What should Indy read, and why? Who's coming to town, and which Central Indiana writers have new books coming out soon? Who should you skim, who should you read ... and who should you read for yourself? Learn more about how these writers fit in with the community's broader local and global picture at www.provocate.org.
"Few spoken word artist can speak of Revolution and do it with style. Gabriela is one of them. Born to Cuban parents, she has seen the world through eyes most haven’t. As an international spoken word artist and award-winning poet, her poetry has taken her to places such as South Africa, Cuba, Brazil, Switzerland and all over the United States. Her poetry ranges from topics as serious as the social injustices we all face to talking about her lingerie. Most recent are her national commercials for Dove and Toyota, which features her poetry and performance."
When: Tuesday December 7, 6:06 p.m.
Where: IUPUI Campus Center Atrium 420 University Blvd. Indianapolis, IN 46202
Butler University's Visiting Writers Series the largest and most comprehensive in Indy, with an average of 16 public readings and Q & A sessions every year. Featured are some of the most influential people in contemporary literature: Toni Morrison, Billy Collins, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Gwendolyn Books, Nick Hornby, David Sedaris, Allen Ginsberg and Amy Tan.
Spring 2011 lives up to the standards set by the Delbrook series. Still to be determined is the March date and location for Alicia Erian (could the University be putting its March plans on hold until it has a sense of how far the Bulldogs might go in the NCAA basketball tournament?). Erian is an Egyptian-American novelist whose critically acclaimed book Towelhead — a coming of age story about a thirteen-year-old girl named Jasira who is sent from her Euro-American mother's home in Syracuse to live with her Lebanese father in Houston — was made into a successful film.
Other writers coming to town this spring as part of the Delbrook series:
February 8: MacArthur genius winning essayist George Saunders
February 23: Mark Halliday reads his “ultra-talk poems”
Acclaimed fiction writer Aleksandar Hemon will come to the campus of DePauw University for a reading on Wednesday, February 24. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Thompson Recital Hall, which is located within DePauw's Green Center for the Performing Arts. Presented by the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series, the program is presented free of charge and is open to all.
Hemon's novel The Lazarus Project, published in 2008, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named as a New York Times "Notable Book" and New York magazine's #1 book of the year. The latter called the work, "An ingenious mirror-narrative about two lives separated by 100 years ... Subtly, the two stories begin to merge, creating a resonance that vibrates simultaneously on many levels-comic, poetic, crude, tender, playful, profound, musical, angry."
The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Hemon has also authored Love and Obsctacles: Stories (2009); Nowhere Man (2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Question of Bruno: Stories (2000).
Born in Sarajevo, Hemon came to the United States in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months. While he was traveling, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. He wrote his first story in English in 1995. He now lives in Chicago.
The University of Indianapolis continues its annual Kellogg Writers Series with three reading and discussion events in February and March.
Organized by the university’s English department, the series will feature young-adult novelist John Green on Feb. 8 in Good Hall, fiction writer Doug Crandell on Feb. 10 in Good Hall, and fiction and memoir writer Cathy Day on March 22 in Schwitzer Student Center’s UIndy Hall C. Each appearance begins at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free.
Green’s first novel, 2005’s Looking for Alaska, won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and has been translated into 13 languages. Paramount acquired the movie rights, and Josh Schwartz (creator of Fox’s The O.C.) is writing the screenplay. Green’s second novel, An Abundance of Katherines (2006), was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His latest novel, Paper Town (2008), was on the New York Times bestseller list for children's books and in 2009 won the Edgar Award for best young adult novel.
Crandell has authored five books including The Flawless Skin of Ugly People, which has been optioned for film by Big Talk Productions. His short stories and essays have been anthologized in Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood; Stories From the Blue Moon Café: An Anthology of Southern Writers; and When I Was a Loser: True Stories of Barely Surviving High School. His new novel, The Peculiar Boars of Malloy will be published this spring. Day’s most recent work is Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love (Free Press, 2008), part memoir about life as a single woman and part sports story about the Indianapolis Colts Super Bowl season. Her first book, The Circus in Winter (Harcourt, 2004), a fictional history of her hometown of Peru, Ind., was a finalist for several awards, a Barnes & Noble “Discover” selection, an “Original Voices” pick at Borders and a Best Book of 2004 on Amazon.com. Day’s fiction and nonfiction have been broadcast on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and “Studio 360” and have appeared in many publications.
For more information about the Kellogg Writers Series, endowed by Allen and Helen Kellogg, contact Associate Professor Elizabeth Weber at eweber@uindy.edu or (317) 788-3373. Maps and directions are available at www.uindy.edu/maps.
