The Anti-Defamation League has chosen Michelle Edwards’s Chicken Man as one of their Recommended Books on Israel for kindergarten and elementary schools. The ADL describes their recommended Israel Book Connections titles as quality titles that present Israel while avoiding “stereotypes in presenting the complexities of the region” …
Author Frye Gaillard offers the following remembrance of Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller, who died this past week. “I was stunned by the news that Millard Fuller had died. Seldom have I met a man more vital, more energetic or committed to his work” …
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Whitt died Monday, January 26, at his home in Marietta, Georgia, of a heart attack; he was 64. Rich was the author of Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, forthcoming from NewSouth Books …
Renown civil right attorney Solomon S. Seay, Jr., speaks out about his new memoir Jim Crow and Me: Stories from My Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer on WBHM Birmingham radio’s Tapestry with Greg Bass, WTSU Troy radio’s Community Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson, and “Talk With Tonya” with Tonya Terry on WSFA Montgomery television …
Civil rights activist Bob Zellner spoke about his new memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement on December 16 with WKRF Louisiana’s Jim Engster. In the interview on The Jim Engster Show, Bob talks about his early forays into the civil rights movement while a student at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama and his work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bob also relates his experiences in Louisiana, including being jailed at the East Baton Rouge Parish prison for his desegregation work, the forming of his organization GROW in New Orleans, and his graduate study at Tulane University …
Author Gerald Duff‘s novel-in-progress No Man’s Land has been named a finalist for the Michigan Literary Fiction Award. Gerald is the author of the novel Coasters and the short story collection Fire Ants from NewSouth Books …
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation chose Dr. Regina M. Benjamin as one of twenty-five recipients of their $500,000 “genius awards.” Author Frye Gaillard wrote about Dr. Benjamin in his essay included in American Crisis, Southern Solutions, and he sent this statement regarding Dr. Benjamin’s award …
NAIA Basketball Coaches’ Hall of Fame inductee Bill Elder, author of All Guts and No Glory, remembers Coach Don Haskins, who died September 7, 2008, at 87: “My first thoughts when I learned of the passing of Coach Don Haskins, long-time basketball coach at the University of Texas at El Paso (known as Texas Western for many years), was that he was a true American hero. He was well known nationally for establishing a stellar coaching record of 719 wins and 354 losses, winning a NCAA National Championship, and being inducted into the NCAA Basketball Coaches’ Hall of Fame” …
C. S. Fuqua, author of Music Fell on Alabama, offered this remembrance of record producer Jerry Wexler: “Jerry Wexler is known to many around the Shoals as the ‘Godfather of Muscle Shoals Music.’ Wexler died on August 15, 2008, at age 91 of complications related to congestive heart failure. Had it not been for Wexler, Muscle Shoals may never have become known as the ‘Hit Capital of the World'” …
NewSouth editor-in-chief Randall Williams speaks with host Lori Cummings on Alabama Public Television’s Face to Face show on Sunday, August 24. The show will air at 2 pm and 11 pm …