ATHENS, Ohio -- The 18th annual Spring Literary Festival will be held from May 7 to 9 on the Ohio University Athens Campus. This year's festival features five highly acclaimed, award-winning writers: fiction writers Ann Hood and Howard Norman, poet Yusef Komunyakaa, film critic Molly Haskell and singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. The English department's Program in Creative Writing sponsors the Spring Literary Festival.
Hood is the author of seven novels, including "Ruby" and "Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine." Her work is noted for its portrayals of complex friendships that cross generations and spiritual journeys that result from personal loss. She is also the author of two works of nonfiction. Her most recent book, "Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time," tells the story of her father's battle with cancer and the search for a miraculous cure.
She received a Breadloaf Writer's Conference Fellowship in 1987. Her essays and stories have appeared in periodicals such as Redbook, Story and The Washington Post.
As a novelist, short story writer and translator, Norman's literary accomplishments extend over a 30 year period. Perhaps best known for his Canadian trilogy -- "The Bird Artist," "The Museum Guard," "The Haunting of L." -- Norman has consistently looked north for his inspiration.
Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., Norman was drawn at an early age to the cultures of the native Canadians: the Inuit, the Algonquin and the Cree. Much of his early work was translations of the traditional tales learned while living and working among native cultures. His numerous translations earned Norman several awards, including the 1978 American Academy of Poets Landon Award for translations of Native American tales.
He is also the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His first two novels, "The Northern Lights" and "The Bird Artist," were nominated for the National Book Award. Norman teaches writing at the University of Maryland and the New York State Summer Writers Institute.
Komunyakaa is the author of twelve books of poetry, the most recent of which include "Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems," "Talking Dirty to the Gods" and "Thieves of Paradise." The latter titles were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize in May 2001. Forthcoming is a collection of poems entitled "Scandalize My Name" (Picador, U.K.). He won the Pulitzer Prize for "Neon Vernacular" in 1994. He has also published "Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews and Commentaries" and co-edited "The Jazz Poetry Anthology" and "The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology."
His poems have been selected regularly for Best American Poetry and a recent essay appears in Best American Essays of 2001. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.
Film critic Haskell is the author of three books, most recently "Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men," "Film and Feminists" and "Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir." She is perhaps best known for her ground breaking critical work, "From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies," which was first published in 1973 and updated in 1987. "From Reverence to Rape" exposes the increasingly negative representation of women in films of the 1940s through the early 1970s and addresses the portrayal of women as sex objects in film. The book remains a standard in college film courses.
Haskell has served as a film critic for such well-known periodicals as Village Voice, Vogue and New York Magazine. She is the recipient of such awards as the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Award for Film Criticism in 1989, as well as the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres Award, also in 1989. Haskell is also a member of the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle.
Wainwright has released 19 albums in a musical career that has spanned over 30 years and earned him a reputation as a shrewd lyrical commentator. Wainwright began to write songs in 1968 and had his first large commercial success with "Dead Skunk" on the 1972 release, "Album III."
Wainwright is the recipient of two Grammy nominations for the albums "I'm Alright" (1985) and "More Love Songs" (1986). Such renowned recording artists as Johnny Cash, Earl Scruggs and, most recently, his singer/songwriter son Rufus Wainwright have covered his songs.
Wainwright's most recent musical releases include "Last Man On Earth" (2001), "Social Studies" (1999) and "The BBC Sessions" (1998). His essay "Letter to Chester Baum" is included in the recent anthology "Songs Without Rhyme: Prose by Celebrated Songwriters" (2001) and he has been invited to write several editorial pieces for The New York Times.
The five writers will be present throughout the festival, lecturing and reading from their work. All events will be held in Irvine Auditorium on the West Green and are free and open to the public. Books by the authors will be available for purchase after each evening's program.
Free parking is available for the evening programs at the Convocation Center off of Richland Avenue. For more information contact the Office of Special Programs at (740) 593-4181 or visit www.english.ohiou.edu/litfest/.
