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.

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.

From my Inbox to you:

MARGINAL ARTS FESTIVAL RETURNS FOR 2013 – MAR 25- 30

The regions only contemporary art festival is back for its sixth year and it is still as out of place in Roanoke as a rubber chicken at a gun show! Performance art, vaudeville, film screenings, absurdist theater, curated exhibitions in ephemeral spaces, absurdist carnival, a parade full of artist-built floats, giant paper mache heads and art on wheels—everything the festival organizers claim is normally excluded from Roanoke’s art scene.

Workshops, demonstrations and lectures begin March 25 and festivities proper will begin on Thursday, March 28^th  with the final festival event ending around 11pm, March 30th.

Education focused on making contemporary art more accessible will be a large component of this year’s festival:

Lectures, master classes, and hands-on workshops will take place at 16 West Marketplace on Church Street, and Community High School on Campbell Avenue, as well as a few other locations in downtown Roanoke. This “Lyceé Marginal” will include a lecture by curator Brian Sieveking on how the popularity of wrestler Sputnik Monroe in the 1950’s led to desegregation in the South. Avant-garde historian and performer Olchar E. Lindsann will be giving a lecture on the history of the Readymade from 1830 to 1930. Virginia Tech and Hollins drawing students will work together to complete a collaborative drawing mural at 16 West Marketplace early festival week, while silkscreen printing workshops and food preparation demonstations will be among the other educational offering provided by the Lyceé Marginal. Read more »

For even more about today’s feature story, check out this post by Elizabeth Watts-Jones of SWoCo and my own previous blog post, where you can compare the photo with the book cover and see the “Flutter” book trailer.

Courtesy Dorothy Nguyen. Cave Spring High School seniors Sarah Beth Penny (left) and Colleen Truskey. Truskey’s photograph of longtime friend Penny graces the dusk jacket of “Flutter,” a young adult science fiction novel.

Thousands of young artists hope to break into the New York publishing scene.

Cave Spring High School senior Colleen Truskey did it by posting a portrait of a friend online.

Colleen’s photograph of longtime friend and fellow Cave Spring senior Sarah Beth Penny graces the dust jacket of “Flutter,” a young adult science fiction novel by Chicago author Gina Linko . It was released Oct. 23 by Random House Books for Young Readers.

“Flutter” follows the adventures of 17-year-old Emery, a teenage girl troubled by seizures, that she calls “loops,” during which she seems to travel through time. She escapes the hospital where she’s being kept when she discovers the town she has seen in her visions is a real place.

As Linko explained in an email, “in the moment before she seizes, which she believes takes her into time-traveling, she has some warning signs – smelling ammonia, her eyelids fluttering, etc. And this photo sort of caught the emotion and motion of that moment for Emery. Sort of a creepy/cool vibe.

“Also, later in the book, the way she explains her time traveling, she uses the curls in her hair as a visual. So, the curls of her hair underneath the title are super cool,” Linko wrote.

Because of Colleen’s photo, Sarah Beth is now the “face” of Emery. In fact, Linko asked Colleen to shoot footage of Sarah Beth made up as the character for the official book trailer.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

From Sunday’s column:

“The Mighty Josh” by Kadir Nelson, part of the traveling exhibition “We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,” opening Saturday at Piedmont Arts in Martinsville.

Piedmont Arts at 215 Starling Ave. in Martinsville will celebrate Black History Month in February with an arts exhibition and a one-man play.

“We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,” a collection of 33 paintings and 13 sketches that artist and author Kadir Nelson created for a children’s book of the same name, opens Saturday and will remain on display through March 30.

Nelson’s paintings involved years of research, studying old photographs, interviewing former Negro League players and collecting sports equipment and uniforms.

He photographed himself wearing the uniforms in pursuit of creating accurate depictions. His art and words tell the story of how athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and Willie Mays and the owners of the clubs they belonged to battled institutionalized racism and segregation to pursue their love of baseball.

Nelson’s book won the 2009 Coretta Scott King Book Award and was named one of the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2008 by The New York Times.

In conjunction with “We Are the Ship,” Piedmont Arts will showcase airbrush paintings of vintage scenes from black American life by Axton artist Rupe Dalton.

Furthering the exploration of Negro League history, the art center will present “A Game Apart: Mike Wiley As Jackie Robinson” at 7 p.m. Feb. 11.

Roanoke native, playwright and actor Wiley, a 1991 Patrick Henry High School graduate who teaches at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will bring the legendary ballplayer to life in the play, and show the stark conditions he faced as a star on the field who was treated like a second-class citizen everywhere else.

Admission to “We Are the Ship” is free. Admission to “A Game Apart” is $15, students $10. For more information call 276-632-3221 or visit piedmontarts.org.

This just in from conference organizer Dan Smith:

We have just made the decision to postpone the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference until next weekend (Feb. 1-2) because of the possibility of a snow/ice storm, which the forecasters say is hovering around 100 percent. About a third of those registered are from out of town and we simply did not want to take any chances of anybody being hurt.

