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McCullers Center Re-Launches Friends Group
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The McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians has recently re-launched its Friends of the Carson McCullers Center as part of a fundraising initiative to support the Center's many programs as well as its two facilities, the Smith-McCullers House, Carson's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, and the Carson McCullers House, her adult home in Nyack, New York. Those signing up as "Friends" of the Center will know that their financial support is helping to make possible everything the McCullers Center does: hosting literary events in Columbus and Nyack, writer / musician / artist / scholar residency programs in both houses, Honors Student internship residencies, CSU Study Away and Faculty Residency programs in Nyack, and more. Recently the McCullers Center received several generous donations, including an anonymous gift of $10,000 from one of its Advisory Board members, and a gift of $100,000 from a New York-based family foundation, in honor of which the foyer of the Nyack house will be named. McCullers Center director Nick Norwood expressed his appreciation for these wonderful gifts, which he said constituted a promising start for the re-launched Friends group. Anyone interested in becoming a Friend of the Center can contact Nick at mccullerscenter@columbusstate.edu or Rex Whiddon, Associate VP for Leadership Philanthropy, at whiddon_rex@columbusstate.edu.
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McCullers Center Co-Hosting the Carson McCullers Literary Festival with Chattahoochee Valley Libraries
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The McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, partnering with the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries, will present the Carson McCullers Literary Festival to celebrate Carson's 106th birthday, February 17-18, 2023. The festival, to be held at the Riverside Theatre Complex on CSU's RiverPark Campus, will feature graphic memoirist Thi Bui--whose book The Best That We Could Do is a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection--and Natalia Temesgen, CSU creative writing professor whose recent work for television includes Dear White People, Julia, and Reasonable Doubt.
The Festival will kickoff Friday, February 17, at 7:30 p.m., with a reading and book signing by Thi Bui on the Main Stage of the Theatre Complex. Later that evening, the poet and actor Jonathan Samuel Eddy will conduct a poetry slam for high school poets.
Saturday at 9:00 a.m., Thi Bui will conduct a master class from the Main Stage. At 10:00 a.m., Natalia Temesgen will introduce a screening from her television work, which will be followed by a Q&A with Temesgen and writer/filmmaker Anna Salinas. The Festival will conclude with the awards ceremony for this year's Carson McCullers Literary Awards.
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McCullers Center Hosts Readings by Award-Winning Writers
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The McCullers Center presented a Georgia Poetry Circuit reading by National Book Award finalist Allison Adele Hedge Coke on Friday, November 11, at the Bo Bartlett Center on Columbus State's RiverPark Campus. The reading, which was free and open to the public, was the first in-person, live event in the Georgia Poetry Circuit the McCullers Center has hosted since before the pandemic.
On Tuesday, November 14, the Center hosted a reading by 17th Annual Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow in Writing, novelist Snowden Wright, in the Auditorium of the Columbus Public Library. It was one of many annual writing fellow readings in which the McCullers Center partnered with the Columbus Library to host the event, and the first time since the pandemic that it could be held in-person.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s most recent honors include her 2021 induction into the Texas Institute of Letters, the 2021 AWP George Garrett Award, a 2021-2022 Legacy Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council, and the 2022-2023 UCR Dean’s Mellon Professorship. An American Book Award-winning author and former Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow, she is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing for the University of California Riverside, where she directs the UCR Writers Week Festival and is affiliated faculty (narrative medicine) for the UCR School of Medicine. Her eighth authored book is Look at This Blue (Coffee House Press, 2022) and tenth edited book is Effigies III. At the Bo Bartlett Center, Hedge Coke read from her book Look at This Blue, a finalist for this year's National Book Award, then answered questions from the audience.
Snowden Wright is the author of the novel American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month, selection for Barnes & Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” program, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and NPR Favorite Book of the Year. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review.
Wright was awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the 2018 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and his debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, won the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars’ Graywolf Prize. Recipient of proclamations from Batesville and Meridian, Mississippi, he has been granted residencies and fellowships by Yaddo, Escape to Create, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Stone Court, Monson Arts, and the Hambidge Center. Wright lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi. His third novel is forthcoming from HarperCollins. At the Smith-McCullers House this fall he worked on his fourth. which is based on the life of legendary Hollywood actress Tallulah Bankhead and which he read from at the Columbus Library, along with a passage from his previously published novel American Pop.
