New Books by Great Writers 2008-2009

A Series of Literary Readings and Workshops

Last Year's Series - New Books by Great Writers 2007-2008

The Carnegie Center is proud to announce the fifth annual New Books by Great Writers reading and workshop series. Some of Kentucky’s finest literary talents, as well as exceptional writers with ties to the state, will be on hand to read from new work and to share their craft with workshop participants in an intimate setting. Past readers in the series include current and former Kentucky Poets Laureate Jane Gentry Vance (Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig), Sena Jeter Naslund (Abundance, Ahab’s Wife), and Richard Taylor (Sue Mundy); as well as New York Times Bestselling Author Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter) and Kentuckians Silas House (The Coal Tattoo) and Frank X Walker (Buffalo Dance). Poet Leatha Kendrick, this year celebrating the release of her own New Book (Second Opinion) will reprise her role as Project Coordinator and will once again lead The Eclectic Living Room book discussions on the Thursday evening preceding each reading scheduled in the series.

All New Books by Great Writers programs are made possible in part by the generous support of LexArts.

All readings are free and open to the public. Workshops are $25 each, or $100 for as many workshops as a subscriber wishes to attend in the 2007-2008 series.

Unless otherwise indicated, all readings and workshops will take place at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, 251 W. Second Street, Lexington.

Thursday, Sep. 18: LEATHA KENDRICK AND GEORGIA GREEN STAMPER

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Second Opinion and You Can Go Anywhere: From the Crossroads of the World

Leatha Kendrick is the author of three volumes of poetry, Second Opinion (2008), a chapbook, Science in Your Own Back Yard (2003) and Heart Cake (2000). Kendrick's poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Cold Mountain Review, MARGIE, Wind, blink, Appalachian Journal, Now & Then, The Louisville Review, The Connecticut Review (among others) and in many anthologies including Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia; The Kentucky Anthology—Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State; and I to I: Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists. She co-edited Crossing Troublesome, Twenty-Five Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop (Wind, 2002) and wrote the script for a documentary film: A Lasting Thing for the World—The Photography of Doris Ulmann (Little City Productions, 2002). She teaches at regional writing conferences and has been a presenter at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs’ national meetings. She currently works as a teacher of poetry and life writing classes at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, KY, and directs their reading series, New Books by Great Writers.

Georgia Green Stamper is a seventh generation Kentuckian, and she and her husband Ernie still own the Eagle Creek family land that has belonged to one member or another of her mother’s people for over a hundred and fifty years.

A graduate of Transylvania University, Stamper is a former high school English and theater teacher and speech team coach. Her essays have received many awards, including the Emma Bell Miles Award from Lincoln Memorial University’s Mountain Heritage Literary Festival; the Carole Pettit Creative Writing Medallion and Legacies Award from the Carnegie Center; the Leadingham Prose Award from the Frankfort (KY) Arts Foundation, and from The Appalachian Writers Association and Green River Writers.

Her work has been published in the literary anthologies New Growth (Jesse Stuart Foundation); Tobacco (Wind Publications); Daughters of the Land (in press - Texas Tech U Press); and “The Journal of Kentucky Studies” (Northern KY U.)

Since 2004, she has written a bi-weekly column, “Georgia: On My Mind,” for The Owenton (KY) News-Herald. In early 2006, she became a regular commentator for NPR member station WUKY affiliated with the University of Kentucky. Over sixty of her commentaries have aired in the WUKY listening market.

Thursday, Oct. 16: MICHAEL L. COOPER

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Hero of the High Seas: John Paul Jones and the American Revolution

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on workshop with the author: ENGAGING NONFICTION: USING FACTS TO TELL A GOOD STORY

Michael L. Cooper is the author of 16 trade books of biography and social history for children and young adults.

Many of the author's books have been about outsiders in American history: Indian School (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin) is about the controversial federal boarding schools of the late 19th century; Manzanar and Fighting for Honor (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin) are about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; Hell Fighters (E.P. Dutton) describes the experiences of African American soldiers in World War I; and Dust to Eat (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin) is about the Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s.

