SewaneeLetters.com

I’m thrilled to share Nick Nichols’ review published in the American Songwriter. Those of you in the Creative Nonfiction workshop in 2008 might remember some of his early music writing. We’ll be able to say we knew him when… Congrats Nick!

Attention English teachers! Meg alerted me to the following opportunity for young writers of Creative Nonfiction:

NCTE/Norman Mailer Writing Award

The Norman Mailer Writers Colony and the National Council of Teachers of English will jointly sponsor the 2010 Norman Mailer High School and College Writing Awards.

Writing Category:  Creative Nonfiction
Norman Mailer produced extraordinary works in many genres, including the category of this year’s award: creative nonfiction. Students may submit work in any of the many subgenres of creative nonfiction: memoir or autobiography, essay, literary journalism, profiles of people or places, and so on. Whatever its type, the best work will be true material presented with compelling literary merit.

Winners
One winner in each category will receive a cash award and will be an honored guest at the Colony’s National Award Ceremony in New York City on October 19, 2010. Winners will be notified by mid-September.

You can learn more about the competition here. If for those of us who are neither teachers or high school/college writers, check out the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA.

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

…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”?

So there’s a good reason for the cosmic musical pairing going down this week in Bryant Park, NYC: to commemorate the publication of this anthology! Peter Terzian’s collection Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers On The Albums That Changed Their Lives features essays by both John Jeremiah Sullivan and James Wood.

John Grammer just sent a link to (nonfiction professor) John Jeremiah Sullivan’s latest piece in GQ…

which achieves what I’d have thought impossible: a thoughtful, funny, sympathetic, even poignant profile of Levi Johnston, the rejected unwed hockey-playing bear-hunting father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild.

Congratulations to Jill Carpenter! One of her essays was selected by the Union of Concerned Scientists to appear in the forthcoming Penguin anthology, Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. Can’t wait to read the published piece, Jill. How inspiring!

Jason Kelley sent me a link to (non-fiction professor) John Jeremiah Sullivan’s latest book review in the November 08 Harper’s (subscription required). While searching for a free version of the piece, I found more on Sullivan’s interest in the blues (sort of an interview about a review of the texts which are themselves grappling with the music). All of which makes the blues seem even more intriguing… I mean, you could never get this much mileage out of, say, the new Guns n Roses. Though I would welcome the attempt.

Current home: East Point, GA
Age: 30
Program: MFA
Year in the program: Just finished my 2nd summer
Blog/website: strongsilent.com

Fill us in on your background. Schools attended, work situation, etc.
Graduated from Agnes Scott with a BA in English Lit/Creative Writing, spent a few years working in publishing in NYC, started experimenting with interactive media and printmaking, married, moved back to ATL, landed a job with an ad agency, established my garage printshop

What led you to the School of Letters program?
I’ve been kind of dreaming about an MFA since the last days of undergrad. An ad for the School of Letters in the Oxford American made me curious. My mom lives in Sewanee, so it was like puzzle pieces coming together.

What writing/academic projects are you working on currently?
I’m really getting into the history and landscape of the southside of Atlanta. I’m trying to archive vanishing bits of southernness around here. Also, I print all kinds of stuff in my garage and then write about artmaking.

Favorite class so far at Sewanee:
Creative Non-fiction with John Jeremiah Sullivan

What would be your fantasy class or workshop at Sewanee, and who would teach?
Screenwriting with Miranda July

What advice would you give to any prospective students?
Catch up on sleep when the program is over. And then look for ways to integrate the utopian Sewanee experience into your “other” life.

What are you reading these days?
Design blogs mostly. Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. (because Prep was so juicy.)