SewaneeLetters.com

Photo/University of the South

This article on Sam Pickering’s return to Sewanee appeared today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and features a priceless quote from Jason Kelley and a photo of the back of my head. Both represent the program well, I think!

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.

Attention curious students: All courses and faculty for summer 2010 are now listed online. Time to start daydreaming about next summer on the Mountain.

And now back to your hectic holiday schedule…

Check out this from the Chicago Tribune, whose reviewers were invited to recommend only two “favorite books of 2009.”  Critic Julia Keller picks  “Girl Trouble” by our new faculty member Holly Goddard Jones. It’s just the most recent endorsement of a book that has gotten a lot of attention since appearing at the end of the summer.

If you haven’t noticed yet, the School of Letters website has been updated with some fresh photos and the 2010 courses and faculty. Have a look, but don’t freak out– John Grammer says “more will be added to both lists.” I see that some former profs are back, some awesome profs are not on the list, and the new folks and classes look intriguing. What do y’all think?

Check out the “Best Southern Books of All Time” feature in the current Oxford American magazine, for which both Michael Griffith and John Grammer were judges, and see if you agree.

And if you can get your hands on a copy of the magazine, John also recommends:

I think most of us will be able to recognize ourselves in Diane Roberts’ piece on writing and procrastination, entitled “Notwriting.” See also the poem “Itinerant” by our Sewanee neighbor Caki Wilkinson. A rich issue throughout, really.

Up close and personal with Wayne Newton? Not exactly. Check out this lovely new essay by Ellen Slezak, posted on AGNI online.

I found (Fiction professor) Michael Griffith in my mailbox today. His piece Beautiful, Desirable, and Dead: Is Eudora Welty Weirder Than You Think? is in the latest issue of the Oxford American. It’s not online, so you’ll have to go find a copy. Griffith’s punchy reading picks away Welty’s reputation as the “hydrangea-blue” Southern Lady of fiction to locate the acerbic punk of her early and less-anthologized stories.

…let it be this one by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Because it was hatched at Sewanee, somewhere between Sterling’s and Gailor. My nonfiction classmates will recognize the intro from our brainstorming session.  Sullivan makes the case for MJ as a writer above all– which made me relate to the King of Pop in weird new way. What artist has “never known a reality that wasn’t susceptible on some level to his creative powers”?