Corinne and Victor Rice and Sherry Robbins to be honored with Just Buffalo Literary Center's Literary Legacy Awards.
Just Buffalo Literary Center, the 37-year-old institution dedicated to the creation and promotion of Western New York’s literary culture, will award its latest Literary Legacy Awards to three prominent Western New Yorkers today (Feb. 23) in Babeville’s Asbury Hall (341 Delaware Ave.).
The biennial awards ceremony and fundraising dinner will honor local poet and teaching artist Sherry Robbins and philanthropists Corinne and Victor Rice. Robbins, the author of the poetry collections "Snapshots of Paradise" and "Or, the Whale," has led thousands of creative writing workshops since she began to work with Just Buffalo in 1982. She was named New York State Teaching Artist of the Year in 2005.
Corinne and Victor Rice are longtime supporters of Just Buffalo’s popular and growing Babel reading series as well as the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Shaw Festival, Albright-Knox Art Gallery and many other local cultural and educational institutions. They’ve remained in Buffalo, a Just Buffalo release states, "because of a shared passion for the city and belief in its potential."
More information is available at www.justbuffalo.org or by calling 832-5400.
The mysteries and complexities of the human mind will be the focus of a two-day symposium this weekend in the Manny Fried Playhouse (255 Great Arrow Ave.). The series of events, collectively dubbed "Improvising Consciousness," will be co-produced by the University at Buffalo’s Intermedia Performance Studio and the Subversive Theatre Collective.
Through a series of interactive workshops and lectures, the studio, which collaborated with the Real Dream Cabaret in 2009 for an experimental production of "Woyzeck" and "Ubu Roi," will "explore the idea that that cognition -- our mental processes and the product of these processes -- may be an accident of history."
The symposium, led by UB media study professor Josephine Anstey, will touch on three vastly different theories of how the mind works -- one of which posits that until recently, "human beings had no consciousness but obeyed the voices of gods that they actually heard in their heads."
The free event requires participants to make reservations at ips.buffalo.edu/impcon. More information and a schedule of workshops is also at ips.buffalo.edu.
The News' Charity Vogel is hosting the monthly Buffalo News Book Club live chat with guests Vincent O'Neill from Irish Classical Theatre and Laurence Shine from Buffalo State. This month's News Book Club selection was James Joyce's "The Dead."
It’s time again for a "Big Night," Just Buffalo Literary Center’s monthly salon that’s out to unite local audiences for poetry, art, food and music in the Western New York Book Arts Center (468 Washington St.). The second program of the current "Big Night" season will get going at 8 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 19)with a reading from poet Anna Moschovakis, music from Malaria Control and readings from the recently released "Starlight Studios Anthology." Moschovakis has been collecting rave reviews for her most recent book of poetry, "You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake," out on Minneapolis-based Coffee House Press. Moschovakis’ wide-ranging poetry, according to the publisher, "incorporates Craigslist ads, technobabble, twentieth-century ethics texts, scientific research, autobiographical detail, and historical anecdote to present an engaging lyric analysis of the way we live now." The Starlight Studios anthology features a collection of poems and illustrations by 15 artists associated with the local arts organization, which helps people with developmental, neurological and learning disabilities create and sell their art. For more information on the event, call Just Buffalo Literary Center at 832-5400 or visit www.justbuffalo.org. -- Colin Dabkowski
I went on Tuesday -- Dipson Theatres' Bargain Night -- to see "Anonymous," the movie about the off-the-wall premise that Shakespeare's plays were written not by Shakespeare but by the Earl of Oxford.
It was beautiful to look at, if a little confusing here and there, and I thought it had some memorable scenes. I loved the scene near the end when the Earl of Oxford is dying and Ben Jonson -- a great poet in his own right, though you would not get that from the movie -- tells off the Earl's wife who all through the movie has been griping about all the writing he does.
"Madame," Ben Jonson says. "If we, and our civilization, and even our Queen are remembered at all, it will be because we lived in the age when he put ink to paper."
Thrilling! And I like the last scene in this preview, where you see the Earl of Oxford in his box, looking down on the stage.
So, all in all, yes, I liked "Anonymous." I will even go so far as to say I would like to see it again when I have not worked a long day beforehand and can keep more straight all the relationships and time warps.
What surprises me is how many critics and pundits absolutely hate this movie.
Jeff Simon, at our paper, was fair to the movie. He saw it as good entertainment, despite the flaws of the premise.
I get the idea "Anonymous" touches some kind of nerve among Shakespeare nerds, dramatizing this wackiness about the Earl of Oxford. I personally had never heard of that "theory" (I am afraid even to call it that because people seem so touchy). I had heard of the Christopher Marlowe theory, but not this one.
Apparently the people who believe this theory have a name. They are "Oxfordians." The people who hate the Oxfordians are afraid that this movie lends the theory legitimacy and people will exit the theater believing it.
They might have a point. "You totally leave believing the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays," one friend told me before I saw the movie.
But she was kidding (I think). I mean, I think most people will see it as a story -- a good story.
And if they don't, so what? We could do worse than having a lot of people running around brooding about whether or not Shakespeare wrote the Shakespeare plays. I mean, it beats people thinking about Lady Gaga or something, doesn't it? I am just saying.
I go through this kind of thing all the time, being the classical music critic. "Amadeus" was a fiction. Mozart was not like the idiot portrayed in "Amadeus." You could almost compare that to the treatment Shakespeare got in "Anonymous."
And yes, people who don't know better leave "Amadeus" saying, "I didn't know Mozart laughed like that." That was an actual quote I overheard the first time I saw the movie. It drove me crazy. But I'm over it. And, trust me, Mozart is too.
