Foster Dickson, author of I Just Make People Up: Ramblings with Clark Walker and former NewSouth Books editor, has been awarded a $4,200 Fellowship by the Surdna Arts Teacher Fellowship Program. A complementary $1,500 grant will go to Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Alabama, where Mr. Dickson has taught creating writing for six years.
Mr. Dickson plans to use the money to explore podcasts and letterpress printing as alternative (non-book) media for the distribution of writing. He will conduct an interview series about living in Alabama now in an effort to further his understanding of Alabama as a “place.”
“I am proud to have this opportunity that the Surdna Foundation has afforded me with this fellowship. As our culture changes, our reading habits change. Learning about media other than books is going to help me better prepare my students to be the creative writers of the future,” Dickson said. “To be learnng about these media by using Alabama as the subject is just a bonus to me.”
Mr. Dickson’s skill at interviewing can be enjoyed in I Just Make People Up: Ramblings with Clark Walker, a biography and retrospective of artist Clark Walker’s work that developed from a series of conversations the two men had when they were neighbors. First Draft magazine says, “Foster Dickson’s narrative biography of Clark Walker is a triumph of the as-told-to style of writing.”
I Just Make People Up is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.