Short Takes: Pulses with crazed life

Should we have called it a memoir? THE RIOTS, winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction, reviewed with verve in DIAGRAM. An interview with Deulen will air on KUED Salt Lake City this Sunday on Utah Conversations with Ted Capener and should be available online afterward. Deulen will read at Powell's in her hometown of Portland on June 23.

Memoirist Dinty Moore names AWP creative nonfiction winner Sonja Livingston's GHOSTBREAD one of his top six memoir recommendations.

Library Journal on Mark Hersey's MY WORK IS THAT OF CONSERVATION: "Hersey here focuses on Carver’s role as a conservationist and his use of renewable resources to create sustainable farms. The book portrays the world of black farmers in the South in a plain and realistic manner from what could have been Carver’s point of view." Hersey will appear with historian Gary Kremer for a Carver-double-header at the Kansas City Public Library May 24.

UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON in Publisher's Weekly: "an enlightening portrait of a Southern city in the final stages of snuffing out black gains from Reconstruction." A lively interview with authors Williams and Hoffius on WICN's Inquiry.

AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY receives the Malcolm Bell Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society for the best book in Georgia history.

BEYOND KATRINA, by Natasha Trethewey, is the winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for the best nonfiction book by a living Mississippian. The awards ceremony will be held in Ocean Springs June 4.

John Casteen's new poetry collection reviewed in C-ville: "In all, FOR THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL pulses with crazed life."

Kyle Dargan meets Arne Duncan: poets, Washington, DC high school students, and the role of the arts in education.

"How to turn that diss into a prize-winning book": interview with Christine Keiner at the Forum for the History of Science blog on how THE OYSTER QUESTION came to be. A review by Stephen Bocking in the History of Science Society's journal Isis notes, "Keiner's detailed historical account is a model of sensitivity to the Chesapeake's dual identity as an ecosystem and as a landscape rich in cultural and social meaning."

Upcoming area events

Wednesday, June 1 @ 6 pm - Atlanta, GA
Restaurant Eugene
Author dinner featuring John T. Edge & SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE COMMUNITY COOKBOOK
Call 404-355-0321 for reservations