Short Takes

The radio show Living on Earth will air an interview with Ian Marshall (WALDEN BY HAIKU) this weekend (rescheduled from November). The show will be available online starting Friday evening.

Camille Dungy and BLACK NATURE in the Oakland Tribune. Dungy will appear live on the KPFA radio show Oakland Seen tomorrow (Friday, 1/22) from 8:08-8:30 am Pacific time. Stream it here.

Keith Gilyard, author of a forthcoming biography of radical black novelist JOHN OLIVER KILLENS, appeared on the the radio show Perspective on Killens's birthday (January 14). Archived for the next week at WBAI in New York.

An exhibit featuring the photographs of CITY OF MEMORY, pre- and post-Katrina images of New Orleans by John Woodin, will open tomorrow at Open Lens Gallery in Philadelphia. The book will release in early February.

Kevin McFadden (HARDSCRABBLE) has received the 2010 New Writers Award in poetry from the Great Lakes College Association. As part of the award, McFadden will read at a number of GLCA member campuses.

CRACKERS IN THE GLADE and an article on Marjory Stoneman Douglas by Jack Davis (AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE) are featured in a special Everglades issue of Forum, the magazine of the Florida Humanities Council.

Now available:
THE HORRIBLE GIFT OF FREEDOM
Marcus Wood
In a follow up to Blind Memory, his well-received study of the visual culture of slavery, Wood examines the troubling iconography of emancipation, which often codifies "Liberty" as a white woman handing the gift of freedom to a kneeling, shackled slave. The study covers two centuries of imagery, with special attention to stamps, exhibits, protests and performances relating to the 2007 bicentennial of the Slave Trade Abolition Act.

TRANSFORMING SCRIPTURES
Katherine Clay Bassard
The first sustained study of African American women writers’ engagement with the Bible, with particular focus on the work of Maria W. Stewart, Frances Harper, Hannah Crafts, Harriet E. Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Sherley Anne Williams.

MISSISSIPPI WOMEN, volume 2
Edited by Elizabeth Anne Payne, Martha H. Swain, and Marjorie Julian Spruill
In volume 1, accessible essays by historians profiled notable women in Mississippi history. Volume 2 complements this work with thematic essays on the historical forces that have shaped women's lives.

SOUTH CAROLINA WOMEN, volume 2
Edited by Marjorie Julian Spruill, Valinda W. Littlefield, and Joan Marie Johnson
Volume 2 continues the biographical treatment of interesting women of South Carolina, here exploring the lives of women from the Civil War through the Progressive Era.