Becoming Alabama: This Goodly Land

Barbara Brown Taylor and Debra Moffitt featured at Auburn Writers Conference

On Friday and Saturday, October 12-13, the third annual Auburn Writers Conference will open its doors to aspiring, emerging and established writers and readers.

This year’s theme is “The Winding Road: Travel, Identity, and theSearch for Voice.” Embracing the broadest definition of “travel”—whether in our heads or on the road—the conference invites writers and readers who “hear the beckoning call of discovery and new cultures, as well as those who believe that the greatest voyage may be an exploration of the places we call home.”

Sponsored by the Auburn University Department of English, the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities and the Collegeof Liberal Arts, AWC features talks and workshops on craft, publishing and promotion for poets and fiction and nonfiction writers.

Among this year’s presenters are Barbara Brown Taylor and Debra Moffitt, both contributors to Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality. Edited by poet Jennifer Horne and writer-producer Wendy Reed, Circling Faith is a volume of essays on the joys and struggles of spiritual life.

Taylor, the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College in rural northeast Georgia, is the author of twelve books, including the New York Times-bestseller An Altar in the World and the acclaimed memoir Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. Taylor studied at Yale Divinity School and Emory University and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1984.

Moffitt is the award-winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life and the forthcoming Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery. Her work has appeared in Faith and Form: The Journal of Religion, Art and Architecture, The European, Venture Inward and other publications in the U.S. and Europe. Awake in the World presents spiritual practices from around the world from meditation to walking labyrinths, pilgrimages and retreats.

On Friday, October 12, Moffitt will lead a workshop on the creative process from the birth of an idea to its launch into the world. It will include tools to tap into powerful resources of creative energy, get structured and create a writing discipline.

Both writers will appear, along with the editors, on a Circling Faith panel on Saturday. A third contributor, singer-songwriter and memoirist Marshall Chapman, will perform on Friday night.

Information about registering for the conference and workshops can be found at http://www.cla.auburn.edu/awc/.

Symposium on the War of 1812

The first in a series of symposia commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813-4 will be held on Saturday, August 25 in the Special Collections & Archives Department of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library. "...Toward a Larger Stage: The War of 1812, the CreekWar and the Idea of America,” will focus on the pivotal events of two hundred years ago in Alabama, the Southeast, the United States, and the world.

The first symposium will focus on connecting the audience to the compelling and significant events that occurred in 1812, the first year of the larger War of 1812 and an important precursor to the conflict building between Creek nationalists, the Red Stick faction, and Anglo-American settlers culminating with the Creek War and the ultimate Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March of 1814. The program will place these events in a local, national, and international context, as well as the cultural context of Indians, Americans, British and Canadians. 

This 1812 bicentennial symposium is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and refreshments will be provided.

Schedule

•       9:30-10:00 a.m.       Registration
•       10:00-10:15 a.m.     Welcome and Introduction
•       10:15-10:45 a.m.     William Dean: “Europe and the Napoleonic Wars in 1812”
•       10:45-11:15 a.m.     Harold Youmans: "A ‘Close-Quarter’ Future: The U.S. Navy in 1812”
•       11:15-11:30 a.m.     Break
•       11:30-12:00 p.m.     Sebastian Lukasik: “The War of 1812: The Canadian Perspective”
•       12:00-12:15 p.m.     Question and Answer Session
•       12:15-1:30 p.m.       Lunch (On Your Own)
•       1:30-2:00 p.m.         Adam Jortner: “Nations and Security in the Old Northwest: Prelude to              Horseshoe Bend”
•       2:00-2:30 p.m.         Kathryn Braund: "Wild, Ungovernable Young Men”
•       2:30-2:45 p.m.         Break
•       2:45-3:15 p.m.         Gary Burton: "Mounting Tensions Along the Federal Road in 1812: The Murder of Thomas Meredith”
•       3:15-3:30 p.m.         Question and Answer Session

Sponsors

• Horseshoe Bend National Military Park

• Friends of Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, Inc.

• Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities

• Auburn University Libraries  

Call for Creative Submissions

The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University and the Auburn Writers Conference invite writers to participate in “The Winding Road: Travel, Identity, and the Search for Voice” to be held on October 12-13, 2012, in Auburn, Alabama.

Offering instruction, practice, perspective, and community in a relaxed setting, AWC features small-group workshops, panel discussions, and readings from emerging and established authors.

Conference attendees are invited to read their short fiction, creative nonfiction and/or poetry. To be considered for a reading slot, please submit a 300-500 word excerpt of creative writing appropriate for a 15-minute presentation by August 1, 2012. Please include a brief cover letter that indicates connection to the conference’s theme.

Email submissions as an MS Word attachment to Maiben Beard at maiben@auburn.edu. In the subject line of your email, please include: Conference: [Your Last Name, Title of Submission].

For more information, visit the conference website, or find us on Facebook and Twitter (#AWC2012).

POV Previews at The Gnu's Room

Join us each month for a sneak peek at the latest POV documentaries! All screenings are free and open to the public.


Sponsored by The Gnu's Room and Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities. These events are a collaboration with POV, the award winning independent nonfiction film series on PBS.

Schedule

All films will be screened at 7:00 p.m. at The Gnu's Room (414 S. Gay Street).


June 21: The City Dark
July 5: Guilty Pleasures
August 2: POV Short Cuts
September 6: I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
October 4: Sun Kissed
November 1: Reportero
December 6: Girl Model


 

2012 Auburn Writers Conference

Save the date! On Friday and Saturday, October 12-13, 2012, the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts’ Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities and Department of English, in partnership with the College of Education’s Truman Pierce Institute, will host the third annual Auburn Writers Conference.

“The Winding Road: Travel, Identity and the Search for Voice” invites writers and readers who hear the beckoning call of discovery and of new cultures, as well as those who believe that perhaps the greatest voyage is an exploration of the places we call home. The Auburn Writers Conference offers instruction, practice, perspective, and community for both established and emerging writers. 

The 2012 conference will feature Judith Ortiz Cofer (The Latin Deli, Call Me Maria), Nick Taylor (Sins of the Father), R.A. Nelson (Days of Little Texas, Teach Me), and Myra McEntire (Hourglass), among others. Visit the conference website for an updated list of writers and workshops.

Registration Fees:

• Full Conference, $200
• Friday Only, $125
• Saturday Only, $75
• Student Rate, $40

For more information, visit the conference website, or find us on Facebook and Twitter (#AWC2012).

Southside Market

Jonathan Odell to read at The Gnu's Room

Author Jonathan Odell will read from his new book, The Healing, on Thursday, May 24 at 5:30 p.m. at The Gnu’s Room.

Rich in mood and atmosphere, The Healing is a warmhearted novel about the unbreakable bonds between three generations of female healers and their power to restore the body, the spirit, and the soul. Inspired by true-life events, Odell brings the pre-Civil War South to life in this masterfully written novel, centered on a mysterious and charismatic healer readers won’t soon forget.

Jonathan Odell is the author of the acclaimed novel The View from Delphi which deals with the struggle for equality in pre-civil rights Mississippi, his home state. Odell grew up in the Jim Crow South and became involved in the civil rights movement in college. He holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology and has been active in human resource development for over 30 years.

The reading is free and open to everyone. Co-sponsored by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and The Gnu’s Room. 

                                                                                        

Immigration Film Series Concludes with "Harvest of Shame"

Harvest of Shame, a film narrated and produced by Edward Murrow, will be the eighth and final installment of the film series on immigration Tuesday, April 24, at 7 p.m. at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, located at 540 E. Thach Ave. Victor Villanueva, professor and head of Auburn's English department, will lead discussion. 

Harvest of Shame is among the most famous television documentaries of all time. This 1960 expose on the plight of migrant workers resonated deeply for a nation unfamiliar with such brutally honest depictions of living conditions that as Murrow remarks, “wrong the dignity of man.”

The event is sponsored by the Auburn University Latin American Studies Center for Community Connections, the College of Liberal Arts Global Citizenship Project, the departments of Foreign Languages and Literatures, English and Political Science, as well as AUUF and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts.