BitLit

Chestertown Book Festival (Nov. 13th & 14th) brings Collier, Corrigan to Eastern Shore; Brings local authors together to share in the literary experience

Well, it's nearly upon us.  

     43 authors and 15 Chestertown venues will be participating in the 38 events that will make up the first-ever Chestertown Book Festival this weekend, November 13th and 14th, 2009.  And I sure do hope you'll come experience a part of it.  There's literally something for everyone at this year's ChesBookFest: highlights include the lit of love and war to mysterious historical muckraking, paranormal regency romance and giant gingerbread houses, the art and craft of memoir, letterpress demos and cocktails.  

     If you haven't seen the schedule of events yet, please head to http://chestertownbookfestival.org post-haste!  There's still space at all author brunches/lunches - call Kate at 410-778-7899 to reserve your spot - and Barry Louis Polisar's 7pm Prince Theatre event is FREE, family-friendly, and is not to be missed.  

     Still not convinced?  The inaugural year of ChesBookFest seeks to celebrate literary life on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  Participating authors include former Maryland Poet Laureate Michael Collier (who'll be reading Friday night at 7pm at Bookplate), NPR Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan (who discusses why her favorite books are her favorites at 1:30pm on Saturday at Bookplate), and author/illustrator Marc Castelli (who'll show off his works at 11:30am on Saturday at Chestertown Old Book Co.).  The wide variety of events include author lunches, readings, signings, panel and roundtable discussions, and a musical finale by Barry Louis Polisar, whose 1977 song “All I Want is You” was chosen for the Grammy Award-winning Juno soundtrack.

     Events kick off on Friday, November 13^th at 7 p.m. with a reading by Michael Collier, 2001 Maryland Poet Laureate, director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and author of Dark Wild Realm (2007) at Bookplate, 112 S. Cross St., Chestertown, MD 21620. 

     Festivities continue on Saturday,  November 14^th, starting at 9 a.m., with events with Terwana Brown, Robert Earl Price, Robert Ortiz, Meg Founds, Terence T. Finn, Eric Mills, Maureen Corrigan, Marcy Dunn Ramsey, Cynthia Bowers Fulton, Peter J. Heck, Alix Rickloff, Bill Thompson and Jenna Moore; panel discussions by Maureen Stack Sappey, Carol Larese Millward, James Dissette, Dawn L.C. Miller, Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson of Idiots’Books, Emily Kalwaitis and Lindsay Lusby of Thread Lock Press, Gail Johnston, Edith Noordewier Foley, Michael Collier, Elizabeth Arnold, Robert Garson, Robert Earl Price, Sue Ellen Thompson, and Mary Wood; author lunches with Erasmus H. Kloman, John Elsberg of Bogg: A Journal of Contemporary Writing, Art Bounds of Pegasus, Jehanne Dubrow, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Nancy Taylor Robson and representatives from Delmarva Review; exhibitions by Ian and John Murray, Master Printer T. Michael Kaylor, Shirley Hampton Hunt, Marc Castelli, Heather R. Davidson; and the semi-annual Kent County Public Library Friends of the Library Used Book Sale.

The Rose O'Neill Literary House has worked its butt off on this one.  And we couldn't have done it without Artworks, Bookplate, Chester River Press, Chestertown Old Book Co., the Compleat Bookseller, and the Kent County Public Library.  Special thanks goes out to our the Friends of the Kent County Public Library, the Friends of the Clifton M. Miller Library, and the Kent County Arts Council.   

Visit our blog for the latest news: http://chesbookfest.blogspot.com/

DONATE TO THE BOOK CAUSE!   

The Chestertown Book Festival Fund is a component fund of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation, a public foundation designated as a 501(c)(3) charity.  Gifts to the Fund are fully tax-deductible as allowable by law.  A copy of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation’s financial statement is available at www.mscf.org or by calling 410-820-8175.  Information about Mid-Shore submitted under the Maryland Charitable Solicitations Act can be obtained from the Office of the Secretary of State, State House, Annapolis, MD  21401.

Questions?  Write Lindsay at chesbookfest@gmail.com or call Kate at 410-778-7899.  We're at your literary service.  

KAB

Dr. Dubrow takes home the "Bright Lights Big Verse" Times Square prize

Congratulations are owed to Washington College Assistant Professor of English Jehanne Dubrow, a winner in this year's "Bright Lights Big Verse: Poems of Times Square" contest.

