"Stellaaah!" Tennessee Williams Literary Fest

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Literature

Published on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 07:25

Written by L E Shannon

The 24th Annual Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival runs March 24-28, 2010 at Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré and other venues in and around the French Quarter in New Orleans, La. 

The Festival celebrates the playwright and his works and literary life in the adopted city Williams called his "spiritual home." The fête features master classes; panel discussions; interviews; theater music, food/drink and film events; a scholars' conference; comedy improv; a poetry slam; short fiction and one-act play competitions; a breakfast book club; French Quarter literary walking tours; a book fair; and a fund-raising event.  

Leading the list of participants is Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee. Also appearing are two-time Tony Award-nominee Lois Smith, who appeared in the original Broadway production of Williams' play Orpheus Descending, and  playwright-screenwriter-director John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck).

Read more: "Stellaaah!" Tennessee Williams...

Split This Rock Poetry Festival

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Literature

Published on Tuesday, 09 March 2010 06:35

Written by L E Shannon

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness comes to the historic U Street neighborhood of Washington, D.C., March 10-13, 2010. Poets, artists, social justice activists, and community organizers from across the area and the nation will take to the stages and streets of the capital to celebrate poetry as an agent of social change.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival offers a diverse mix of programs, including poetry readings every evening on the main stage at Bell Multicultural High School, workshops and panel discussions about the intersection of poetry and social change, a book fair, films, youth programming, parties, and activism.

Featuring 24 visionary voices:

 Chris Abani
 Lillian Allen
 Sinan Antoon
 Francisco Aragón
 Jan Beatty
 Martha Collins
 Cornelius Eady
 Martín Espada
 Andrea Gibson
 Allison Hedge Coke
 Natalie Illum
 Fady Joudah
 Toni Asante Lightfoot
 Richard McCann
 Jeffrey McDaniel
 Lenelle Moïse
 Nancy Morejón
 Mark Nowak
 Wang Ping
 Patricia Smith
 Arthur Sze
 Quincy Troupe
 Bruce Weigl

Also included is Somehow Tenderness Survivies: a Tribute to Dennis Brutus, Lucille Clifton, Mahmoud Darwish, and Howard Zinn. Friends and colleagues will present remembrances and favorite poems, then attendees will be invited to add their voices, as well, as they honor these visionary world citizens.

As the country continues to grapple with two wars, the economic crisis, and social and environmental ills, Split This Rock offers participants opportunities to speak out, make common cause, and explore the many ways poets are working for change through their writing, activism, and community work. Co-Director Sarah Browning said, “At times of crisis, poetry that looks directly at our world and struggles to understand, to bridge differences, to imagine other possibilities than those endlessly repeated by politicians and pundits is more important than ever.”

A screening of cutting-edge short films that showcase how poets, writers, and activists are collaborating with visual media artists to explore critical social issues. Edited by poet, filmmaker, and Director of the Poetry Center of Chicago Francesco Levato.

A new feature is a free Social Change Book Fair. Festival participants and members of the public can explore progressive presses, literary magazines, independent newspapers, and social justice and literary organizations.

Other free events during the festival include a youth poetry open mic and the final round of competition for the D.C. Youth Slam Team, the teen poetry group that will go on to compete at the national slam competition in Los Angeles in June.

As the country reaches the milestone of  $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, festival participants will engage in peaceful action and use poetry to speak to those in power. A “public poem,” to be spontaneously created at a federal government site on the afternoon of Thursday, March 11, will imagine what the next $1 trillion could — and should — be spent on. “Based in our nation’s capital, Split This Rock provides opportunities for all who gather to speak out for a more just ordering of our nation’s priorities,” Browning said.

Split This Rock was incorporated in Washington, D.C., as a nonprofit organization in 2009. The biennial festival is just one part of Split This Rock’s larger mission. “All Split This Rock’s programs are designed to integrate poetry of provocation and witness into public life and to support the poets who are writing this vital work,” Browning said. “We collaborate with community and social change organizations, organize public events such as the festival, readings and forums, sponsor contests to promote socially engaged poetry, and provide workshops on craft and the writing life for youth and adult poets.”

For more information, visit www.SplitThisRock.org.   

Split This Rock Poetry Festival
March 10-12, 2010

1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-787-5210

Bell Multicultural High School
3101 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20010

Busboys and Poets
2021 14th Street NW
Washington, DC

The Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage
1816 12th Street NW
Washington, DC

True Reformer Building
1200 U Street NW
Washington, DC

Jaipur Literature Festival 2010

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Literature

Published on Tuesday, 12 January 2010 10:38

Written by FFTraveler Staff

Now in its fifth year, DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, an event described by Tina Brown in the Daily Beast as "the greatest literary show on earth" will again play host to authors, publishers, lovers and connoisseurs of books from January 21-25, 2010 at the Diggi Palace in Jaipur, India.

Although only five years old, already Jaipur is the biggest literature festival in Asia and the biggest completely free festival of literature in the world. Besides showcasing the best of Indian-language and English writing from India, the Festival hosts a Nobel laureate, a winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, two Booker winners and five winners of the Pulitzer prize for Literature.

Writers include:

Anne Applebaum is an American historian and journalist who has written extensively on US and international politics, focusing in particular on central Europe and Russia. Her most recent book Gulag: A History won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist, best known for his biographies of political figures. His biographical works include The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms, The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz. Bird and co-author Martin J. Sherwin won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He and Sherwin also won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for their biography of Oppenheimer. In 2009 they also won the Duff Cooper Prize. Bird's newest book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, will be released in April 2010 by Scribner.

