Promoting Writers, Engaging Readers

Save These Dates!

April 1, 2010
Competition Deadline
The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society will began accepting manuscripts for the 2010 William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition on January 30. The final deadline for submissions has been changed to April 1 to allow more time for judging and for early notification of winners and also finalists who may wish to attend Words & Music, 2010.
The competition guidelines have been revised significantly for 2010 and are now posted on the web, along with the new entry form, so be sure to review guidelines before submitting. Click Here for guidelines. Click Here to download 2010 entry form.

Libris III, Ron Pincus, who was awarded the Faulkner Society's 2009 ALIHOT (A Legend In His Own Time) for Community Service, is shown here with his muse, Thalia III, Anne Simms Pincus, at the third annual meeting of the Krewe of Libris. Ron and Anne costumed as the late Earl Long, Governor of Louisiana, and his mistress, exotic dancer Blaze Starr.

April 4, 2010
Krewe of Libris
4:30 to 6:30 p. m.
The fourth annual meeting of the Krewe of Libris, which had been scheduled for February 9 at the Cabildo, has been postponed. The decision was made to postpone the event when the New Orleans Saints parade for the same night was announced. We decided not to buck Saints fever, as persons desiring to attend the Libris event would find it near impossible to get to the Cabildo and, besides, we all want to participate in welcoming the Saints back to our city after their victory in the Superbown Sunday. And we do believe they will be victorious, in spite of David Letterman's corny, unfounded prediction on his February 1st show that the Colts will beat the Saints. What does he know about football? For that matter, what does he know about late night talk-talk! Bless you Boys. The Krewe of Libris will be cheering you on to victory Sunday and we will be on the streets for the parade, shouting for the conquering kings of our hearts:
Hail, Saints!

The Krewe will meet instead on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, April 4 with a finale to the glorious day's festivities. Details will be posted shortly

May 9, 2010
Meet The Author: Barry Gifford
The event will take place on Sunday afternoon, May 9 from 3:00 to 6:00 p. m. Free to the public, the event will include food and wine. Advance reservations are required. Venue to be announced. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the publication of Barry Gifford’s international bestseller Wild at Heart and the film adaptation by director David Lynch, which won the Cannes Palme d’Or, all of Gifford's works encompassing the saga of Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune, “the Romeo and Juliet of the South” will be published in a special collector's volume: Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels. The seven novels and novellas included are: Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango (also made into a feature film), Sailor’s Holiday, Sultans of Africa, Consuelo’s Kiss, Bad Day for the Leopard Man, and The Imagination of the Heart. For more on this entertaining writer, Click Here!

June 12, 2010
Juleps in June
Tentative date for the Faulkner Society's annual gala fundraiser and overture to the summer season, Juleps in June, 2010, is Friday, June 12. The time will be 7 to 10 p. m. Details as to venue, music, and chef will be announced in March. Ticket prices will be $125 per person. Juleps will be served in traditional Julep cups engraved with Juleps in June, 2010, favors for the event.

August 29, 2010
My New Orleans:
Katrina Anniversary Observance
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Sunday, August 29th, the Faulkner Society will present readings of Katrina related literature interspersed with music. Details will be announced in June.
Among featured authors will be Ellis Anderson, whose new book

will be published by the University of Mississippi Press in August. Ellis, a designer, musician, and civic activist, grew up in Charlotte, NC, then migrated to New Orleans in pursuit of her artistic muse, including the creation of original jewelry, which she sold in a Royal Street boutique. She resided in the French Quarter for two decades before moving full time to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1996. Writing has remained her primary passion and Anderson’s work has been published in various regional venues, including Southern Cultures.  Her essays have garnered several awards, including first place runner-up in the 2006 Faulkner/Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.  She was also the recipient of a Mississippi Arts Commission Fellowship for Literary Excellence (2007).  Her book Under Surge, Under Siege: The Odyssey of Bay St. Louis and Katrina, details her eye-witness account of Katrina’s fury and three years of the storm’s aftermath in her close-knit community.  It is being published by University Press of Mississippi and will be released in August, 2010. An excerpt will appear on the web site in February when we complete and post the first on-line edition of The Double Dealer.

September 15, 2010
BIG READ Kickoff Event
The Faulkner Society will apply for a new BIG READ grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts. Assuming our application is approved, the Society will kick off its 2010 BIG READ project on
Wednesday, September 15 with an Orientation program for participating teachers and librarians.

