Prairie Schooner News

Following recent online efforts such as the launch of the podcast series Air Schooner and the cross-cultural e-zine Fusion, the University of Nebraska’s internationally-recognized literary journal, Prairie Schooner, will continue its innovative trend this June by making its print issues available on Amazon Kindle starting with its Summer 2012 issue.

This transition to Kindle puts Prairie Schooner in company with top literary magazines, such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker, that are available in an electronic format. A current issue of Prairie Schooner on Kindle will cost $6.99. (A current print issue costs $9.)

Under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes, a recently-appointed Guggenheim Fellow, the spectacular Summer 2012 issue features some of the biggest names in contemporary literature, including poetry by Sharon Olds, John Kinsella, Robert Gibb, and Maxine Kumin, as well as fiction from Nancy Welch and the late Gerry Shapiro.

Marianne Kunkel, Managing Editor of the journal, says, “Debuting Prairie Schooner on Kindle does not signal a move away from offering our journal in hard copy; instead, we see the digital version of PS as an exciting supplement to our print tradition, which dates back more than 85 years.”

As more and more people prefer reading on e-readers, the Schooner will continue to offer its journal to readers and subscribers in a user-friendly format. Visit the Prairie Schooner website for a link to buy the Kindle issue on Amazon, or download the issue to your mobile device via the Kindle app.

Every summer since 2001, the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference has brought to Lincoln some of the nation’s most acclaimed authors. The conference offers weekend and a week-long curriculum, as well as a number of events free and open to the public. This year they are spotlighting successful graduates of UNL’s creative writing PhD program: Lee Martin, emily danforth, and Dave Madden, as well as former Nebraskans Carleen Brice, Terese Svoboda, and Meghan Daum, all having achieved national success as authors.

In addition to the workshops, the Conference features an evening with Terese Svoboda, translator of Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth: Nuer Song, celebrating Nebraskan-Nuer culture; Guggenheim-winning poet Kwame Dawes discussing his new appointment with the Prairie Schooner literary journal; and many other readings, discussions, and panels.

The faculty includes:
• Lee Martin (Pulitzer Prize finalist for the novel The Bright Forever);
• Carleen Brice (whose novel Orange Mint and Honey was made into the NAACP Image Award-winning film Sins of the Mother);
• Terese Svoboda (poet, novelist, filmmaker and native Nebraskan);
• emily m. danforth (author of the acclaimed YA novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post);
• Meghan Daum (author of the memoir Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House; columnist for the LA Times; has contributed to This American Life, the New Yorker, Vogue, Travel and Leisure, and many more publications and broadcasts);
… as well as poets Stacey Waite, Aracelis Girmay, and Kwame Dawes; nonfiction writer Dave Madden; and fiction writer/poet/memoirist Michelle Tea.

The Nebraska Summer Writers Conference is part of the creative writing program of UNL’s English Department, in the College of Arts and Sciences.

WHEN: June 9-15, 2012
WHERE: University of Nebraska-Lincoln, city campus
WHAT: Creative writing workshops (registration required); also free/open readings & panel discussions (no registration required); faculty includes renowned authors, novelists, poets.
WEB: See website for schedule, online registration, more info about sessions, and faculty bios: http://nebraskawriters.unl.edu MEDIA CONTACT: Timothy Schaffert (tschaffert2@unl.edu) or Sarah Chavez (nswc@unl.edu); 402-472-3067

Kwame Dawes, professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He is among 181 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada who were selected for the honor from nearly 3,000 applicants.

The fellowship will support his work on the poem cycle, "August: A Quintet," based on the work of August Wilson, an American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner whose work illustrated the African-American experience in the 20th century.

Dawes called the award a tremendous honor, adding that he's grateful to all the writers who wrote in support of his selection.

"I have long regarded the Guggenheim Fellowship as a clear indication of the quality and significance of the work of American artists and artists from around the world. I waited until I thought I had a fit project before applying, and I am glad I did," he said.

He's especially grateful because the fellowship acknowledges the importance of the work it will support, he said.

Dawes joined the UNL faculty as a Chancellor's Professor in 2011 and took the helm of Prairie Schooner, UNL's quarterly literary magazine that for the past 85 years has published the fiction, poetry, essays and reviews of talented writers of all levels. He is the author of 16 poetry collections, three works of fiction, and several anthologies, produced plays, and books of literary criticism and aesthetics, not counting forthcoming works. His long list of accomplishments includes a 2009 Emmy Award for a multimedia documentary project on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed based on distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from others is the wide range in interest, age, geography and institutions of those it selects. The 2012 fellows come from 54 disciplines and 77 different academic institutions.

Since its establishment in 1925, the foundation has granted fellowships to more than 17,300 individuals. Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer and other prizewinners appear on the rolls of the Foundation's fellows. Among them are Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Paul Samuelson, Martha Graham, Philip Roth, Derek Walcott, James Watson and Eudora Welty. The last UNL scholar to win a Guggenheim Fellowship was chemist Xiao Cheng Zeng in 2004.

Dawes will join other 2012 fellows at a reception next month in New York to accept his award.

-Jean Ortiz Jones

Prairie Schooner and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department are excited to welcome Macedonian poet and translator Nikola Madzirov as the Prairie Schooner Visiting Writer from April 18-19. Madzirov, according to the Tottenville Review, is “a first-rate poet who deserves worldwide attention,” and Der Spiegel says his poems “are similar in quality to the poems of the Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer. They are genuine and open.” Born in Strumica, Macedonia, to a family of Balkan Wars refugees, his award-winning poems have been translated into thirty languages. BOA Editions published his first selection of poetry in the US, Remnants of Another Age, in 2011. According to Professor Kwame Dawes, Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner, “Few poets I know manage to contain in a few lines such lucid and unsettling images that never let us off the hook for an instance, as well Nikolai Madzirov.”

While visiting Lincoln, Madzirov will lecture on Balkan literature and translation in the Bailey Dudley Library of Andrews Hall at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18. This lecture is free and open to the public. On Thursday, April 19, at 10 a.m., Madzirov will be interviewed for Prairie Schooner’s Podcast series, Air Schooner, and he will conduct a one-hour translation workshop with UNL students and faculty in the afternoon. At 7:00 p.m. on Thursday evening, Madzirov will give a free, open-to-the-public feature reading at the Great Plains Art Museum (12th & Q Streets).

In the foreword to Madzirov’s Remnants of Another Age, poet and translator Carolyn Forché writes, “Madzirov calls himself ‘an involuntary descendant of refugees,’ referring to his family's flight from the Balkan Wars a century ago: his surname derives from mazir or majir, meaning ‘people without a home.’ The ideas of shelter and of homelessness, of nomadism, and spiritual transience serves as a palimpsest in these Remnants.” The recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program, Madzirov has been awarded numerous international literary prizes, such as the Hubert Burda European Poetry Award. Professor Dawes added, “He is a splendid poet whose reputation is growing rapidly and deservedly. Beyond that he is one of the gentlest and kindest people I know. Our students, faculty and community will be enjoying a tremendous presence during his visit. I am so pleased that we managed to get him here.”