Just a couple weeks ago I saw "Mozart's Sister." That was also, let us say, an embroidery of the truth. And sure, there will be people leaving the theater going, "Wow, Mozart's sister was at least as good a composer as he was." I've got news for you, no, she wasn't. But it made for a darn good story.
Reading these rants against "Anonymous," I find myself saying exactly that. "It's a story!"
Then I started seeing what was bugging all these people doing the ranting.
They are all worked up over the "elitist" notion that only a nobleman could have written Shakespeare's plays. It's OK if Shakespeare did not write them -- what bothers them is the notion, however preposterous, that a nobleman did. Over and over they return to that. Until it turns into: How could a rich nobleman possibly write those plays? The idea! The very idea!
What we are seeing is a reverse snobbery. How dare anyone think a rich man could have any kind of feelings, any kind of humanity, any kind of poetry in his soul. It's sort of an "Occupy Wall Street" attitude.
I'm sick of it. I personally believe Shakespeare wrote his plays. And I am glad of it. I like Shakespeare -- his face, his name, his legend. Heck, he may even have been Catholic, and I like that too.
Today, the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance, a regional arts advocacy group formed last year in the wake of the county cultural funding crisis, released a statement reaffirming its mission to form a "united front" of regional arts groups. The statement follows (emphasis mine):
The Steering Committee members of the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance (GBCA) affirmed at a recent meeting that regardless of the upcoming County government election and its subsequent results the grassroots organization will continue its commitment to providing strong advocacy and support that focuses on bringing the arts and cultural communities of the Western New York region together as one united front. A significant part of these efforts will be to create a dedicated Erie County funding mechanism for the Arts.
GBCA spokesperson and Co-chair Randall Kramer stated, “This is not a political issue but speaks to how we envision our community in the future. The Arts need to team up with all sectors, government, business and public, to ensure the greatest possible results for our region.”
“We remain committed to have the entire cultural sector recognized for its importance to this region’s economy, quality of life, education and enjoyment; and we remain committed to securing proper investment for all the cultural organizations that make up this important sector,” Tod A.Kniazuk, the newly appointed executive director of the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, added.
On Friday, the long-germinating (and muchbuzzed-about) documentary "Buffalo Unsrcipted" will debut in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center in a program beginning at 6. We'll have an interview with filmmaker Jason Clement in Gusto on Friday. In the meantime, check out this teaser the "Unscripted" team put together to whet your appetite for the big screening:
Award-winning Jordanian-American fiction writer and memoirist Diana Abu-Jaber will read from and sign copies of her latest novel "Birds of Paradise" (W.W. Norton) at 7 this evening at Talking Leaves Books, 3158 Main St. in Buffalo.
It is a story of an upper-middle class Miami family torn apart by career choices and the ethical questions raised by their differing business and professional interests. The protagonist of "Birds of Paradise" is the family's runaway teenage daughter Felice, a young woman who drifts on the periphery of Miami's glamorous life, while risking homelessness and victimization in her own lifestyle. How this particular contemporary family reconciles -- set against the background and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's pre-New Orleans strike on South Florida in August 2005 -- displays Abu-Jaber's ability to create vivid characters and place them in a meaningful social context.
Abu-Jaber's novel “Crescent” won the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and an American Book Award. Her 2005 memoir, "The Language of Baklava," won the Northwest Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the James Beard Award for food-related writing.
A native of Syracuse who spent a portion of her childhood in Amman, Jordan, she was educated at the State University of New York at Oswego, the University of Windsor (Canada), and earned her Ph.D in English and Creative Writing at the University of Binghamton. She is now writer-in-residence at Portland State University in Washington and splits her time between Portland and Miami.
The Canisius College Contemporary Writers Series presents a reading by and discussion with Stewart O'Nan at 7:30 tonight (Thursday) in the Grupp Fireside Lounge of the college's Richard E. Winter Student Center, located on 80 Hughes St. in Buffalo. The event is free and open to the public.
O'Nan is the award-winning, Pittsburgh-based author of twelve novels, including “Snow Angels” (1994), “A Prayer for the Dying” (1999), “Last Night at the Lobster” (2007), “Songs for the Missing” (2008), and, most recently, “Emily, Alone”(Viking, 2011).
His best-known nonfiction books include “The Circus Fire” (2000) — based on the Hartford, Connecticut Circus Fire of 1944 — and “Faithful,” a book about the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series Championship season co-authored with Stephen King.
O'Nan, who once studied to be an aerospace engineer but went on to receive his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Cornell University, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for his debut collection of short stories "In the Walled City" (University of Pittsburgh Press).
His second novel "Snow Angels"(Doubleday, 1994) was adapted into motion picture by the same title by director David Gordon Green. Actors Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale starred in the film, which was distributed by Warner Independent Films and debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
While teaching at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in the mid 1990's, he compiled extensive research on Vietnam War memoirs and oral narratives that led to his 1996 novel "The Names of Dead."
In 1996, Granta Magazine included O'Nan in its list of the top twenty young American novelists.
His 2007 novel "Last Night at the Lobster," set in a New Britain, Connecticut Red Lobster restaurant on the last day of its existence in a local strip mall, anticipated the wave of "downsizing" and "New Depression" era fiction and non-fiction writing about working class life in America.
His most recent novel, "Emily, Alone" is a sequel to his 2002 novel "Wish You Were Here." It follows the diminishing world of 80 year old Emily Maxwell, a widow now living alone after a lifetime dedicated to family life in all its heartbreaking dignity and intimate minutia. How Emily reinvents her sense of identity--and finds some measure of grace--under these circumstances becomes the question that drives O'Nan's gritty domestic realism.
