On Salons (and Where to Go from Here)

Is it a DC thing? Having grown up here, having attended a lot of evening events framed as cultural ambassadorship--a mixing of "officials" in purposefully un-official settings--I'm charmed by the notion of this emerging dinner party tradition, hosted at the Watergate by David Bradley of The Atlantic, in which politicians and journalists mingle for off-the-record conversation. I've heard Andy Shallal of Busboys and Poets hosts evenings in a similar format, focusing on people from peace-activism and international-policy communities. This gathering impulse reaches the arts scene as well: tonight I'm going to a potluck for Washington's women writers.

Last night I was sitting on my balcony with another poet, and we talked about the siren call of academia. I love the pace of being in class--the performative and improvisational aspects, the chance to see someone light up in response to finding a new author they like. I would welcome the chance to teach for a year or two in conjunction with being a working writer. But so much of higher-level academia seems to be about cultivating mastery of a very narrow area of focus, as in the majority of Ph.D. dissertations, and acquiring a precise vocabulary of core texts and theories shared with those in your field. Sometimes (and perhaps this is my insecurity showing) I feel like I've spent the last 40 minutes not so much conversing as bluffing.

What I crave are conversations that emphasize breadth rather than depth of knowledge--colliding with people of different backgrounds, expertise, or ideological persuasions. I suspect this dovetails less with a university professorship and more with an administrative position at an arts non-profit or a government organization. I dream about staying in DC and building a roster of acquaintances I can draw from for dinner parties of my own some day, inviting a different mix each time, talking about ideas on the horizon.

I'm not quite there yet. My food budget is limited to hummus and pretzels; my living room lacks a couch. Perfect for standing-room-only poetry readings, not-so-ideal for a salon. But there's time.

*Confidential to Rahm Emanuel (featured in the Washington Post article linked above): Sorry about almost hitting you with my car as you biked through Rock Creek Park on Sunday afternoon. I was about to be late for a funeral, and not watching the road. You were gracious. And handsome! No wonder everyone invites you to their dinner parties.

How I Discovered Poetry

...I read poetry on the school bus. I read poetry in my grandfather's garden, down by the unnameable purple flowers. I read poetry in my tent. I read poetry while eating artichokes one leaf at a time. I read poetry on the cold mornings in my house, standing over the air vent with my nightgown tucked under my feet, trapping all the hot air against my thighs before it could escape to the rest of the house....

[From a post at Dustin Brookshire's blog, "I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin." Thanks for the opportunity, Dustin!]

In Which People Who Deserve Money Get Money

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Holly Bass, NAAW press liaison
202-518-3609 / langstondays@gmail.com


WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR THE 2008 NATIONAL AWARD FOR ARTS WRITING

(Washington, DC) On Thursday, April 16, 2009 Michael Sragow and Brenda Wineapple were announced as joint winners of the National Award for Arts Writing, now in its third year. The authors will split the purse with each receiving $7,500. This year’s award was judged by noted book and film critic David Kipen; Linda Pastan, National Book Award winner and former Poet Laureate of Maryland; and Reynolds Price, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner and author of twenty-two novels.

The National Award for Arts Writing, sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, gives $15,000 to an outstanding nonfiction book about the arts. This annual award is designed to recognize excellence in arts writing for a general audience and is one of the highest monetary awards for a single-author book. (The Pulitzer awards $10,000, for comparison.)

The winners will return to Washington, DC in May for an Awards Dinner and public reading. They will also speak to students at Duke Ellington School for the Arts and give radio and print interviews to the news media.

The winning books are:

Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, by Michael Sragow (Pantheon Books)

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by Brenda Wineapple (Alfred A. Knopf)

On the selection of the two winners, judge David Kipen says, “The idea of the passionate but chaste Emily Dickinson on a blind date with Byronic, swashbuckling Victor Fleming, if only for one night, encompasses precisely the breadth of inspiration that these awards exist to honor.”

The Award was established by long-time Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield in honor of Florence Berryman and Helen Wharton. Publishers, agents, or authors may submit books for consideration. The submission for the 2009 award will begin in July 2009.

Previous winners include: Jenny Uglow in 2007 (finalists Carolyn Brown, Alex Ross, Nigel Cliff, William Jelani Cobb; judges Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Pinsky, Nancy Pearl) and in 2006, Scott Reynolds Nelson (finalists Ross King and Julie Phillips; judges Alan Cheuse, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates).

To arrange an interview with the Award recipients, please contact our press liaison, Holly Bass, langstondays@gmail.com. For more about the awards and finalists, please visit the site: http://artsclubofwashington.org/award.htm. You may also contact Kim Roberts, Award Administrator at 202-331-7282 x15.

About the Arts Club of Washington:
Headquartered in the James Monroe House, a National Historic Landmark, the Arts Club of Washington was founded in 1916 and is the oldest non-profit arts organization in the city. The mission of the Arts Club of Washington is to generate public appreciation for and participation in the arts in the Nation’s capital.