Illinois Press Book Blog

The schedule for Roger Ebert’s 10th (!!) annual film festival has just been announced. Founded by former Urbana resident Roger Ebert, this overlooked fest is a gem for the Champaign-Urbana-University of Illinois community. This year’s planned participants include Illinois alumnus Ang Lee, and two directors that are forthcoming subjects of our Contemporary Film Directors series, Paul Schrader and Sally Potter.

Coldfront, an online poetry magazine, gives Stephen Cramer’s Tongue & Groove 7.5 stars.

“Imagine a man in the subway who removes his shirt and starts picking a scab. Would you look the other way? I would, but I think Stephen Cramer would watch and find an uncomfortable beauty about the scene.”

Though quibbling a bit with Andrew O’Toole’s portrayal of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn rematch (was it fixed?), maxboxing.com recommends Sweet William: The Life of Billy Conn.

“O’Toole recounts Conn’s rise vividly and gives this reader real insight into Billy Conn’s fistic stature in the 1930s and early 1940s.”

The giveaway table in our breakroom lately included a springtime assortment of goodies.

Five shades of lipstick, shiny bags, and perfume samples tempted the cosmetics lover, while a cheerful pack of bubblegum balls attracted the little kid in all of us. The tea, chapstick, and cold medicine undoubtedly gave relief to some unlucky colleague with a runny nose and sore throat.

Time on the table: less than two hours (for everything except the bubblegum, which was claimed by a happy chewer the next morning).

Roy Schonfeld, one of our reps from Abraham Associates, was named Publishers Weekly’s sales rep of the year. Congratulations! And, let us know if you need any additional information on our forthcoming book Life along the Illinois River.

A1 Poetry Post features an interview with Steve Gehrke, author of the recent poetry collection Michelangelo’s Seizure.

We had just returned from a doctor’s appointment when I got the call telling me Veil and Burn was a winner of the National Poetry Series.  At one moment my husband and I were drinking coffee at our yellow formica and chrome table, and a few minutes later this lovely person on the phone was telling me something I could barely believe. 

The doctor’s visit had been fairly uneventful but oddly portentous.  I had been reading Maxine Kumin’s book Jack and Other Poems, and the doctor asked me about it when he came in.  I told him she was a judge for a contest I’d finalized for but probably wouldn’t win, and how I’d been reading her for years.  The doctor said that having the name Thomas Lux made for occasional requests to sign books of poetry, which, as I remember, he said he did once even though he is not the poet with that name.  I could be wrong.  It makes for a more interesting story, though.  I do recall the exam room was a bit different than most by the magazine selection.  Art in America featured prominently, and when Dr. Lux saw my husband reading it, he said, “That’s a good one . . . when was that, January?”

What interests me now as I write this is the idea of mistaken identity.  My doctor mistaken for Tom Lux, me reading a book by the poet who selected my book on the day I was notified she had chosen my book back in June.  And who was I now?  It had been such a year of adjustment—and I’m not complaining, believe me—no longer a graduate student but a writer and poet, not knowing exactly which art I should choose for the moment, trying to put together a book of creative nonfiction I’m still feeling my way through today.  The speakers in my poems and nonfiction are mere facets of myself refracted through different lenses.  I could not definitively point to one of those panes to say this is who I am.  So many of those identities are lost to me now, and some new ones have formed.  No longer, at least for now, a horsewoman, no longer a student, no longer a Californian, I still claim them even though they’re beyond my reach.  I hold my purse like I would hold a rein.  I move up a bit and draw my heels in when the Olympic rider cues her horse over a jump. The poems take me back.  I am convinced identity, coincidence or not, can simultaneously be both mistaken and true, and I, on the phone at that little table, the August light shafting through stained glass, can feel for a moment like the luckiest girl anywhere.

Laurie Clements Lambeth is the author of a new poetry collection, Veil and Burn. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
 

Corrina Wycoff’s 2007 collection of short stories, O Street (OV Books, distributed by the University of Illinois Press), is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category.

Nat Hentoff celebrates Marian McPartland’s 90th birthday in today’s Wall Street Journal, and recounts anecdotes from her University of Illinois Press book Marian McPartland’s Jazz World: All in Good Time.

On Monday evening, eight representatives from the Press volunteered for the central Illinois public broadcasting station’s Festival 2008 fund drive. During the Spring drive, WILL has raised over $140,000 and recorded more than 1050 pledges.

Thanks to all who made a pledge and came out to answer phones in support of public broadcasting. Thanks also to our ninetieth anniversary community outreach committee chairs Lisa and Heather for organizing the volunteers and details.

Fun photos here.