MEET THE FINAL JUDGES
International
Competition Panel
Lauren Belfer
Roy Blount
Joyce Carol Oates
Dayton Duncan
Leslie Fiedler
Robert Hirst
Garrison Keillor
Connie Porter
Young Writers
Competition Panel
Charles
Anzalone
Gabrielle Burton
Mick Cochran
Celeste Lawson
Tom Reigstad
Chuck Stoddart
International Competition Panel
Lauren Belfer grew up in Buffalo, New York, where she attended the Buffalo Seminary, the school on which she based the Macaulay School in her acclaimed debut novel, City of Light (The Dial Press; 1999). Since its publication, the book has earned praise from critics around the country. Ellen Feldman, reviewing it in The New York Times Book Review, called it "an ingenious first novel." Heller McAlpin, reviewing it in Newsday, remarked it "may well put Buffalo on the literary map the way William Kennedy’s Ironweed did for another upstate city, Albany." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a review in The New York Times, called it an "impressive…powerfully atmospheric book." Walter Kirn stated in Time that the plot guarantees "a straight-through, sleepless read;" and Jeff Simon, reviewing it in The Buffalo News, said "it is quite possibly the best book of any sort ever written about Buffalo…[Belfer’s] story is fascinating."
Making its paperback debut in October, 2000, City of Light became a national bestseller and bookstore favorite. Independent booksellers across the country chose it as the #1 pick on the November/December 2000 Book Sense 76 list, making it the first mass market paperback to top this list.
After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree at Swarthmore College, Belfer worked primarily in the area of documentary filmmaking as a researcher, writer and associate producer, before entering the Master of Fine Arts program in fiction at Columbia University. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.
In addition to being the author of 15 books, Roy Blount has written introductions to three different collections of Twain essays and will be writing one for the Modern Library's forthcoming edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Blount will also write the foreword and afterword to Twain’s "A Murder, a Mystery,and a Marriage" for The Atlantic Monthly.
His first book, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (Little Brown; 1974), was named one of the ten best sports books ever by Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post. Playboy said he was "known to the critics as our next Mark Twain." His latest book, co-authored with Valerie Shaff, Am I Pig Enough for You Yet? is coming out the fall of 2001. Some of his other works include Not Exactly What I Had in Mind (Atlantic Monthly Press; 1985), Now, Where Were We? (Villard Books; 1988), Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor (W.W. Norton & Co.; 1994) and If Only You Knew How Much I Smell You also co-written with Valerie Shaff (Bulfinch Press; 1998).
A contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, he writes a regular column for The Oxford American and has written essays, articles, stories and verses which have appeared in 122 magazines and newspapers. His writing has appeared in 143 books including The Best of Modern Humor, The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, The Ultimate Baseball Book, Classic Southern Humor, The Elvis Reader, Russell Baker's Book of American Humor, The Sophisticated Cat and Best American Essays l997.
Blount’s talents extend into a variety of industries. He wrote the screenplay of "Larger Than Life," starring Bill Murray, and the lyrics for a song in the feature film "Michael." Of his two one-act plays produced at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, one became part of an Off-Broadway review. He has also portrayed a number of characters in film, television and radio. He has read or lectured at colleges from Harvard to Clemson to Washington State; at the 92nd Street Y, Symphony Space, Manhattan Theatre Club, Theatre for a New Audience, San Francisco's City Arts and Lecture Series, the San Diego Forum and the Mark Twain House.
Blount has covered the l992 Democratic and Republican conventions, the Civil Rights Movement, Elvis's funeral, and has interviewed public figures including Martin Luther King, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Loretta Lynn and Rep. Dick Armey.
Born 1941 in Indianapolis, Roy Blount grew up in Decatur, Georgia and now divides his time between western Massachusetts and Manhattan. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s Degree from Harvard University.
Joyce Carol Oates is a Western New York native, born in nearby Lockport and a graduate of Williamsville High School. Oates began her prestigious writing career at an early age, drawing picture books before she could write (at age three) and submitting her first manuscript at age 15. She became one of the youngest writers to receive the National Book Award for fiction for her novel them (Vanguard Press; 1969). Since Oates published her first book at age 25, a collection of short stories entitled By the North Gate (Vanguard Press; 1963), she has averaged two books a year. Her prolific work includes over two dozen novels, as well as numerous collections of short stories, poetry, plays, essays and literary criticism. Oates has not limited herself to any particular genre or even to one literary style. Throughout her career, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including several National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim fellowship, an O. Henry Award and The PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.
Most recently, Oates’ 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys (Dutton) was selected to be the first featured reading selection of 2001, for Oprah’s Book Club. In addition, her latest novel Blonde (HarperCollins; 2000) was nominated for the 2000 National Book Award for fiction.
Joyce Carol Oates received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Syracuse University and her Master of Arts in English from the University of Wisconsin. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
Writer Dayton Duncan has worked with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns for many years on collaborations including "The Civil War" and "Baseball." Their next project is a biography of Mark Twain.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in German literature, Duncan’s early career included stints as a reporter, editor and editorial writer. His weekly syndicated humor column, "Wooden Nickels," ran in 17 New England newspapers. He has also been published in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Old Farmer’s Almanac and American Heritage magazine.
He is the author of six books. Out West: An American Journey (Viking; 1987) chronicles his retracing of the Lewis and Clark trail. Grass Roots: One Year in the Life of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary (Viking; 1991) is a unique look at politics through the eyes of volunteers. Miles from Nowhere: In Search of the American Frontier (Penguin; 1994) examines the current conditions, history and people of the most sparsely settled countries in the U.S. His children’s books are People of the West (Little Brown; 1996) which was named a Notable Children’s Trade Book by the National Council of Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council and The West: An Illustrated History for Children (Little Brown; 1996), which won "The Wrangler" award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (Knopf) was published in 1997, and Duncan also co-produced it as a documentary film. This work, garnering both a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and "The Wrangler," attained the second highest ratings in PBS history (following "The Civil War").
Leslie Fiedler is the Distinguished Samuel Clemens Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo and an associate fellow of Calhoun College at Yale University. In addition to tenures at these educational institutions and Montana State University (1941 – 1963), Fiedler has taught at the Universities of Bologna, Rome, Paris, