Welcome, Mrs. Bush.

The Carson McCullers Center was honored to have as our guest today former First Lady Laura Bush, who is in town to deliver a presentation at a leadership conference.

"... the last Friday of August ..."

The first page of The Member of the Wedding:

It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid. In June the trees were bright dizzy green, but later the leaves darkened, and the town turned black and shrunken under the glare of the sun. At first Frankie walked around doing one thing and another. The sidewalks of the town were gray in the early morning and at night, but the noon sun put a glaze on them, so that the cement burned and glittered like glass. The sidewalks finally became too hot for Frankie’s feet, and also she got herself in trouble. She was in so much secret trouble that she thought it was better to stay at home – and at home there was only Berenice Sadie Brown and John Henry West. The three of them sat at the kitchen table, saying the same things over and over, so that by August the words began to rhyme with each other and sound strange. The world seemed to die each afternoon and nothing moved any longer. At last the summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass. And then, on the last Friday of August, all this was changed: it was so sudden that Frankie puzzled the whole blank afternoon, and still she did not understand.

Southern Literary Trailfest 2011

The Southern Literary Trail has announced that it will begin its Trailfest 2011 on February 17 with guess what event? Yes! You guessed it -- The Carson McCullers Center's very own McCullers conference: "Carson McCullers: An Interdisciplinary Conference and 94th Birthday Celebration." For more on the Southern Literary Trail, including LOTS of other events scheduled for Trailfest, go to www.southernliterarytrail.org

The Carson McCullers Center is proud to be a part of the Southern Literary Trail, and we are especially happy to sponsor the inaugural event of Trailfest 2011.

In Nyack

Here we are in the front door of Carson's home in Nyack, New York.

Brooklyn Trip

Here we stand in the very spot where once stood the famous #7 Middagh Street House, also known as "February House." For a while in 1940, the house was occupied by Carson McCullers and a whole slew of other creative folks, including W.H. Auden, George Davis, Richard Wright, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Pictured left to right are: Cathy Fussell, Leslie Lanning, Amanda Todd, Ty Deane, Rachel Thornell, Sammy Eugenio, Kim Crowell, Chris Beyer, Sarah Hulbert, Leslie Pinckard, Aaron Sanders (peeping around), Rebecca Holman, Orion Wertz, and, on the far right, two New York artists who joined us for the visit to the Middagh Street site -- Wendy and Alvin Eng. Alvin is a playwright who has been inspired by McCullers' work.

After we visited the Middagh Street site and the beautiful Brooklyn Heights neighborhood where so many, many writers have lived, we ventured over into DUMBO for a visit with Phenix Citizen-turned-New-York-artist MIKE HOWARD, pictured below outside his studio, talking with CSU students Leslie Lanning, Amanda Todd, Leslie Pinckard and Sammy Eugenio.

... joined by Rachel Thornell.

Thanks, Mike, for a great tour!

CSU Students and Faculty at Bowery Poetry Club

On Wednesday evening, May 26, several CSU students and faculty members read at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Here are some photos:

Chris Beyer

Kim Crowell


Aaron Sanders
Sabrina is a former student who moved to New York a few months ago. She heard that we were reading and asked to join us. Of course, we were happy to have her with us. Other readers were Rebecca Holman, Scott Wilkerson, and Amanda Todd. I'm afraid that my photos of them were failed -- but you know the light in the room was too tricky for my limited photography skills.

Watching our students read on a stage in New York was indeed a proud moment for me, and I sincerely thank my colleague Aaron Sanders for arranging this terrific opportunity.

Live from New York,
-- Cathy

More New York

This is a photo I took this morning of 321 West 11th Street, in Greenwich Village, Carson and Reeves' first apartment in New York. They moved into this building in 1940, immediately following the success of the publication of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

Here's a photo of the CSU group, all dressed up for an opening at Heidi Cho Gallery in Chelsea, on Thursday night. Thanks to Mike Howard for the invite.

That black-and-white was entirely an accident, but I like it so much that I kept it. I thought the group looked smashin' in color, too, so ...