September 25, 2010
Happy Birthday, Mr. Faulkner!
The Faulkner Society will celebrate the 113th birthday anniversary of our namesake, Nobel Laureate William Faulkner, who wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, while living on Pirate's Alley in 1925. Details will be announced in July.

November 17, 2010
Master Class for Creative Writing Students
Special programming for high school students will include the 2010 Master Class for Students and Tim O'Brien has been invited to be principal speaker for that event.
The 2009 Master Class featured Edgar Award winning mystery novelist, Julie Smith, who also spoke at Words & Music, 2009. Her excellent analysis of Dashiell Hammett's classic noir private eye novel, The Maltese Falcon, which was the ground-breaking, precedent setting work for subsequent detective story writers, has been given to the Society for publication. Click Here to read it! The Faulkner Society presented multiple programs during its NEA funded project, The Maltese Falcon BIG READ, which focused on Dashiell Hammett, who with such contemporaries as Raymond Chandler, introduced noir novels to the world of writers and readers. Teachers who wish to bring their students to the 2010 Master Class should e-mail us at Faulkhouse@aol.com for details.


Hotel Monteleoneat 200 Royal Street will once again be the primary venue for Words & Music. Hotel Monteleone, a literary treasure, enters its second decade in 2010 as the only hotel in New Orleans designated as a national literary landmark. For more on this literary landmark hotel, visit:
HotelMonteleone.com

November 18-21, 2010
Words & Music
A Literary Feast in New Orleans
Those who register prior to July 1 will receive a discount on any registration package. Groups of 25 or more persons will receive a group discount. Click Here for details. July 1 is the deadline for Louisiana students to apply for scholarship participation in Words & Music, 2010. Students approved for scholarships must serve as volunteers for a minimum of three days prior to Words & Music and one day during Words & Music. September 25th is the deadline for writers who wish their work to be critiqued during Words & Music to register and submit their work. Guidelines for submissions for critique can be found by clicking here on: Words & Music.

Faulkner - Wisdom Competition

New Orleans author Barb Johnson Scores Again!
Barb Johnson, whose first book of fiction—More of This World or Maybe Another—was published by Harper Perrenial in 2009, has been named one of the three finalists in the fiction category for the Barnes & Noble "Discover New Great Writer" Awards. The announcement was posted today (February 2, 2010). Other finalists are Victor Lodato for Mathilda Savitch and C. E. Morgan for All the Living (both published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux) . The winners in each category, fiction and nonfiction, receive a $10,000 prize and a full year of additional promotion from Barnes & Noble. Second-place finalists receive $5,000, and third-place finalists, $2,500. Congratulations, Barb! Ms. Johnson, who for many years has been a preliminary round reader for the William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, last year was the final round judge for the Short Story Category, selecting Julie Chagi of Scotts Valley, CA as winner for her manuscript, The Camel. Barb has been a carpenter in New Orleans for more than 20 years. In 2008 she received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. While there, she won a grant from the Astraea Foundation, Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and Washington Square’s short story competition.  In 2009, she became the fifth recipient of A Room of Her Own foundation’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom. Her book is a collection of short stories. In addition to judging the short story competion, she also was a member of the 2008 and 2009 faculties for Words & Music. For more on this extraordinary new talent, see the story on her by Book Editor Susan Larson, which appeared on October 21st in The Times-Picayune and can be found at NOLA.com.

Eight Good Reasons to Enter the 2010
William Faulkner -William Wisdom Creative
Writing Competition:
Eight New Success Stories from Winners
and Finalists of Other Years.
The Faulkner Society has been very successful at selecting finalists who meet the key competition guideline, "ready for publication," and helping winners and finalists find agents and publishers. The proof lies in how many of our winners and finalists go on to be published and receive national recognition for their work.

