Come hear established writers discuss their creative processes and the business aspects of making a living at one’s art.
On Saturday, May 22, from noon to 1:00 p.m., AIW is hosting the panel The Writer’s Life: A Report from the Field, featuring documentary film maker David Taylor; novelist C.M. Mayo; journalist Alan Elsner; and memoirist Kevin Quirk, in a lively discussion about their lives as professional working writers. The panel will be moderated by Jessie Seigel, an associate editor at the Potomac Review.
The panel is one of many events at Lit Artlantic, a regional three-day festival celebrating cross-currents in the arts with panels, readings, a film-screening, children’s theater workshops, musical performances, a young songwriter’s showcase, and HIVE, a resource fair to inform the public about local and regional organizations whose work supports artists and the art of storytelling.
The festival will run the evenings of May 20 and 21, and from noon to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 22, at The Writer’s Center, located at 4508 Walsh Street in Bethesda, just a few blocks south of the Red Line’s Bethesda Metro stop. All events at the festival are free. For more information on scheduled events at the festival, call The Writer’s Center at (301) 654-8664 or visit their web site at www.writer.org.
Additional information on the AIW panel:
Film maker David Taylor co-wrote and co-produced the film Soul of A People: Writing America’s Story, about the country as seen by people on the WPA Writers’ Project, which aired on the Smithsonian Channel and was nominated for a 2010 Writers Guild award. His companion book, Soul of a People, was named a Best Book of 2009 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In addition, Taylor has written for other television documentaries, The Washington Post, The American Scholar, and Oxford American, and is the author of the adventurous cultural history, Ginseng, the Divine Root, and a collection of short fiction, Success: Stories.
C.M. Mayo is the author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, an historical novel based on the true story and named one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2009. She is also the author of a widely-lauded travel memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico, and Sky Over El Nido, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. An avid translator of Mexican poetry and fiction, Mayo is, in addition, the editor of an anthology of Mexican writing, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press), which Mexican poet and critic David Huerta has called “one of the outstanding contemporary works on this country.”
Alan Elsner has had a 30-year career with Reuters News Service including stints in Jerusalem, London, Stockholm, and Washington. He has been the agency’s Chief Political Correspondent, National Correspondent, and Diplomatic Correspondent, and currently serves as a senior editor. Elsner was a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Romania where he advanced the cause of a free media in an emerging democracy. He is the author of Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America’s Prisons, a dramatic exposé praised by the late Senator Edward Kennedy who called it “a wake-up call for federal, state, and local governments across America.” In addition, Elsner is the author of the novels, The Nazi Hunter and Romance Language, and the memoir, Guarded by Angels.
Kevin Quirk is co-author of the new book Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life (HCI Books). This inspirational book presents 25 first-person accounts of passengers and first responders from the January 2009 plane crash and rescue that riveted the world. Quirk also is the author of Not Now, Honey, I’m Watching the Game (Simon & Schuster/Fireside), the first book to explore the impact of sportsaholism on individual lives, relationships, and our culture. Through his service, Memoirs for Life, he also serves as a ghostwriter and editor.
Jessie Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, and an AIW board member. Her fiction has appeared in Ontario Review, Gargoyle, Élan, and the anthology, Electric Grace. Her poetry has appeared in Response-A Contemporary Jewish Review, and has been featured bi-weekly in The Boston Jewish Times. Seigel was a semi-finalist in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Contest for a novel, and received an honorable mention for the Washington Prize, as well as fellowships from the Washington, D.C. Commission of the Arts and Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ireland’s Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
Comments on this entry are closed.