From my Inbox to you:

Hollins Writers Karen Osborn and Shelby Smoak Win Gold IPPY Awards

Karen Osborn

Karen Osborn, this year’s Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University and a 1979 Hollins graduate, and Shelby Smoak M.A. ’99  have each received a 2013 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal for their latest work.

The “IPPY” Awards, launched in 1996 and designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers, honored Osborn in the Popular Fiction category for her novel, Centerville (West Virginia University Press), and Smoak took top prize in the Autobiography/Memoir III (Personal Struggle/Health Issues) category for Bleeder: A Memoir (Michigan State University Press).

Set in the summer of 1967, Centerville (which shared the gold with All the Dancing Birds by Auburn McCanta) is the story of how the bombing of a small Midwestern town’s drugstore alters the lives of the community’s residents. The book is based on an incident that occurred during Osborn’s own youth and explores how a small town copes with a senseless act of violence.

Shelby Smoak

Osborn is the author of three other novels: Patchwork, Between Earth and Sky, and The River Road. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in journals nationwide, including The Southern Review, Kansas Quarterly, Clapboard House, Poet Lore, Wisconsin Review, New England Watershed, and The Centennial Review. Her grants and awards include fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a Notable Book of the Year Award from The New York Times.

In Bleeder, Smoak, a hemophiliac, discovers at the start of his college career that he has been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion. This devastating news leads him to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness is perpetually just around the corner.

Smoak’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in journals and magazines such as Northern Virginia Review, Clues, Cucalorus, Juice, The Crutch, New Thought Journal, Cities and Roads, and Coastal Plains Poetry.

Southwest Virginia Ballet’s “Romeo & Juliet”
Where: Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre, Roanoke Civic Center
When: 7 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday
How much: $19-$45; children, $15-$25
Info: 387-3978; www.svballet.org/romeojuliet.html

Courtesy Southwest Virginia Ballet. Performers include Jonah Sunnen (“Romeo”), Nathan Nguyen (“Benvolio”) and Clayton Willis (“Mercutio”).

As Southwest Virginia Ballet prepares for its first performance of “Romeo and Juliet,” artistic director Pedro Szalay is experiencing a bit of deja vu. The set that the company is using is an exact duplicate of the one used by the Ballet National of Caracas in Venezuela when he was a dancer there.

It’s a large, complicated set that uses all the hanging lines in the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre’s fly loft and accommodates the performance’s many scene changes, he said.

Szalay choreographed the classic Shakespeare story to the score by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, and has made some tweaks so all the Southwest Virginia Ballet dancers have parts. “I’m using everybody in the company.”

He advises, “Bring a tissue box.”

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Natasha Trethewey

The prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock and others, has inducted two Hollins University creative writing program graduates into its ranks: U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey and 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Trethewey earned her master’s degree in creative writing at Hollins in 1991, and returned last spring to serve as the 2012 Louis D. Rubin writer-in-residence. In the summer the Library of Congress chose her as the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate. Her collection “Native Guard” won the 2007 Pulitzer for poetry.

Dillard is a member of the Hollins class of  ’67 and earned her M.A. in Creative Writing in ’68.

The two authors are in intriguing company. From the Academy press release:

In the Humanities and the Arts, new members include: novelist Martin Amis; novelist and essayist Wendell Berry; philosopher David Chalmers; director and actor Robert De Niro; Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Annie Dillard and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; actor Sally Field; Michael Fishbane, a scholar of Jewish studies; operatic soprano Renée Fleming; jazz musician Herbie Hancock; documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles; French history scholar Sarah Maza; linguist David Perlmutter; artist Judy Pfaff; Stuart Schwartz, a leading historian of colonial slavery; artist Yoshiaki Shimizu; and singer-songwriters Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.

From Sunday’s column:

Courtesy WikiMedia Commons.

Community High School in Roanoke has become a hub of writing-related activity, first with its well-attended series of themed monthly readings in the Liminal: Alternative Artspace gallery, organized by Cara Modisett, then with last month’s 48-Hour Novel Contest organized by Josh Chapman.

This week, Roanoke Regional Writers Conference founder Dan Smith joins the trend, launching a monthly series of free classes for writers.

