Congratulations to David Hunter, recipient of the 2008 Knoxville Writer's Guild Career Achievement Award.

Don Williams will be introducing David at the awards dinner, and says:

Presentation of the award will be a highlight of the Guild’s Spring Gala at St. James Episcopal Church, 1101 Broadway, from 2-6 p.m. on Saturday, April 26. That event will include a community seminar and panel discussion called “Writing in the 22nd Century: Technology We Must Know”, and a celebration following with awards presentations and music by Kelle Jolly and Friends.

The Career Achievement Award is a salute to the full body of a writer’s work which spans a career. Past recipients include: Carson Brewer, George Scarbrough, Wilma Dykeman, Jon Manchip White and Jeff Daniel Marion.

Hunter’s work of the past 30 years includes 15 published books, numerous magazine and newspaper articles and a weekly opinion column that appears in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on Mondays.

Read more at the Knoxville Writer's Guild website.

You will be missed...

Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90

By RAVI NESSMAN – 15 minutes ago

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

We're catching up on our reading. You sure can go through some pulp fiction with the TV turned off!

A partial list: Eleanor vs. Ike (Gerber), Double Whammy (Hiaasen), The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Haddon), I Am Charlotte Simmons (Wolfe), Innocent Man (Grisham, non-fiction), Thunderbolt Kid (Bryson), The Summons (Grisham), Playing for Pizza (Grisham), A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole), Then We Came to the End (Ferris).

We're about ready for another trip to the book store. What's on your summer/beach reading list?

If this doesn't make you old bookworms feel ancient, nothing will.

“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”

Link...

Looking for a mid-week diversion from all the Fear and Loathing and dysfunction with, bonus, an opportunity to support local literary and musical excellence? Well, here you go:

The April "Homecookin'" edition of the Writer's Block performance series at Knoxville Museum of Art will feature RB Morris, who will perform solo versions of material from his forthcoming CD, "Empire."

The show is 6:30 - 8 p.m. Wednesday in the KMA auditorium, an amazing little listening room adjacent to the big room. Doors open an hour before showtime.

Admission to the 170-seat room is $7. There's a table loaded with free Panera snacks in the big room. This is an excellent opportunity to support the pretty special Writers' Block program that was started a few years back by host Karen E. Reynolds.

More details from the communique after the jump...

Giovanni was born in Knoxville and chose to launch her new book here. "On My Journey Now: Looking at African-American History Through the Spirituals" honors the way slaves used gospels to give them hope and strength during the darkest of times. Giovanni's poems appear in almost every literary anthology focusing on modern writers. She's a veteran of the civil rights movement and has a strong sense of history. Her poetry is tough, often urban, and politically radical. Like her message or not, like Rap music or not, she sure has a way with words and she speaks for a lot of people.