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat is an artful coming of age story told through the lens of an young girl, Sophie, as she immigrates to the United States from the Haitian countryside. Sophie has to leave her beloved Tante Atie, who has raised her since she was a baby, to go be her mother in New York whom she barely remembers. She soon finds out that the brutal sugar cane fields which her mother, Tante and grandparents worked in left more permanent scars than she realized. Danticat uses her compelling, succinct narrative to chronicle three generations of women's struggle to escape the psychological marks left on them by sexual violence and the brutality of the sugar cane fields. Sophie finds that she too is caught in the same loop as her mother when she runs off with a neighbor, endures sex to please him and becomes pregnant. Sophie's voice has all the directness and disconnect of a young woman trying to find herself among all the trauma around her. This perfunctory tone allows topics like rape and death to come to the forefront of the narrative and then fade quickly away. Breath, Eyes, Memory has a much appreciated psychological depth that Danticat imparts with such winsome writing that it is possible to savor it and be deeply moved by it without being overwhelmed by the injustices suffered by these women. Danticat has received numerous awards for her books such as the International Faialno Prize and the MacArthur Genius Grant. She also has also been active in promoting human rights in Haiti trying to combat the corruption and dire poverty that her books so poignantly portray.
January 9 -- A group of some of Indiana’s finest musicians, along with the Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, will pay tribute to BOB DYLAN
January 13 -- Indianapolis Poetry Slam, featuring Denver's Paulie Lipman. From Lipman's Myspace page:
Paulie Lipman has been at this spoken word thing for about 6 years. He has been a part of 6 Denver National Slam Teams (including 2004's 2nd place team and 2006's National Champions) He has extensively toured the U.S.(and a little Canada) including many schools (Grade-College) and youth correctional facilities. He was recently published in the National Poetry Slam collection "High Desert Voices". He also appears as the voice of Neal Cassady in the upcoming documentary “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years”. Pick up Paulie Lipman's new album, Inobservant at http://www.twistandshout.com/.
January 13 -- Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat comes to Butler. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti, came to the US at the age of 12, and just won a MacArthur "Genius Grant." Peak inside her brain here
"Edwidge Danticat" is not a name from TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
February 11 -- Pulitzer Prize winning writer Junot Díaz speaks at Butler. Says his website:
Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), in Pushcart Prize XXII and in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009. He has received a Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 Pen/Malamud Award, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948) and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
February 22 -- Poet Lucille Clifton comes to Butler. This comes from poets.org:
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good Times, was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times in 1969. Clifton remained employed in state and federal government positions until 1971, when she became a writer in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed two collections: Good News About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary Woman (1974). She has gone on to write several other collections of poetry, including Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions, 2000), which won the National Book Award; The Terrible Stories (1995), which was nominated for the National Book Award; The Book of Light (1993); Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (1991); Next: New Poems (1987) Her collection Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Two-Headed Woman (1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee, was the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. She has also written Generations: A Memoir (1976) and more than sixteen books for children, written expressly for an African-American audience. Her honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award, and the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize.In 1999, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She has served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
February 25 -- Poet Patricia Smith at IUPUI. A four-time individual champion on the National Poetry Slam, Patricia Smith has also been a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. She has written and performed two one-woman plays, one of which was produced by Derek Walcott’s Trinidad Theater Workshop. She is a Cave Canem faculty member and has served as the Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University.
March 23 -- Free verse poet Lawrence Raab comes to Butler.
"Miles Davis On Art"
-- by Lawrence Raab
"The only way to make art," Miles Davis
said, "is to forget what is unimportant."
That sounds right, although the opposite
also feels like the truth. Forget
what looks important, hope it shows up.
later to surprise you. I understand
he meant you've got to clear
your mind, get rid of everything
that doesn't matter. But how can you tell?
Maybe the barking of a dog at night.
is exactly what you need
to think about. "Just play within
the range of the idea,"
Charlie Parker said. The poem
that knows too quickly what's important
will disappoint us. And sometimes
when you talk about art
you mean it, sometimes you're just
fooling around. but once he had the melody
in place, he could never leave it behind
and go where he wanted, trusting
the beautiful would come to him, as it may
to a man who's worked hard enough
to be ready for it. And he was,
more often than not. That was what he knew.
Nin Andrews grew up on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her BA in 1980 from Hamilton College and her MFA in 1995 from Vermont College. Andrews is the author of Spontaneous Breasts, winner of the Pearl Chapbook Contest; Any Kind of Excuse, winner of the Kent State University chapbook contest; The Book of Orgasms, and Why They Grow Wings, winner of the Gerald Cable Award. Her book, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane was published in 2005 by Web del Sol. Nin Andrews’ poems and stories have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, 2003), The KGB Bar Book of Poems. She received individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council in 1997 and 2003.
