SewaneeLetters.com

Mary Priestly wrote a children’s book! You can get your copy signed at the Spring Wildflower Festival and Native Plant Sale, April 8-10th. Congratulations Mary!

School of Letters student Robie Jackson is performing in a new play by Sewanee’s playwright-in-residence David Roby. “Mercy Me” stars our dear Robie, 2 senior theatre students, and 2 visiting actors. Robie calls the piece “a dark comedy, more dark than comic, about forgiveness.”

If you’re in Sewanee, don’t miss the performances on March 24, 25, & 26 in the Tennessee Williams Center. The last show falls on Tennessee Williams’ birthday. Tickets are free, show is at 7:30.

Congrats to Nick and Patrick and all the 4th of July parade floaters. We won 3rd place!

Mary Priestly’s weekly hikes are one of the highlights of the summer term. Pictured here is the group she led to find the local oddity known as “the H tree.”

Two June items that may be of interest to SOL folks:

Porch/Party Jam @ Pete’s 1431 Roark’s Cove Road, Sewanee, TN - Saturday June 19, 2010 is the next porch party / jam, the fourth of the oh-ten season. This time it will be some kind of kielbasa or other link sausage product & some potatoes. Start time is 5ish & if you need something other than sausage or potatoes, bring it. As always, if you are musical, bring it on. A bonfire is planned.

I also have a botanist friend who is planning a hike into the Walls of Jericho area on Sunday 6/27/10 - probably start about 9:30ish

–Peter Trenchi

We’ve lined up a lecture by Philip Weinstein from Swarthmore, a brilliant critic of modern fiction, for a talk about Faulkner. Weinstein is the author of two books on Faulkner, most recently Becoming Faulkner.

Later we’ll be hearing from David Hudgins, the screenwriter behind the (very well-written) television show Friday Night Lights, among others. David will be offering what he characterizes as a craft lecture.

On February 17 and 18 are the festivities surrounding the appearance of Donald Hall, 2009 recipient of the Sewanee Review’s Aiken-Taylor award for poetry. Hall, as you may know, is a major and senior figure in American poetry; now in his 80s, he published his first poems at 16, when he was Robert Frost’s student at Bread Loaf.  He’s won most of the major prizes for a poet (and a few unusual ones, like a Caldecott medal for Children’s literature) and was the Poet Laureate of the United States.

At 3:00 p.m. on the 17th, in the Alumni House, Poet Peter Makuck will lecture on the importance and meaning of Hall’s work. The next day, Feb 18 at 4:30 in Convocation Hall, Donald Hall will receive his award and read from his poetry.

Then on March 1, at 4:40, in Gailor Auditorium, Playwright David Roby, next year’s Tennessee Williams Fellow and Writer in Residence at Sewanee, will read from his works. Roby is a very promising younger playwright and an excellent reader of his own works; should be a good show.

April Alvarez forwarded this fantastic meditation on fiction writing by Robert Jackson Bennett. I particularly liked this confession:

I can say that the more I learn about stories, the less I know what they are. The narrative construct is one of our greatest and most mysterious tools, and I often doubt if we wield it as much as it wields us.

April has also promised to send in photos of John Grammer sledding. Stay tuned.

This just in from Melinda Haines:

Available January, 2010:  two story unfurnished house for rent, approx. 2,500 s/f, three bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths. Attached furnished guest quarters with bath and office. On secluded cul-de sac off Virginia Avenue, within walking distance to campus and elementary school. Open floor plan and fireplace, full kitchen with dining area, large decks and screened-in porch overlooking cleared woods and Running Knob Hollow Lake. Easy access to lake for boating, swimming, and fishing. $1500/mo.or make offer. Contact Daniel Thompson at 931-598-0889.