Amit Chaudhuri is, according to the Guardian, ‘one of the leading novelists of his generation'. His latest book The Immortals is his fifth novel, and was Critics' Choice, Best Books of 2009, for the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, and the Irish Times. He was one of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His works include D. H. Lawrence and ‘Difference': Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present, Clearing A Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture. His novels include Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song and A New World.

Steve Coll is President of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He is the author of six books including On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia; Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize; and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.
His earlier Pulitzer Prize was for explanatory journalism for his coverage of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Roddy Doyle is the author of nine novels, including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993.  His latest novel, The Dead Republic, will be published in May 2010.  He also writes for children, and has written for the stage and screen.

Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author whose novel Th e Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Irish Novel of the Year. Her first novel, The Wig My Father Wore, was published in 1995. A collection of her short stories, The Portable Virgin, won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An influential scholar in the field of African American Studies, he is the author of twelve books and has hosted and produced nine documentaries for PBS and the BBC. He was named to Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" list in 1997 and to Ebony magazine's "Power 150" list in 2009. His books include Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars, The African American Century, and Finding Oprah's Roots: Finding Your Own. Works he has edited include The Bondwoman's Narrative, The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lincoln on Race and Slavery.

Tania James has had stories published in One Story magazine, Guernica, and Elle India.  Her debut novel Atlas of Unknowns was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and an Editor's Choice for The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times.

John Kampfner's latest book is Freedom For Sale, which looks at the global trade-off between liberty and money and security. He is Chief Executive of the free expression organization, Index on Censorship, and Chairman of Turner Contemporary, a major new UK art gallery. A long-standing journalist and broadcaster, he was Editor of the New Statesman from 2005-08.

Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John's, Antigua. Her books include At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, and My Favorite Plant, among others.  In 2009 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of literary non-fiction, including Husband of a Fanatic, which was an Editor's Choice book at the New York Times. His novel Home Products was a finalist for the Vodafone Crossword Award. Kumar's latest book, Evidence of Suspicion, soon to be published by Picador India, is a writer's report on the global war on terror.

Hanif Kureishi is the author of numerous novels, short story collections, screenplays and plays. In 1984 he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. His second film, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, was followed by London Kills Me, which he also directed. The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel in 1990 and was made into a four-part drama series by the BBC. Intimacy, his third novel, was published in 1998, and was adapted for film in 2001. The film Venus, directed by Roger Michell, won Peter O'Toole a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination. His latest novel, Something To Tell You was published to great critical acclaim in 2008. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts des Lettres and a CBE for services to literature.

Sadia Shepard is a writer and documentary filmmaker whose memoir The Girl from Foreign was published in 2008. Shepard's writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Indian Express. As a film producer, her credits include The September Issue, a portrait of Anna Wintour and the making of Vogue, which won the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. She teaches non-fiction writing at Columbia University.

Wole Soyinka, playwright, poet, novelist and essayist, is a Yoruba from Nigeria, and  is also active on Human Rights issues, in whose cause he serves on a number of international organizations. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the first African to be so honored. His novels are The Interpreters and Season of Anomie. His plays include The Swamp Dwellers, The Trials of Brother Jero, A Dance of the Forests, The Bacchae of Euripides and Requiem for a Futurologist. Some of his poetry collections are A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison) and Mandela's Earth and other poems.

Ma Thida writes fiction, is a human rights activist, and a practicing surgeon from Myanmar/Burma. Thida is a prolific writer of many articles and stories about the damage done to her country by successive repressive regimes. She is the author of the books The Sunflower and In the Shade of an Indian Almond Tree, among others.

Claire Tomalin is the author of highly acclaimed biographies of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Mary Wollstonecraft and Katherine Mansfield. She has won many prizes like the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography), the NCR Book Award and the Hawthornden Prize. Her biography of the 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year. Her book Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Biography of the Year.

Gita Wolf originally prepared for academic life by studying English and Comparative Literature. But she decided to write and publish books for children, partly as a result of her own difficulties as a mother with finding good material written in Tamil for her own children.  She founded Tara Publishing in 1994, and has since written and published many award winning books.  Her first book, Mala, A Woman's Folktale, explored gender. Her later works include The Legend of the Fish, Tiger on a Tree, and The Flight of the Mermaid.

Other speakers and panelists include: Tina Brown, Niall Ferguson, Roberto Calasso, Vikram Chandra, Mahasweta Devi, Shobhaa De Indira Goswami, Krishna Sobti, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Pavan Varma, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk, and Kishwar Desai.

Highlights include readings from Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq by acclaimed actor Om Puri, performances by Titi Robin, Cheb I Sabbah, Susheela Raman, Djaima, Rajasthan Roots and Paban Das Baul, and readings and performances from William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives.

Some of the sessions:

Henry Louis Gates sits with Wole Soyinka for Figures in Black
Hanif Kureishi is joined by Roddy Doyle and Stephen Frears for The Director’s Cut

Also included:

The Art of Criticism
Bhasha Swar: Multiple Voices
Travels with a Typewriter
Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience
In Search of Sita
The Queen’s Hinglish
Bin Laden After Bush
The Art of the Anti-Thriller
A Writer’s Diaries
The Myth about Short Stories

For more information, visit www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org.

Jaipur Literature Festival
January 21-25, 2010
Diggi Palace
Jaipur, India