Books Alive 2016 Photo Blog

Books Alive returned last weekend, expanded to three days and moved to venues in downtown Panama City. Here are some of the moments I managed to record:

Ginger Littleton, me, and Cheri Leistner (Books Alive committee members)

Local authors area at the Civic Center

Cool projections by Public Eye featured the local authors' work

David Angier, me



Me with Mary McDonough (Erin Walton)



JD from Public Eye and author Milinda Stephenson



Rick Bragg with a Destin book club



Connie Gittard introduces Ellen Urbani, Annie Quinn & Mary McDonough



Kwame Alexander, Kathie Bennett, and Mr. & Mrs. Middlemas



Kwame Alexander meets a young future reader.



Librarian Sandra Pierce and author Olivia Cooley



Refreshments at the library



Margaret Webster of Public Eye & Jennifer Jones of Bay Arts Alliance

Books Alive 2015 Photo Blog 3

Finally, the big event itself.

Bill Curry speaks at the luncheon

Magic Time authors gathered for "family" photo

Olivia deBelle Byrd (Cooley) & her 11th grade English teacher

Mark Boss, Carole Lapensohn and me

Marjory Wentworth reads from one of her books

Michael Morris, left, and Olivia at right

Susan Boyer signs for a fan

Marjory greets a reader

Mary, Tony and Marjory

New friends saying goodbye.

Books Alive 2015 Photo Blog 2

Wentworth with my class

Friday, I had the pleasure of having Marjory Wentworth, the poet laureate of South Carolina, join me for the day. She led my class at Education Encore in an exercise that inspired me to write a new short story.

The prompt: Describe a building from the point of view of a person who has lost a child in a war. Do not mention the child, or the war.

Second prompt: Describe the same building from the point of view of a happy lover. Do not mention the loved one.

Then we went to the St. Andrew Bay Yacht Club for a luncheon where Mary Alice Monroe spoke, and we shared a table with Kathie Bennett and Patricia Moore-Pastides. They all made a fuss over my new book launching that weekend.

Moore-Pastides, Wentworth, Simmons & Monroe

Mary Alice Monroe

Bill Husfelt with Carolyn and Bill Curry

Mary Alice beams as Marjory checks out Patricia's locket

Then, in the evening, the volunteers and staff gathered with the featured authors for a party to get acquainted at the home of Frank Walker in Panama City Beach. It was a great day.

Janice Lucas, Marty Sirmons, Carole Lapensohn & Ruth Corley

Mike and Jan Waddy

Me with Bettina Mead

Books Alive 2015 Photo Blog: 1

Our first visitor for Books Alive 2015 was Kwame Alexander, who had just the same week won the Newbery Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature. He gave a free talk at the Bay County Public Library. Here are photos from the evening, along with my article advancing his appearance, as it appeared at NewsHerald.com and in The News Herald:

Alexander greets a fan at the library

 PANAMA CITY — Fresh off winning the Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children’s literature, poet and author Kwame Alexander will speak at a free event hosted by the Bay County Public Library.

“I am so excited and elated,” said Sandra Pierce, head of Youth Services for the library. “We are so blessed to have an author of his caliber visiting our library and our schools.”

Alexander, whose novel-in-verse “The Crossover” was named a Newbery winner Monday, will visit with Hiland Park Elementary School third-graders and Bay High School freshmen Thursday morning. That afternoon, he will address a group of students from the After-School Assistance Program and Girls Inc.

“Generally I like to inspire kids to read and write,” Alexander said by phone Tuesday. “I use poetry to do that. We are immersed in poetry, and often kids will leave saying, ‘I had no idea this was poetry.’ ”

Kathie Bennett & Marjory Wentworth

Alexander will then speak at the Bay County Public Library, 898 W. 11th St. in Panama City, at 7 p.m. Thursday. The event is free and open to the public. The BHS jazz band, Bay Blast, will play music during the event, and BHS cadets will act as door greeters and ushers. Representatives from the Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sororities will provide refreshments.

“This is an excellent opportunity to see a children’s author in our community share his knowledge and some poetry,” Pierce said. She also called “The Crossover” a powerful book. “It reads with such rhythm. It’s about the family life and relationships of two teenage boys, it’s about character building.”