The first class, “Ghost Writing for the Internet,” taught by Bonnie Cranmer and Sarah Beth Jones, takes place 6 p.m. Wednesday at Liminal.

Cranmer is a social media consultant who also has experience with ghost writing, while Jones is co-owner of Nary Ordinary Business Services in Floyd, a consulting service for micro-businesses.

At 6 p.m. May 22, Richmond writer and former Roanoke resident Karen Chase will lead “Blog to Book.” Chase will share her experiences using the blog she kept during a Paris visit as the basis for her self-published book “Bonjour 40.”

For more information, call Smith at 556-8510 or email him at pampadansmith@gmail.com.

UPDATE: Contest organizer Josh Chapman tells me that the $500 prize money will be split between the two winners. He also tells me the contest will likely return next year.

C.L. Bledsoe, the judge in the Marginal Arts Festival’s 48-Hour Novel Contest, was apparently unable to narrow down the 22 contestants who finished the 30,000-word challenge to just one. The two winners, Olchar Lindsann’s King Jaundice and Eric Earnhart’s Tunnel, were bound together as one book — the-two-books-in-one itself being a rather pulpy tradition.

The completed cover of the book, with both winners bound in together.

I’ve asked for a clarification on what will happen with the prize money, and will update when I know.

Last year’s octopus float will be a giant sugar skull this year in the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival Parade, which starts at noon on Saturday, March 30 at Community High School in downtown Roanoke. Anyone is welcome to join in.

MIKE ALLEN | The Roanoke Times. Marginal Arts Festival founder Brian Counihan demonstrates one of the Easter Egg masks he’s making for the festival parade on March 30.

The Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival decided not to take chances this year.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be odd, bizarre, cutting-edge art experiences mixed into the festivities. It’s the weather they don’t want to gamble on.

For the past four years, the festival has tied its schedule to Mardi Gras, which meant it sometimes has taken place in the heart of winter. Founder Brian Counihan counts his blessings that the colorful and strange Marginal Arts Parade through downtown Roanoke has never been snowed out.

“We dodged a bullet every year,” said Roanoke artist Ralph Eaton, another of the festival’s organizers. So the artists running the festival decided to move it back a few weeks. (Eaton joked that he wished it could be held April Fool’s Day.)

The lineup this year includes an appearance from the Society for Creative Anachronism, famous for wearing medieval garb and battling with rattan swords, a contest to write a novel in 48 hours, experimental poetry, experimental art, experimental theater, and workshops that might help you understand what all these experiments are getting at. “We have a lot of professional artists involved,” Counihan said.

Of course there’s the parade at noon March 30 and the absurdist street carnival that immediately follows. This year, the festival ends with Vaudeville Night, a performance at the June M. McBroom Theater in Community High School at 302 Campbell Ave. S.E. Themes for the festival include Easter eggs, the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead, and lucha libre, the sport of Mexican professional wrestling.

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Festival organizers could use help decorating this giant clown shoe. Click the image to go to the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.

Major websites are abuzz this week with this likely unauthorized fan animation of a classic “Calvin & Hobbes” strip, created with respect and panache by Adam Brown, an animator for Comedy Central’s “Ugly Americans.” Watching it, I can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic. Click the image to go to the video.

I visited sculptor Ralph Eaton’s studio in Southeast Roanoke this morning to chat with him and artist Brian Counihan about this year’s Marginal Arts Festival, with events that start with the 48-Hour Novel Contest from March 23 to 25 and end with the Marginal Arts Parade and Vaudeville Night on March 30. I thought I’d share some of the goodies Counihan and Eaton are making for the parade.

By the way, Eaton could use some volunteer help. If you’re interested, contact him through the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.

Hat tip, Dwayne and Trina Yancey. Click this link to learn more.

The Bard in black and white, courtesy WikiMedia Commons.

Beware the Ides of March!

Do you suffer from Shakesfear? Or do you quote the prologue from Richard III every chance you get?

Together, let’s dispel all doubt and fear with Attic Production’s first support group for Shakespeare.

In order to “build up… a love and respect for the English classics on both sides of the footlights” we will be reading selections from Shakespeare’s plays – this month Julius Caesar. If you have any questions contact Trina Yancey at 529-1135.

When: Friday, March 15, 7 p.m.

Place: D. Geraldine Lawson Performing Arts Center

Cost: Free