AIW Pubspeak: David Taylor, Soul of a People, Thursday, April 29, 2010
David Taylor’s Soul of a People is the story of writers rescued from joblessness by the Federal Writers’ Project. It’s a compelling drama of people caught when a soaring economy crashes and an account of some of America’s best writers—before they were famous—turned loose on the landscape with a government mandate to “hold up a mirror to America.”
John Cheever was a high school dropout living on raisins and buttermilk. Richard Wright was 28 with a seventh-grade education and a passion for books. Anzia Yezierska and Zora Neale Hurston had each already published novels and more – only to be hit hard by the Depression. The WPA Writers’ Project offered them a lifeline: it hired unemployed writers to document life in America for a series of state travel guides. The WPA writers walked streets, interviewed passersby, described landmarks and landscapes, recorded folklore and folk music, and compiled information about how Americans lived and how America looked.
Through striking images, firsthand accounts, and new discoveries from personal collections, Soul of a People brings it all to unruly life: the writers, their friendships, the hardships, the political battles, and the outcome. You’ll see Florida’s Gulf Coast through the eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, and oil-flush Oklahoma City through the eyes of Jim Thompson and Louis LaMoore, who had not yet become Louis L’Amour, one of the bestselling authors of Western novels of all time. From Nobel Prize winners to barroom brawlers, Soul of a People traces lives drawn surprisingly together and captures the voices and spirit of America at a pivotal moment, and their profound effect on our culture.
David A. Taylor is the author of the award-winning books Ginseng, the Divine Root (Algonquin, 2006), Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America (Wiley, 2009), and a fiction collection, Success: Stories (WWPH, 2008). His work has appeared in Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Village Voice, The American Scholar, Outside, and elsewhere, and can be found at www.davidataylor.com. He has written and co-produced documentary films for PBS, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel, including Soul of a People, nominated for a 2010 Writers Guild award. He teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Member cost is $10 and nonmember cost is $30. Reservations are required. To RSVP, call (202) 775-5150, or send e-mail to rsvp@amerindywriters.org. Please mention the event for which you are responding and your membership status.
Event Details: Thursday, April 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m., food and beverage orders from 6:30 p.m. La Madeleine 7607 Old Georgetown Road Bethesda, MD 20814 Wheelchair accessible Metro: Bethesda, on the Red Line
REGISTER NOW!
- AIW Member Regular Registration Price: $10.00
- Nonmember Regular Registration Price: $30.00
After you make your selection, the shopping cart will appear for you to check out.
Comments on this entry are closed.