The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians has sponsored CSU's participation in the Georgia Poetry Circuit for 18 years, and during that time, in addition to giving readings and making appearances on the CSU campus, visiting poets have stayed at the Smith-McCullers House and met with students and faculty there.
Named in honor of Carson's parents, The Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers was inspired by McCullers's experience at the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Vermont and, especially, the Yaddo Arts Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. To honor the contribution of these residency fellowships to McCullers's work, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians awards fellowships for writers to spend time in McCullers's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The fellowships are intended to afford the writers in residence uninterrupted time to dedicate to their work, free from the distractions of daily life and other professional responsibilities.
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Renovations at the Smith-McCullers House are Underway
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This fall the McCullers Center embarked on a complete renovation of the Smith-McCullers House, Carson's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. Because this year's Writing Fellow Snowden Wright was due to arrive in September, the Center decided to divide the renovation into two phases, with Phase 1 comprising only the back portion of the house--the visiting writer's bedroom with en suite bathroom, the stairs leading to the bedroom, the kitchen, and the breakfast room. The renovations entailed replacing the flooring in those areas--which was not original to the house--with LVP, matching as closely as possible the stained hardwood floors in the upper bedrooms, hallway, front and rear parlors. Other renovations include new fixtures in the en suite bathroom and a fresh coat of paint. Further renovations for those areas will include new cabinet doors in the kitchen and breakfast room and plantation shutters, which will also be installed throughout the rest of the house. The home's security system also got an upgrade.
On Tuesday, December 13, a team from Bonsai Fine Arts packed up all the artifacts in the Smith-McCullers House and moved them to the CSU Archives, where they will be safely stored until Phase 2 of the renovations are complete sometime in the spring. Those renovations are to begin in January.
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Images from Recent Moments
at the Carson McCullers Center
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McCullers Center Advisory Board Members and fundraising team at work in the Carson McCullers House in Nyack: L-R Jim Akin, Johanna Gurland, Rex Whiddon, Thornton Jordan, Joan Mertens, and Nick Norwood.
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Left: McCullers Center Advisory Board Member Thornton Jordan with one of the two reproductions of the charcoal study of Henry Varnum Poor's portrait of Carson McCullers. Dr. Jordan purchased the study and donated it to the Columbus Museum and had reproductions made for display in the McCullers Center's Nyack and Columbus homes. Right: Rex Whiddon, Thornton Jordan, Johanna Gurland, and Jim Akin in front of the Carson McCullers House in Nyack, NY.
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The Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over the Hudson River at night from the back garden of the Carson McCullers House in Nyack, NY.
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Archived Newsletters Now Available
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All of our past newsletters are now accessible on our website at www.mccullerscenter.org! Just click on the “Newsletter” tab and then choose the issue you want to read.
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The holidays are here. It’s been a busy season for the McCullers Center, and I feel strongly that I need to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to a number of people who have been particularly helpful and supportive of the Center’s many efforts and initiatives, starting with my Advisory Board. The contributions of this group are essential to our success, and I am most grateful for the members’ advice and service. The current board is made up of the following individuals:
Ann Gray Conger
Carlos Dews
Cathy Fussell
Susan Schley Gristina
Thornton F. Jordan
Joan R. Mertens
Florence Neal
Susan Perry
Natalia Temesgen
Sherry Wade
Rex Whiddon
I would also like to thank some specific individuals who have been actively involved in our fundraising and home-renovation efforts: Rex Whiddon, Catherine Trotter, and Rocky Kettering in the CSU Advancement Office; Johanna Gurland of Johanna Gurland Associates, our fundraising consultant; and Jim Akin, Executive Director of Foundation Properties. This group of people has formed itself into an effective team with the specific goal of helping the McCullers Center achieve both its short- and long-term goals. It is rewarding to me to see so many high-achieving individuals take up the cause, and again, on behalf of the McCullers Center and all its fans and supporters, I would like to express my gratitude for their commitment and efforts.
And to all others with an interest in Carson McCullers and the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, here’s wishing you a happy holidays!
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