The schedule will remain the same (though we will likely lose a few presenters). The conference sold out Sunday, but we are re-opening registration at http://hollinsroanokewriters2013.eventbrite.com/

UPDATE: The writers conference has been postponed until Feb. 1 (click link for details.)

Karen Osborn

Massachusetts novelist Karen Osborn will return to Hollins University this month for the first time since her 1979 graduation as the 2013 Louis D. Rubin Jr. Writer-in-Residence, and to talk about the state of the publishing industry at this year’s Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, which starts Friday on the Hollins campus.

Osborn lived in Roanoke’s Old Southwest neighborhood while she worked toward her degree in English, and began having poems published while a Hollins College undergrad.

She said she’s very excited about coming back to campus. “I love it there and they have such a great community of writers.” During her residency, she hopes to start a new novel. “I have some ideas,” she said.

She began working on her first novel, “Patchwork,” after she had finished graduate school at the University of Arkansas. The book, chronicling decades in the lives of three sisters, was inspired by research she conducted in a South Carolina textile town near Clemson University, where she was teaching. The textile mill industry was mostly a memory at that point, but through interviews, she learned how a mill town functioned.

The New York Times named “Patchwork” a Notable Book of the Year in 1991.

Her latest novel, “Centerville,” published through West Virginia University Press, is her first that springs from one of her own childhood memories, she said.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Cave Spring High School student Colleen Truskey took an arresting close up portrait of classmate Sarah Beth Penny and posted it to the popular art website DeviantArt.com. One thing she did not expect: that someone from major publisher Random House would find the photo, decide it would make a good book cover, and make her an offer. Yet that’s exactly what happened.

Chicago author Gino Linko‘s young adult time travel novel Flutter appeared in October, with Truskey’s photo on the cover.

Truskey’s photograph of Penny, titled “Trespasser: The Sybil”

The cover of Gina Linko’s FLUTTER

Truskey and Penny, now seniors, were also asked to create footage for the Flutter book trailer. Watch the video below:

Linko’s website contains an interview with Truskey.

From my Inbox to you:

SHOWTIMERS

Community Theatre Since 1951

Season Opener to Honor Black History Month

***

Ernest J. Gaines’s Award-Winning Novel Brought to Life on Showtimers’ Stage

 Showtimers Community Theatre will open its 2013 season this February 13^th with Romulus Linney’s stage adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines’s award-winning novel, A Lesson Before Dying. Mr. Linney’s drama, set in rural Louisiana in 1948, is meticulously faithful to Ernest Gaines’s story about a poor plantation worker who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, resulting in his being convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

Mr. Gaines’s novel should be familiar to local audiences as the book was selected by “The Big Read Roanoke Valley” in 2009 and became the centerpiece for discussions and cultural presentations for over six months.  The stage play, A Lesson Before Dying, developed at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival while Linney was playwright in residence there, was the result of a longstanding friendship between playwright, Romulus Linney and author, Ernest J. Gaines

The drama is presented by a cast of seven; five African-American actors and two Caucasian actors.  Much of the dialogue is taken directly from the novel and invites the audience into a tangible experience of black history at a time when “Jim Crow” laws enforced strict segregation.

A Lesson Before Dying will be performed at Showtimers’ McVitty Road theatre at 8:00 PM Wednesday through Saturday nights, February 13^th through 16^th and 20^th through 23^rd and at 2:00 PM on Sundays, February 17^th and 24^th.

Tickets are $12.00 for adults and $5.00 for those under 18.  Groups, especially educational ones, are encouraged to contact Showtimers’ Box Office (540-774-2660) for information about group rates.  Presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service.

Staff writer Ralph Berrier Jr. has this item about Roanoke Valley Reads selecting Smith Mountain Lake author David Baldacci’s Wish You Well as its book for this year’s programming.

Roanoke Valley Reads picks ‘Wish You Well’ as its book for 2013
David Baldacci’s 2000 novel was inspired by his own Southwest Virginia family history.
By Ralph Berrier Jr.

Roanoke Valley Reads organizers are rolling out the red carpet for their next book choice.

Best-selling author David Baldacci’s 2000 novel “Wish You Well,” which was turned into a Southwest Virginia movie project last fall, will be the featured book in the third installment of the community reading project later this year.

Roanoke Valley Reads is a program that invites residents, teachers and students to read a common book, then participate in events centered on that book. Events are scheduled for October, which should give local readers plenty of time to get through the book’s 432 pages.

“We announced it so early because book groups requested” an early decision, said Meg Carter, one of the program’s coordinators. “So many book groups put their calendars together in January and they don’t like to change once everything is set.”

The book has a tangle of local roots. Baldacci’s novel takes place in the mountains of Virginia and is inspired by his own Southwest Virginia family history. The author lives part time at Smith Mountain Lake, as does movie producer Sara Elizabeth Timmins, who co-produced the movie version of the book with Baldacci.

Cast and crew wrapped up two months of filming in November in Giles County, where local residents got to appear in background roles.

The movie features 12-year-old actress Mackenzie Foy, who was recently on screen as Renesmee, the young daughter in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” parts one and two, the last two sequels of the “Twilight” mega-hit series.

Click here to read the rest of the story.