—intrude, but do not overwhelm, a testament to Singer’s skill and artistry."

The unaugural volumes in the VQR Poetry Series were featured in a full-page spread in a recent issue of Publishers Weekly:
- BOY (starred review): "This second collection from Kate Tufts Award–winner Phillips ... is haunted by memories, could-have-beens and what-ifs ... Phillips is consumed with his vulnerability as a parent and finds himself lost in the cyclical recurrences of time."
- THE HISTORY OF ANONYMITY: "[Chang] is at her best and boldest in raw poems ... The final section continues the narrative of the victimized child, her sister, and her mother, with frankness and a refreshing lack of melodrama."
- HARDSCRABBLE: "This debut showcases a wild and powerful wit in action."
- FIELD FOLLY SNOW: "The sharp, pastoral imagery of Parks’s debut is set ablaze by an ominous tone and the author’s fine musical ear. Her tight tercets and prose blocks convey a sense of isolation, which, when broken by the appearance of someone other than the speaker, is as jarring as a rock heaved into a still pond."

PROPHET FROM PLAINS by Frye Gaillard in the National Catholic Reporter.

GROUNDED GLOBALISM by James L. Peacock in the Nashville Tennessean.

THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT by Margot Singer in NewPages.com.

NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE PROMISES by Kent Germany in the American Historical Review.

We get blogged:
Sudye Cauthen, author of SOUTHERN COMFORTS, has a new blog.

Recommendation for THE UNABRIDGED DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce in Etcetera Whatever

Praise for Michael Martone, author of RACING IN PLACE, in Zyzzyvaspeaks

Reflections on Erskine Caldwell's TOBACCO ROAD and GOD'S LITTLE ACRE in The View from Graustark

Mention of EQUIANO THE AFRICAN by Vincent Carretta in African Disapora, Ph.D.