C. Robert Holloway was a short list finalist for his novella, Wretched Excess, a series of nine linked short stories, in the 2009 Faulkner - Wisdom Competition. The book has been published and may be ordered through Faulkner House Books, (504) 586-1609. C. Robert, as he prefers to be called, has worked as a designer in films, TV, Commercials, Music Videos, Opera and Theatre.  His production design for Two Soldiers, the film based on a Faulkner short story, is credited for helping it win the 2004 Academy Award. The New Orleans premiere for the film was hosted by the Faulkner Socety during Words & Music festivities. Because of the relevent subject matter, the Society plans to rescreen Two Soldiers at Words & Music, 2010. The screening will follow a discussion of Faulkner's first novel, Soldiers' Pay, a story of the trauma of re-entering American life upon returning from from WWI. C. Robert will be a member of the faculty for Words & Music, 2010.
C. Robert’s first novel, The Unauthorized Letters of Oscar Wilde, won the coveted Hemingway Prize and a brace of laudatory reviews along with invitations to speak at University of Bologna, the University of Adelaide, UCLA, USC, and the One Institute in Los Angeles. My Letters from Ludwig, Holloway’s second novel, published in 2004, received glowing reviews and “begrudging acknowledgement from a smattering of Bavarian bureaucrats.” His screenplay, Jean Lafitte, Pirate & Patriot, won the Blazing Quill and Gotham Film Festival Awards in 2008. While writing Dancing to Tchaikovsky, the final novel in his trilogy about gay men of genius, he took time off to write Wretched Excess, which, he promises. offer "equal opportunity offense to a wide spectrum of society."  Between design jobs, Holloway researches, writes and waits on his cat, Charlie, at his circa 1820s garçonnière in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans. For more on the wickedly entertaining Wretched Excess, Click Here.

Rob Magnuson Smith won the Society’s Gold Medal for Novel in the 2004 competition for  his debut novel The Gravedigger.  The novel will be published by the University of New Orleans Press in September.  Rob was raised in England and Oregon. His short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Fiction International, Inkwell Magazine, The Greensboro Review, Notes from the Underground, and The Reader (UK).  He currently divides his time between San Francisco and Norwich, England, where he is the 2009 - 10 David Higham Scholar at the University of East Anglia. Rob will be a member of  the 2010 faculty for Words & Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans. Stewart O'Nan, whose debut novel Snow Angels won the Society first Gold Medal for Novel and who has since had 16 books of fiction published, including Names of the Dead and Prayers for the Living, says of Rob's book:

The Gravedigger is a wry, soulful glimpse of how one good but lonely man's quiet existence is turned upside down by a late and unexpected love. Rob Magnuson Smith paints a funny, sad, gentle yet ferocious portrait of village life.

Susan Schoenberger, who won the gold medal for best novel in 2006 for her manuscript, Intercession, has sold her novel to Guidepost Books and is working on preparing the manuscript with her editor at the publishing house, Linda Guzzardi. The book is scheduled for publication in the Spring of 2011 under a new title: A Watershed Year. Susan has been a journalist since 1984 at various newspapers, including The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, where she now works as a part-time copy editor. Her articles and essays have appeared in many publications, most including in the Courant's Sunday magazine. Her short stories have appeared in Inkwell and the Village Rambler. This is her first novel. Susan lives in West Hartford with her husband and three children.

Caroline Kellems, who runs a large coffee plantation and coffee export operation in Guatemala, has placed in the competition. In 2008, at Words & Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans, Caroline was signed by literary agent Deborah Grosvenor, who has been a member of the Words & Music faculty since 1997, when the Society created the festival, and literary editor Pat Walsh of Macadam Cage expressed strong interest in purchasing her novel, The Coffee Diary. At Words & Music, 2009, the deal was concluded. Caroline is shown below with Pat and Deborah signing the contract. The novel is expected to be published next year.










Kathleen George, whose latest mystery novel is Odds, has been nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award, among the most prestigious of all writing prizes and the most prestigious prize for novels of mystery.  Kathy was first runner-up for the Faulkner Society’s gold medal for novel the first year we awarded a novel prize.  Stewart O’Nan won the prize that year.  Both of their careers have taken off since then. Ironically, they were colleagues. Both were teaching at the University of Pittsburg at the time. Kathy still lives and teaches in Pittsburg and she has just learned that she will be editing the new anthology, Pittsburg Noir.  Kathy was a member of the 2009 faculty for Words & Music, participating in two round table discussions, “How to write a compelling mystery” and “Tough times inspire tough literature.”  Entertainment Weekly said in its review of Odds: "If anyone's writing better police thrillers than George, I don't know who it is." Characters in the book include a pair of memorably determined children. For more on this talented writer, Click Here!

We've good news from another Faulkner - Wisdom competition finalist, who also has a book focusing on two unforgettable children.

Randy Susan Meyers has just published her novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, which is now available in bookstores and being favorably reviewed. Following are a couple of review excerpts.