Dr. Dubrow has been announced as one of four winners in the national contest run by the Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Poetry Alliance.

The contest seeks poetry celebrating Times Square. Dr. Dubrow's prizewinning poem is "VJ Day in Times Square."

The winners are presenting their poems in a public Times Square, NYC reading right now!

Meanwhile, here's a link to the "Bright Lights Big Verse" website:

http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/brightpoetry.html

Congratulations, Dr. Dubrow!  Your Wednesday afternoon poetry workshop students thank you for canceling class to go to NYC to read!

KAB

Chestertown Book Festival - November 13th & 14th

Chestertown's got a new festival on the horizon - a literary one! 

My involvement on the ChesBookFest committee is purely personal, not Lit House-related, but I can't help hoping that the Lit House Community will get excited for a such an outstanding two days of authors and books.

This will be the first-ever book festival on the Eastern Shore.  We've been gathering authors, poets, critics and book artists from the surrounding area and a few from across the Bay for a day-long festival of readings, signings, panel discussions, author lunches, and more on Saturday November 14th.

It kicks off on Friday, November 13th with the Friends of the Library Used Booksale at Kent County Public Library from 10am-6pm and that evening at the Bookplate on Cross St. with NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan and former Maryland Poet Laureat Michale Collier at 7pm.

Our list of participating writers, artists, and performers include:

Alix Rickloff
Barry Louis Polisar
Carol Larese Millward
Dawn L.C. Miller
Edith Noordewier Foley
Elizabeth Arnold
Erasmus H. Kloman
Eric Mills
Gail Johnston
James Dissette
Jehanne Dubrow
Marc Castelli
Marcy Dunn Ramsey
Mary Wood
Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Stack Sappey
Meredith Davies Hadaway
Michael Collier
Michael Dixon
Nancy Taylor Robson
Peter J. Heck
Robbi Behr & Matthew Swanson
Robert Earl Price
Robert Garson
Robert Ortiz
Ryan Grim
Sue Ellen Thompson
T. Michael Kaylor, Master Printer, and
Terence T. Finn

For more information as it becomes available visit our blog:http://www.chesbookfest.blogspot.com and our website:http://www.chestertownbookfestival.org

KAB

Mark Nowak reads today, 4:30pm, at the Lit House

Dear Friends,

I hope you will consider joining us to celebrate the arrival of Mark Nowak, new director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House and associate professor of English, with a reading by Mark, followed by a reception and book sale, today, Tuesday, September 15th, at 4:30pm at the Rose O'Neill Literary House.

Mark is a documentary poet, social critic, and labor activist whose writings include Shut Up Shut Down (afterward by Amiri Baraka), a New York Times "Editor's Choice," and the recently published book on coal mining diasters in the US and China, Coal Mountain Elementary(2009), that Howard Zinn has called "a stunning educational tool."

Mark's unique work in bringing innovative aesthetics and working class communities into dialogue has resulted in a dynamic array of projects and publications.  His poetry, similarly, has engaged central issues of work, family, and community.  His verse play on Reagan's firing of striking PATCO air traffic controllers, "Capitalization," has been staged at both major theaters (Stage Left in Chicago, the Cleveland Public Theatre) and at rallies for striking Northwest Airlines mechanics.  He is one of a dozen poets to have been included in the seminal anthology America Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press).  His ethnographic essay on gothic-industrial music in rust belt America was recnelty published in Goth: Undead Subculture (Duke University Press).

This event is sponsored by The Rose O'Neill Literary House and the Department of English.  Please join us post-reading for drinks and hors d'oeuvres at the Lit House.  If you haven't gotten a chance to come greet Mark yet, I hope you will stop by!

Best,

Kate Bursick

Assistant Director

The Rose O'Neill Literary House

A hoax? No. A tactic? Probably. A horror? Definitely!

The news out of Philadelphia this week isn't good.  It's downright scary.  

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries are set to close, effective close of business of October 2nd of this year.  

NO WAY, right?  Way.  

According to freelibrary.org, they "deeply regret to inform" us that "without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood branch libraries, regional libraries, or the Parkway Central Library after October 2nd, 2009."

PA is working on a budget, but Governor Rendell is threatening to veto it.  