In the book, 12-year-old narrator Josh Bell uses the rhythms of a poetry jam to emulate the “moving and grooving/popping and rocking” of life on the basketball court with his twin brother, J.B.
“I wanted to write a book boys would pick up,” Alexander said, noting evidence boys are hesitant to spend time reading rather than in physical activities. “They want books that are exciting to them, so I framed it in things boys are interested in. It’s about friendship, family and love, couched in terms of basketball.”

Pierce speaks to BHS band

Alexander addresses the audience at the library.

 The founder of two literacy organizations — Book-in-a-Day and LEAP for Ghana — Alexander conducts writing and publishing workshops at schools and conferences throughout the nation. He has owned publishing companies and has written for the stage and television (including TLC’s “Hip Hop Harry”). He recorded a CD, performed around the world, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a radio show, worked for the U.S. government and taught high school. He will serve as the Bank Street College of Education's first writer-in-residence this year.

“I just finished a novel about a boy who loves soccer but hates books,” he said of his next project. “It’s inspired by boys I met on this book tour. I wanted to explore that transformation.”

Alexander is the author of 18 books, including “The Crossover,” which received its honor from the American Library Association on Monday. It also was chosen as a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and was called “a beautifully measured novel” by The New York Times.

“You can’t get better than that,” Pierce said of the honors the book received. “I was so excited I couldn’t catch my breath.”

The Newbery Medal was named for the 18th-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the year’s most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Alexander’s visit is part of the library’s annual BooksAlive festival, which brings nationally-known authors to Panama City for free workshops and speaking sessions. The main event will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Florida State University Panama City. For details, visit BooksAlive.net.

Making time for the arts

Marjory Wentworth

Marjory Wentworth

Who: Poet Laureate of South Carolina

What: Featured presenter at Books Alive 2015

When: Feb. 7; two sessions

Where: Florida State University-Panama City, 4750 Collegiate Drive, Panama City

Cost: Free admission

Details: BooksAlive.net

PANAMA CITY — This may have slipped under your radar in recent weeks, but a longstanding tradition that celebrated the arts was dropped from the governor’s inauguration ceremony in South Carolina on Jan. 14, citing a lack of time.

At least South Carolina has a poet laureate. Florida has had three: Franklin N. Wood, appointed by Gov. John W. Martin in 1929; Vivian Laramore Rader, appointed by Gov. Doyle E. Carlton in 1931; and Dr. Edmund Skellings, appointed by Gov. Robert Graham in 1980. Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation establishing a state poet laureate in June 2014, but the nomination process is still in development.

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was sworn in for her second term Jan. 14. When the state’s Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth inquired about the traditional reading of a new poem during the ceremony, the governor’s office informed her there was insufficient time in the ceremony schedule for her two-minute poem to be read.

Four years prior, Wentworth read her poem, “The Weight It Takes,” at Haley’s inauguration. It focused on natural images of rivers, rocks and fish, and it called on the new governor to “be the weight that grounds us through swirling hours of each day.”

Wentworth will be a featured author at Books Alive on Feb. 7 at Florida State University-Panama City. She will have two sessions: The News from Poems, and Creating a Sense of Place in Poetry and Fiction (with Mary Alice Monroe). She also will speak to my Education Encore class Feb. 6.

The same day as Haley’s inauguration, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) addressed the House floor and read Wentworth’s poem into the congressional record.

“We’ve seen many instances of arbitrary actions against the powerless by the powerful when words and actions threaten their comfort levels. Such actions should not be,” Clyburn said. “I applaud Ms. Wentworth for her touching words, and I am reading her poem today in hopes that the people of South Carolina, across the country, and peoples around the world are as touched by her words as I have been.”

In the summer of 2014, Wentworth wrote the New York Times, reacting to a report on the controversy surrounding the choice of North Carolina’s poet laureate, who had almost immediately resigned the position. In her letter, Wentworth noted “poetry is flourishing” in South Carolina, “home of the oldest poetry society in the United States.”

But she also notes that some in seats of power have little regard for the arts. During the previous governor’s term, $1,500 was earmarked to cover travel and accommodations for Wentworth to make appearances at schools and literary events around the state; Haley’s office has set aside nothing for her expenses.

In an NPR interview, Wentworth said she thought the new poem was cut from the schedule because she didn’t stick to “safe” topics, instead mentioning a former slave market at Gadsden’s Wharf, and the execution of a 14-year-old black boy convicted of murdering two white girls, who was exonerated 70 years later.