April 13 -- Former US Laureate Poet Mark Strand comes to Butler. Strand is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago and a former poet laureate of the United States. His book of poems, Blizzard of One, won the Pulitzer Prize. His other books of poetry include Dark Harbor, The Continuous Life, Selected Poems, The Story of Our Lives, and Reasons for Moving.
April 19 -- Novelist Mona Simpson comes to Butler. What a strange and complicated set of family real and fictional family ties! Says Wikipedia:
Mona E. Simpson (born Mona Jandali, June 14, 1957 in Green Bay, Wisconsin) is a novelist and essayist. She was born to an American mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, and a Syrian father, political science professor Abdulfattah Jandali[1]. She is the younger sister of Steve Jobs, co-founder and current CEO of Apple. Because Jobs was placed for adoption as a baby by their then-unmarried parents, she first met her sibling as an adult. She later took her stepfather's surname, Simpson. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Jackson Burgess, Seamus Heaney, Leonard Michaels and Thom Gunn. After receiving a B.A. in English from Berkeley in 1979, she enrolled at Columbia University, where she earned an M.F.A. She worked for Paris Review during this period. At Columbia she began her first published novel, Anywhere but Here, the story of a turbulent mother-daughter relationship.
The book became a bestseller when published by Knopf in 1987, and was subsequently adapted into a film in 1999. Anywhere But Here was followed by The Lost Father and A Regular Guy. She has since published the novel Off Keck Road, which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award. Excerpts from her new novel My Hollywood have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, and on This American Life. Simpson is also a contributor to various anthologies and essay collections. She is the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College. She currently lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband Richard Appel and their two children. Appel, a writer for The Simpsons, used his wife's name for Homer Simpson's mother, beginning with the episode "Mother Simpson."
April 21 -- Edward Hirsch, poet, at IUPUI. In addition to being an accomplished and well-honored poet, Hirsch is the author of the best-selling How to Read a Poem.
May 13 -- Mitchell L. H. Douglas honors the music and spirit of late soul legend Donny Hathaway in his debut collection “Cooling Board: a Long-Playing Poem”.
Provocate favorite Fran Quigley, a poverty and human rights lawyer in Indiana with a gift for journalism, wanted to report on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. When he heard about the start of a partnership between Indiana University Medical School and Moi University Teaching hospital, he immediately got a journalist grant to go to Kenya and begin reporting. From that happenstance, he witnessed the evolution of what appears to be the most transformative AIDS/HIV care programs in Africa. His book Walking Together, Walking Far: How a U.S. and African Medical School Partnership is Winning the Fight Against HIV/AIDS relates that story. Provocatrix Louise Klann met with Fran to talk about his book and to find out what AMPATH has been doing since the publication of his book.
It started with a few Hoosier doctors in the IU Medical School who wanted to partner their school with a medical school abroad. They created AMPATH (Academic Model for Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS), with Moi University Medical School in Kenya . This partnership changed the face of AIDS care in Africa. All other AIDS programs in Africa left every AIDS patient to die untreated in their hospital while focusing their efforts on prevention education. The only treatment for an HIV/AIDS patient is antiretroviral drugs. Antiretroviral medication does more than save the lives of AIDS patients; it is called the miracle drug because the restoration is so rapid and complete. Most international aide programs and the medical community believed that administering antiretrovirals to Africans did more harm than good. The staggering large numbers of AIDS patients and the high cost of the drug per patient meant that scarce resources would be spent on providing "miracles" for a few patients rather than attempting to prevent the spread of AIDS through education campaigns. Moreover, the AIDS virus's proclivity to develop resistant strains when patients do not adhere to a strict pill regimen meant that providing less than complete care to a few patients could make it more difficult to provide treatment for everyone.
AMPATH challenged the entrenched AIDS care approach of the medical community. AMPATH's doctors began administering the antiretroviral medication which in a few weeks transforms the dying patient back into an active healthy member of society. Unsatisfied with simply treating the disease, the AMPATH's program leaders realized that their patients needed much more to become completely well. Many were starving, had no work, and because of the stigma attached to AIDS had been rejected by their families. The doctors felt that in order to treat their patients, they had to address these issues. As program leader Joe Mamlin said "We are in the business of reconstituting lives, not just immune systems" (Quigley, 109). In response AMPATH created farms to feed their patients, counseling to help with their trauma, homes for the orphans and work in lucrative passion fruit farms so they could regain their place in society. In AMPATH's latest development, Kenyan and US lawyers advocate for patient's rights (more on this later). In short, AMPATH re-knits the Kenyan society that AIDS and an unstable government so effectively tear apart.