Michael is currently at work on two books. One is for young people about urban catastrophes, and the second is for adults on writing nonfiction. Michael grew up in southeastern Kentucky and, after being away for three decades in New York City and in Washington D.C., has recently returned to live in Lexington. For more information on the author visit: http://www.michaellcooper.com

Thursday, Nov. 20: LAURA WEDDELL

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of People Like Us: Stories

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on workshop with the author: WHERE I’M FROM: SENSE OF PLACE IN SHORT FICTION

Laura Weddle's stories have appeared in numerous regional and national literary magazines, one receiving the Appalachian Heritage Danny C. Plattner Award for Excellence in Fiction, an honor she shared with novelist Sharyn McCrumb. Two other stories have received nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Born and raised on tobacco farms in central Kentucky, she holds three Masters' degrees, in Education, English, and Communications from the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University. Her teaching career spans thirty-three years, and includes Campbellsville University and the University of Kentucky's Community Colleges at Somerset and Prestonsburg.

Thursday, Dec. 18: WILL LAVENDER

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Obedience

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on workshop with the author: SPINNING THE BEST WEB: HOW TO STRUCTURE AND DESIGN YOUR NOVEL

Will Lavender is a writing and literature professor. A Somerset native and graduate of Centre College, Lavender also holds an MFA in creative writing from Bard College. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and children and is currently working on a second novel.

Thursday, January 15: DAVID KING

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on writing workshop with the author: Dear Sir or Madam: Will You Read My Book?: How to Sell Your Nonfiction Idea in Today’s Literary Marketplace

DAVID KING’s first book, Finding Atlantis, was a Main Selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club, a Borders’ Original Voices Selection, and has been translated into several foreign languages. Before becoming a writer, King lived in Europe for six years and taught European history for several more at the University of Kentucky.

Thursday, February 19: MITCHELL DOUGLAS

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on writing workshop with the author: The Poetry Suite: Narrative Arch, Character, and Conflict in Verse

MITCHELL DOUGLAS Mitchell L. H. Douglas is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His poetry has appeared in Callaloo, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press), Crab Orchard Review, and Zoland Poetry Volume II (Zoland Books) among others. A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, Cave Canem fellow, and Poetry Editor for PLUCK!: the Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, is his debut collection. Before its publication by Red Hen Press, Cooling Board was a runner-up for the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, a semifinalist for the 2007 Blue Lynx Prize, and a semifinalist for the 2006 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Douglas currently resides in Indianapolis.

Thursday, March 19: LAURA BENEDICT

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on writing workshop with the author: Friends, Lovers, Enemies: Turning Everyone You Know into Fodder for Fiction

LAURA BENEDICT’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies. For the past decade she has worked as a freelance book reviewer for The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan and other newspapers. She lives in southern Illinois, with her husband, Pinckney Benedict, and their two children. She is also the author of Isabella Moon.

Thursday, April 16: LISA WILLIAMS

6:30 pm: Reading and signing of Woman Reading to the Sea

7:30-9:00 pm: Hands-on writing workshop with the author: Narrative Poems: The How and Why of Using Poetry for Stories

LISA WILLIAMS is the author of Woman Reading to the Sea (W.W. Norton 2008), which was selected by Joyce Carol Oates for the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and The Hammered Dulcimer (Utah State University Press, 1998), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award. Williams was awarded the Rome Prize in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004.

She received her M.F.A. in poetry writing from the University of Virginia, where she was awarded a Henry Hoynes fellowship in poetry, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She received a M.A. (with creative writing thesis) from the University of Cincinnati, where she was awarded an Elliston Poetry Fellowship and the Elliston Poetry Prize. Her poems have recently appeared in The Southwest Review, Poetry, Raritan, The Cincinnati Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to Present, and on Poetry Daily. Her essays on contemporary poetry have appeared in The Hollins Critic.

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Williams graduated from Belmont University. She is Associate Professor of English and a Centre Scholar.

Congratulations to our Next Great Writers!