“I really believe that our history is part of what’s holding us back,” Wentworth told NPR. “It’s kind of an unhealed wound. And we’re all in this together. And I know that sounds a little like John Lennon, but I wanted people to think about some of those things.”

Peace.

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This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.

Cocktail Hour shares blog

When Bill Roorbach was in town for BooksAlive recently, he read and enjoyed a column of mine about the mad creative process I enjoyed on a long ride home from Birmingham. I told him it was a version of a blog entry, greatly simplified for the paper, and he asked permission to reprint it on his blog. I sent him a silly photo and an amalgamated version of the blog and column.

He posted it today.

Thanks, Bill!

Author Roorbach draws map to writing success

Roorbach at Mosley High

PANAMA CITY — Bill Roorbach has a thing for geography — specifically, for maps. They play a role in his storytelling, both as an essayist and fiction author, and he uses them to help guide students through the early steps of writing a memoir.

He also turns to them pretty easily when he’s in unfamiliar territory, as he was last weekend — fearlessly using his GPS to locate schools, parks and restaurants.

Bill visited Panama City and the beaches as one of the featured authors at BooksAlive 2014, the annual festival of reading and writing put on by the Bay County Public Library Foundation at FSU-PC. In addition to leading two sessions at BooksAlive last Saturday, he visited the writing class I teach as part of Gulf Coast State College’s Education Encore and he spoke with two groups of students at Mosley High School on Friday.

(Not yet knowing about his love of maps, I sent Bill a map of GCSC’s campus to help him locate the building where my class meets.)

The take-away is a lot of free advice from a gifted novelist, past winner of the O’Henry Prize and the Flannery O’Conner Prize, as well as a retired university professor — which is also just one example of the great gifts BooksAlive brings to this area.

Bill talked about ways to capture “the quality of memory,” ways of using images and dialogue that contain “the truth of the moment” you’re attempting to evoke in your writing. Think of tastes and textures, sounds and scents; use all of your senses when you’re recalling a place and time, not just the visual elements.

One way to do this is to draw a map of the place you’re writing about. It doesn’t have to be to scale or even legible, so long as it helps you to navigate your memories. Draw the neighborhood where you grew up. Now, where did you play, and with whom, and what were they like? Where did the weird person live, and what made them seem strange? What smells came from the house next door? What sounds?

(Bill explores this method in depth in his book, “Writing Life Stories,” which is employed in writing programs all over the planet.)

“How do you go from an anecdote to a full story, to the exploration of what it is to be alive?” he asked.

Bill equated the process of building of narrative to that of building a rock wall: You go down to the creek and gather large, round stones, cart them up to your property, and dump them out. You make several trips to the creek, gathering all the stones you can, and then you begin to place them one on top of another. You find the big picture (the wall) by building up the salient details (the rocks), he said.

Some rocks (or bits of memory) won’t fit your wall, no matter how interesting they look. That’s OK. Set that rock aside for another time (and another story), but keep building until you have a sturdy wall.

Peace.

(This was my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.)

BooksAlive 2014 Photo Post (Part the Second)

Barbara Winter draws a map of her childhood neighborhood in Bill and Kristen's memoir session.

Pat Conroy gives the keynote address at the luncheon.

Bill Roorbach and Patti Callahan Henry talking during a break in the action.

Cassandra King signing for fans.

Chuck Barrett poses with a fan.

Kristen Keckler reads during the memoir session.

Pat Conroy signs after his speech.

These ladies from the Gulf Coast Woman's Club supplied breakfast snacks and beverages in the hospitality room.

BooksAlive 2014 kept me busy Saturday; I moderated two sessions with Bill Roorbach, including an extended 2-hour session on memoir that he presented with Kristen Keckler, and a 1-hour session dedicated to his novel "Life Among Giants."

Pat Conroy had the audience laughing throughout his speech during the luncheon, and I also got to enjoy a conversation with David Angier while everyone else was in line for food.

I have a column coming tomorrow (in print on Friday) that looks at Bill's presentations, so you have to come back for that. Meanwhile, Bill liked my column in last week's edition enough to offer to reprint it on his blog soon. I gave him instead a sort of hybrid that combined that column with info from the blog it grew out of; I'll link to it when it's live.

Many things were different about this year's event, and I plan to examine the pros and cons of that in a later blog. Hope you like the pictures.

Peace.