The ethnic violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan election tested the resilience of AMPATH's care structure. Kenyan parties, representing different ethnic groups hired thug militias to intimidate opposition. When it became obvious that the election was rigged and the incumbent president claimed victory, mass violence broke out over all of Kenya. AMPATH's accomplishments could easily have been destroyed by the ensuing chaos and brutality, but instead AMPATH demonstrated its strength within the Kenyan community. Most clinics stayed open, serving as sanctuaries for people of all ethnicities who prayed and cried together every night for peace. In the face of ever present violence and widespread displacement, AMPATH's doctors and nurses went to great lengths to bring the life sustaining antiretroviral treatment to their displaced patients while treating the overwhelming flow of wounded victims. I asked Fran about the impact of this anarchic violence on AMPATH. He responded that the elasticity with which the entire Kenyan society snapped back to superficial normal functioning was quite remarkable. Although the unresolved underlying ethnic tensions reinforce concerns that the next election may see similar violence, Fran stated that it does not affect AMPATH's life sustaining function. In fact now they serve 100,000 patients in 23 clinics. Taking care of Kenyans -- whether the need is drugs, food, shelter, or stitching up machete wounds -- drives AMPATH, and apparently no amount of violence can change that.
Another AMPATH extension grew out of Fran's training as a lawyer: LACE, the Legal Aid Center of Eldoret. It functions within AMPATH serving as a judicial advocacy program primarily for the rights of AIDS patients. Fran believes the strength of LACE is that it empowers Kenyan lawyers to change Kenya's judicial climate. Although Kenya has strong laws on paper, corruption and a culture of sexism and violence against women meant that policemen, who double as our equivalent of prosecutors, rarely bring criminals to justice. Fran estimated that 80% of cases that involve violence against women are never filed because most women do not think that a judge would do anything. That is where LACE's advocates come in. When they take on a case, they make sure that the judge follows through until the law is upheld. In this way, LACE builds a culture of justice. As Fran says: "What's missing in Kenya is not signatures on human rights treaties but tangible examples of rights being enforced. That's how you deliver the message that justice should be expected." As LACE ensures that cases increasingly come to court, more people will begin to believe that their rights should be respected and that they too can find justice within the system. After only one year of existence LACE has already served 200 clients many of whom came out of the AMPATH system. LACE owes part of its rapid success to partnering with AMPATH's. AMPATH and its partners all equate trust, legitimacy and competency coupled with the focused desire to improve lives. Working together within and across disciplines has made AMPATH one of the most effective aide programs in Africa.
According to Fran AMPATH's influence is beginning to shape care beyond Eldoret. He pointed out that because Moi University hospital is a state hospital, the government hopes to implement all the best practices of the hospital and program affiliates all over Kenya making it "Kenya's most effective domestic government aide program." So not only does AMPATH create a sustainable life force in Eldoret, where it is based, but it intends to revitalize communities throughout Kenya. The hope is that other established universities will create similar development partnerships in Africa.
Walking Together Walking Far has now become required reading in several universities in Indiana from public policy classes to political science. Fran stated that this inspirational book is "not a medical or health success story. It's a partnership and development success story. It goes far beyond HIV/AIDS. It's what we can all accomplish in our communities if we can create partnerships and don't get intimidated by the barriers. It's just as applicable in human rights and development, discrimination etc." Fran and the AMPATH leaders all hope that the publication of this book will inspire others replicate the amplifying power of partnership. There are difficult obstacles to overcome, but contributing to the stability of developing countries has a global impact that is well worth the challenge.
"Few spoken word artist can speak of Revolution and do it with style. Gabriela is one of them. Born to Cuban parents, she has seen the world through eyes most haven’t. As an international spoken word artist and award-winning poet, her poetry has taken her to places such as South Africa, Cuba, Brazil, Switzerland and all over the United States. Her poetry ranges from topics as serious as the social injustices we all face to talking about her lingerie. Most recent are her national commercials for Dove and Toyota, which features her poetry and performance."
Butler University's Visiting Writers Series the largest and most comprehensive in Indy, with an average of 16 public readings and Q & A sessions every year. Featured are some of the most influential people in contemporary literature: Toni Morrison, Billy Collins, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Gwendolyn Books, Nick Hornby, David Sedaris, Allen Ginsberg and Amy Tan.