What hurts most is that it's not just book borrowing that will be over.  All programs for children and teens, all after school programs, all computer classes, all visits to schools and day care centers, senior and community centers, all GED and ESL classes - would be cancelled.

From Cory Doctrow on Boing Boing: "Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least amoung us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly.  Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library.  Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries.  Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings."

Your final Philadelphia library books are due October 1st.

It's a great way to force the State Legislature's hand, but libraries are usually not bargaining chips so this comes across as real hit.  

Doctrow says it best: "Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollers to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community."

KAB

Holiday Road

Well my pretties, I'm finally taking a real, live, honest-to-god vacation - the first I've taken in over two and a half years.  People keep reminding me to not touch my email or my smart phone or to mentally go to work during my week off, but they have no idea that I already have 7 emails and one conference call with NYC on my plate.  

Anyway, that's not stopping me from packing some shoulda-read-it-long-ago novels with me to read while I put my feet up.  So far I'm trying to squeeze these into my suitcase:

The first two Twilight Saga books, Twilight and New Moon, by Stephenie Myer

Vampires, Burial, and Death, by Paul Barber

Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat

Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein

Shampoo Planet, by Douglas Coupland

The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, by Miss Austen & Friend

Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America

Frank Herbert's Dune

and The Zombie Survival Guide, by none other than Max Brooks

I promised myself I wouldn't take anything necessary for class or work.  The problem with this list is that it's all stuff I basically don't need to read.  I've already read Dune.  Three times.  The two Twilight books, despite their noticeable girth, are sadly not filled with much and will only take about a day to read (both together).  I've already read Pride & Prejudice, and I'm not entirely convinced that Zombies will add much to it, and I'm already a walking Zombie Survival Guide.  

Perhaps I need to rethink my packing?

What do YOU, dear reader, think I should take with me?

KAB

Amazon's 1984 snafu is what we'll call "awkward"

Word came this week that Amazon.com had very quickly and quietly, via their "WhisperNet" technology (which, incidentally, brings to mind Terminator's SkyNet), deleted George Orwell's classics 1984 and Animal Farm from both the Kindle marketplace and from every Kindle that had ever purchased them, refunding the money to the Kindle's owners.

The irony, of course, is that 1984 is about a fascist media state and their constant alteration of history by changing digital records of what has occurred. 

The hard part here is that Amazon's mass e-book removal was necessary due to copyright infringement.  Whoever had first uploaded those books to Amazon's Kindle store and started selling them didn't actually own the rights to them.  When Orwell's estate found out, down they had to come. 

Amazon certainly could have handled it a bit better, I think.  io9 points out that what they did flies in the face of what you expect to happen when you purchase a book (i.e. that it's a physically thing that cannot be forcibly taken from you).  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the fall yesterday, and Amazon.com claims that they will not revoke books from customers "in this circumstance" again. 

I don't know.  This spells trouble for e-book readers if you ask me.  No e-book or piece of e-information will ever be yours unless you can get it onto a device that is not connected to the internet.  1984 came and went a long time ago, after all.

KAB

Time to outsource the Lit House

This morning I arrived at the office to 47 new emails and 6 new voicemails.  Admittedly, 15 of the emails were junk, but, alas, only one of the voicemails could be deleted without reply.  The problem, though, is that this is on top of yesterday's 35 new emails and 7 new voicemails.  Every phone and email in the Lit House is forwarded at me right now.  I'm starting to get bogged down in a hazy swamp of communication.  I probably owe you an email.  Or a phone call.  Or a jaunty walk down to your office to say hello to you.  Or I'm supposed to do lunch with you.  RIGHT NOW.  I'm running about two days behind on everything and I'm starting to have dreams about angry office supplies chasing me again.  

I'm reminded that writer A.J. Jacobs experimented in 2005 by outsourcing his life to an executive assistant service in Bangalore.  He was assigned a young woman named Honey.  Here's just a snippet of how it went:  

Honey has completed her first project for me: research on the person Esquire has chosen as the Sexiest Woman Alive. (See page 232.) I've been assigned to write a profile of this woman, and I really don't want to have to slog through all the heavy-breathing fan Web sites about her. When I open Honey's file, I have this reaction: America is fucked. There are charts. There are section headers. There is a well-organized breakdown of her pets, measurements, and favorite foods (e.g., swordfish). If all Bangalorians are like Honey, I pity Americans about to graduate college. They're up against a hungry, polite, Excel-proficient Indian army. Put it this way: Honey ends her e-mails with "Right time for right action, starts now!" Your average American assistant believes the "right time for right action" starts after a Starbucks venti latte and a discussion of last night's Amazing Race 8.
Read more:http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214#ixzz0M6YmdoSe

I'm pleased to report that Owen and I have never once discussed Amazing Race.  

