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 …
Scholar and politician Glen Browder’s new book,The South’s New Racial Politics: Inside the Race Game of Southern History, is garnering national attention for its insight into modern race relations in southern politics. In a recent article, The Associated Press discusses Browder’s life and work, lauding the book’s take on the current state of southern politics. “What makes this book worthwhile is the combination of the perspectives of the scholar and the politician. It’s a rare combination,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia …
The State Arts Council recently honored Kathryn Tucker Windham and seven other artists for their influence on the arts and culture of Alabama. In the elegant concert hall of the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre, Mrs. Windham accepted the “Alabama Living Legacy Award” for her long career in journalism, fiction writing, and storytelling. Mrs. Windham’s contributions give shape to the modern Southern identity, from her fight for acceptance as a female journalist to her active support of Selma in the 1950s to today, to her storytelling and preservation of Southern lore …
The Fort Valley, Georgia Leader-Tribune joins a number of news outlets still talking about reporter Rich Whitt’s controversial book Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia. News Editor Victor Kulkosky felt so incensed by the revelations in Behind the Hedges of the behind-the-scenes politicking at the University of Georgia that he devoted three of his “Out of My Mind” columns to the book. “Rich Whitt’s book Behind the Hedges … tells the story of UGA President Michael Adams, nearing his twelfth year on the job, but who on paper appears to be failing on a grand scale,” Kulkosky writes …
Walk into Annell Gordon’s middle school reading classroom, and this is what you will probably hear: “I want a book that’s fun!” or “What can I read now?” According to Ms. Gordon, students are constantly on the prowl for good reading material. Ted Dunagan’s novel A Yellow Watermelon, recently added as a listing by Renaissance Learning as an Accelerated Reader book, will fit the bill for any avid young booklovers, she says …
The Edwin L. and Elizabeth L. Skelton Foundation generously donated copies of author Roger Reid’s young adult novel Longleaf to twenty elementary and middle schools in Coffee County, Alabama. The Skelton Foundation is a nonprofit organization created to benefit charitable, religious, scientific, literary, or educational purposes …
Normally, I’d say it’s just wrong when a raunchy blues standard is covered by a group of white suburban teenagers whose greatest life deprivation has probably been on the order of running out of cell phone minutes … except that they sounded sooo good. The occasion was the annual Blues Extravaganza at Tuscaloosa’s Bama Theatre on Friday night, May 1, 2009. The evening marked the conclusion of the 11th annual Alabama Blues Project spring camp and featured the Blues Camp Kids and special guest star Bobby Rush …
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rich Whitt’s investigation of fundraising controversies at the University of Georgia, Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, continues to resonate both with national media and the UGA community nationwide. USA Today notes that Behind the Hedges “recasts” the UGA debate, long reported as a conflict between academics and athletics, as instead an examination of the misuse of UGA fundraising money. “The book,” USA Today writes, “includes details such as [UGA President Michael Adams] spending $138,000 of the school’s money on parties surrounding the 2008 Sugar Bowl between Hawaii and Georgia” …
Robert Baldwin continues his busy schedule of speaking engagements in connection with the recent publication of his memoir Life and Death Matters: Seeking the Truth About Capital Punishment. On April 22 the author will be a featured presenter at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Birmingham, AL, where he will speak on the topic, “What it Means to Say ‘Yes’ to Jesus.” Read more about this upcoming event in the April issue of The Canterburian …
Noted historian and scholar John Hope Franklin died Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at the age of 94. He was the author of the bestselling book From Slavery to Freedom and known for his work on the Brown v. Board of Education court case. Paul M. Gaston of the University of Virginia, author of The New South Creed and the forthcoming Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea (NewSouth, 2009) sent this remembrance …