Randy Susan Meyers’s sensitive story about the legacy of domestic violence is painful to read at times, but unforgettable. Randy Susan Meyers delivers a clear-eyed, insightful story about domestic violence and survivor’s guilt in The Murderer’s Daughters.  It’s an impressively executed novel, disturbing and convincing.
—The Boston Globe

Lulu and Merry, ages ten and six, respectively, live with parents for whom marriage is a permanent battleground. One summer day in 1971, their father fatally stabs their mother in their Brooklyn apartment.  Much like Janet Fitch's White Oleander or Jacqueline Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean, her book takes readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Readers, get out your handkerchief and prepare to care.
—Library Journal

Joan Frank, who has placed in the Society's competition, has just published a new story collection, In Envy Country, which has won the 2010 Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. The book was released this month by the University of Notre Dame Press. Joan is the author of the novels Miss Kansas City, winner of the Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and The Great Far Away, finalist for a Northern California Book Award in Fiction. Her first story collection, Boys Keep Being Born, was a finalist for both the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Fiction Award and the Paterson Fiction Award. Her Authors' Guild website, www.joanfrank.org, offers more book and bio information.

Ellis Anderson, who was first runner-up in the Society's 2006 essay competition, expanded her essay to book length and it will be published in August by the University Press of Mississippi as Under Surge, Under Siege: The Odyssey of Bay St. Louis and Katrina. The book details her eye-witness account of Katrina’s fury and three years of the storm’s aftermath in her close-knit community. For more on Ellis and her work, look to your left under Save the Date. Ellis will read and sign at our Katrina remembrance, Sunday, August 29.

To order the books of Randy, Kathy, and Joan, call Faulkner House Books at (504) 524-2940 or e-mail your order to faulkhouse@aol.com. Current paid Society members can purchase their books at a 10 per cent discount. Please mention that you have taken a new or renewed an existing membership since September 25, 2009, the beginning of our Faulkner Society calendar of events. You may pre-order Ellis's book in early August.

Winners of the William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, 2009
Are Announced.
The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society presented its 2009 competition winners at the 20th annual meeting of the Society preceding the gala celebration Faulkner for All during Words & Music on November 21, 2009. CLICK HERE to
review winners and their judges.

Words & Music:
A Literary Feast in New Orleans
The Faulkner Society's annual festival and writers' conference, Words & Music, 2009 opened on Thursday, November 19th with a welcome breakfast session at Muriel's Restaurant at Jackson Square, a favorite of French Quarter residents and visitors. 2009 theme was: The Mysteries of Literature & Life with a sub-theme of: A Walk on the Noir Side of Literature and Life, a nod to The Maltese Falcon BIG READ events which were an important part of Words & Music, 2009.

Highlights included a conversation between bestselling author of eight hit books of noir fiction, including Mystic River and Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane, and the extraordinary Otto Penzler, mystery author, edtior, and publisher and owner of the famous store for mystery buffs, The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan.Lehane and Pensler were part of the Salute to The Maltese Falcon BIG READ on Friday, November 20. They appeared with Richard Layman, author of Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade and five other books about Dashiell Hammett and his work.

THE BIG READ
The Faulkner Society's first BIG READ project, revolved around F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsy, featured such well known authorities on Fitzgerald as Scott Donaldson, noted biographer and author of the Fitzgerald book, Fool for Love. He was joined by Kirk Curnutt, Vice President of the National Fitzgerald Society. The Faulkner Society once was again awarded a BIG READ grant in 2009 to focus on Dashiell Hammett's classic noir novel, The Maltese Falcon. Special guests for BIG READ events during Words & Music included Richard Layman, an important Hammett biographer; Dennis Lehane, author of eight international bestsellers in the noir tradition, including Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day; and the man who knows all there is to know about mysteries, Otto Penzler, mystery writer, editor, and publisher, and owner of Manhattan's Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan. For more on the The BIG READ, visit www.neabigread.org. The NEA projects in this program are presented in cooperation with Arts Midwest and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Faulkner Society has applied for a third BIG READ grant for 2010. The focus book of our grant application is Tim O'Brien's unusual war book, The Things They Carried. The author has been invited to participate in three sessions of BIG READ programming during
Words & Music if our planned BIG READ programming is funded. If funding is approved by NEA and its partners, Arts Midwest and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Things They Carried BIG READ will open with an orientation for teachers and librarians on September 15, with teachig of the book to begin on October 1. The teacher orientation will be followed by a kickoff for media, public officials, and the general reading public on
October 10.