To be honest, A.J. has a much more interesting life than I do.  He's the Editor At Large for Esquire, which probably means he doesn't need to go into the office very often but gets a corporate card anyway.  He's posed nude for Mary Louise Parker because she was posing nude for Esquire.  He's read all 32 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, lived strictly following the rules of the Bible for one year, and, I'm told, is about to tell the world what it was like to live by our very own George Washington's Rules of Civility.  

I'm jealous of the students in Josh's class last year, who got to videochat with A.J. in class, and of Nick, who got to talk to him as he set up the chat.  I'm also jealous of A.J.  But I'm guessing he's got just as many emails and I do today....

KAB

Good Luck, Josh!

7/1/09

Hi everyone,

Yesterday was my last day as director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House,

and I wanted to write to thank the community for three good, creative

years. Together, we helped advance one of the great literary programs,

enjoying intimate encounters with top authors, appreciating the prodigious

talent in our midst, and developing both the physical infrastructure of

the Literary House and that indispensable *feeling* of solidarity and play

and mutual curiosity that strengthens us all in our lone, and sometimes

lonely, pursuits.

(Remember when Neil Gaiman was here? Um … that was awesome right?)

I’m still unpacking boxes in my home & office in Brooklyn and marveling at

the fact that my seven foot writing desk made it through these narrow

corridors. Those of you who got to know my fiancée, Lea, will appreciate

how grateful I am to share a home with her (even with about 1/62nd of the

space of Shenk Acres in Chestertown). And those of you who know something

of my love for the Literary House will grasp how much I miss the place

already. Give Edith a rub for me next time you see her (if she lets you).

And please stay connected with Kate, Owen, Mike, and, coming soon I hope,

a new director who will help steer the Literary House to good, new

directions.

I’m now back to writing for my living. I hope, too, to teach as the

opportunity arises and to curate literary events and creative spaces. I’d

be glad if you stayed in touch. I have an email list, which I’ll use

occasionally to let folks know what I’m up to. You can join here:

http://eight.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/the_list

I’m also on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/joshuawolfshenk

and Twitter, where I am tweeting sporadically, but will do so more when

I’m settled on my next big project.

http://twitter.com/joshuawolfshenk

Many of you have asked about Stories at the Moth, the non-profit that Lea

directs in New York. You can learn more about the Moth at

http://www.themoth.org, and subscribe to its free Podcast.

Okay, now it’s back to work. Among my many motivations for getting the

next book done is the hope that it will be good enough to draw an offer to

read to you, and experience again personally the community that I will

admire and cheer on from afar.

All best,

Josh

The Professor behind "The Tolkien Professor" is one of our own!

We all love his lectures on Medieval Literature and Chaucer, but most of us spend our free academic time praying that Assistant Professor of English Corey Olsen will teach another course on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.  When he does, I've heard that he has so many students enrolled (and so many auditing) that he has to teach in one of the lecture halls - something unheard of here at Washington College, with our faculty-to-student classroom ratio of something absurd, like 1:8.  

Luckily, for those of us that can't be there in his seldom-taught Tolkien classes, Professor Olsen has taken to the web, with his website The Tolkien Professor and his lecture-style podcasts, available for free on iTunes under "The Tolkien Professor."  "In my lectures," writes Professor Olsen, "I am working through The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in detail, doing close readings of the stories (and the songs) in order to explore the fascinating details of Tolkien's world while also tracking some of the large, important themes in Tolkien's fiction."  Right now, he's in the middle of his eight-part series on The Hobbit.  

And, unsurprisingly to those of us who are familiar with Olsen's style of lecturing and his great love of what he teaches, he's #66 on the list of top podcasts on iTunes, and he's at an unbelievable #37 on the list of audio-only podcasts!  He's beating the pants of Dan Savage's Savage Love, NPR, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, Ricky Garvis, and even the Harry Potter PotterCast!

Go, Professor Olsen, Go!

KAB