Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Conference Poetry Writing Workshop

Conference Non-Fiction Writing Workshop with Ira Sukrungruang:

How to Make Your Life Matter

Annie Dillard says that memoirists are minor historians. As a memoirist, not only are we responsible in telling our story, but also the story of our culture. Why do our lives matter? Why does the writing of our lives matter? In this time period of political and social upheaval, how can the story of the lives of people elevate the social consciousness of our culture? Participants of this workshop will discuss the pitfalls and beauty of the contemporary memoir, and also locate themselves not only in the life of their stories but the mind of their stories.

Ira Sukrungruang is the author of the memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy. His work has appeared many literary journals, including Post Road, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is the editor of Sweet: A Literary Confection (sweetlit.com), and teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida. For more information about him, please visit: www.sukrungruang.com.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Conference Poetry Writing Workshop

Conference Writing Workshop with Terri Witek (Stetson University Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing): "Poetry in the Gallery"--the workshop will meet in the Crisp Ellert Art Museum and writers will generate new work inspired by/based on/ that space. Registration forms will be posted on the floridarts.org website soon.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Florida Literary Community Loses Iconic Author Stetson Kennedy


Stetson Kennedy, Florida's last living link to the WPA Federal Writers' Project, died Saturday, August 27, at the age of 94. He had studied at the University of Florida in a class taught by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and served the Roosevelt-era project as writer and editor of Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, still regarded as a milestone portrait of the state. At the age of 21, Kennedy was hired as director of the folklore division, in which role he "supervised" and collaborated with Zora Neale Hurston, another unemployed and little-known writer who had just published Their Eyes Were Watching God.

He later continued to write and publish work as a Florida folklorist and civil rights activist. His books included Palmetto Country, published in the American Folklore Series edited by Erskine Cladwell in 1942, and the important civil rights book I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan (also re-published as The Klan Unmasked) in 1954.

He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2005.

Stetson Kennedy photo by Ivy Bigbee courtesy of Florida Artists Hall of Fame website, Florida Division of Cultural Affairs.





Monday, August 22, 2011

Reviewed: “I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl”


Kelle Groom's (FLAC member) memoir was reviewed in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

Other Words Special Guest

Julie Lequin is a French Canadian artist currently based in Quebec. She received a B.F.A. from Concordia University, Montreal, PQ in 2001 and an M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA in 2005. Julie's multidisciplinary practice interweaves personal history with fictionalized events and circumstances in a manner that constantly blurs the line between the artist as individual and the artist as self-consciously constructed persona. She has exhibited at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in California, La Centrale Powerhouse in Montreal, White Columns in New York City and was most recently included in Between Document and Fiction at MausHabitos in Oporto, Portugual. Lequin was recently honored with the Joseph S. Stauffer Award from the Canada Council for the Arts and has completed residencies at Yaddo, Art Omi, Macdowell Colony and Les Recollets in Paris. 2nd Cannons Publications published her first book and DVD project in 2007.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Conference Evening Reader: Carol Frost

Carol Frost, director of is the author of eleven books of poems. The Queen's Desertion, I Will Say Beauty, Love and Scorn: New and Selected Poems, all from Northwestern University Press, are recent volumes. The Florida Book Awards named her latest poetry collection Honeycomb the gold medal winner in poetry for 2010. Her poems have appeared in four Pushcart Prize anthologies, and she has been a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. The Poets’ Prize and Elliston Award committees have also honored her work.

Carol Frost is the Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Chair at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, where she is professor of English and the Director of Winter with the Writers, A Festival of the Literary Arts. She is also a fore faculty member of the New England College Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry. She spends time and writes each spring on Florida's "Nature Coast" in Cedar Key.

For more information visit:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/carol-frost/448x/carol-frost.jpg

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carol-frost

Watch our website for scheduling information.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Florida Writer's Circuit

This year's FLAC Florida Writer's Circuit (amazing!):
Peter Trachtenberg--October 2011
Erika Meitner--November 2011
Gerry LaFemina--November 2011
Tim Seibles--February 2012
John Blair--April 2012

Thanks to Gianmarc, Rick, and Richard for all their work!

visit http://www.floridarts.org/flor​ida-writer-s-circuit/ for more info