Monday, February 22, 2010

New Novel from Mary Jane Ryals



Mary Jane Ryals has a novel coming out in October 2010: Cookie and Rayann, published by Kitsune Books. It’s a story of cross-racial friendship between two young teenage girls set the deep South of the 1960s. An award-winning author of nonfiction, poetry, and short stories; editor at the Apalachee Review literary magazine; and research associate at Florida State University’s College of Business, Mary Jane Ryals is also the 2008-2010 Big Bend Poet Laureate. Congratulations, Mary Jane!

Dorothy Allison at UT, March 25


The University of Tampa Writers at the University series will host writer Dorothy Allison for a reading on March 25. The event is co-sponsored by UT’s student literary magazine, QUILT. Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. She received the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, and her books include Trash and Bastard Out of Carolina.

March 25, 8:00 p.m.
University of Tampa
Plant Hall - Grand Salon
Free – open to the public
Contact Name: Audrey Colombe
Contact E-mail acolombe@ut.edu
Contact Phone Number: (813) 257-3116

Monday, February 8, 2010

R.I.P., Robert Dana


Sad news. Poet Robert Dana passed away Saturday morning, February 6, at Mercy Hospice in Iowa City after a lengthy struggle with pancreatic cancer. He died peacefully with his wife and family present. His last two books will be published in April--New & Selected Poems 1955 to 2010 (Anhinga), and a book of essays, Paris on the Flats: Versions of a Literary Life (University of Tampa). His publishers and friends will host an informal tribute at this year’s AWP Conference in Denver.

Guy Libeda, a longtime friend now with the Utah Arts Council, wrote: “He gave freely from his experience and his wisdom. I asked him for advice, not just about the lit biz, but about life & love. I looked up to him & valued his friendship. Another of our older brothers in the order has passed. Soon we will be the elders in our world. I just hope we are able to provide the kind of wisdom RP did.”

Robert Dana’s own words remain memorably eloquent, as these from his “Elegy for a Hometown”: “Soon I'll bury my own shadow & slip away like sunlight. / Simplicity's what I'm best at. / In the end, / a small box of a house by the sea. / No electricity. / No running water. Dirt floored. / Prayer, /wind & slapdash from the whereafter.”

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Morrill Wins Massachusetts Review Poetry Award




“Enemy Infant,” a poem by Donald Morrill, of the University of Tampa, has been awarded the 2010 Anne Halley Prize from The Massachusetts Review. The annual award, which includes a cash prize of $500, recognizes the best work to appear in the magazine in the previous year. In addition, a broadside of the poem will be produced, and Morrill will give a reading of this and other works at UMass-Amherst this spring. Congratulations!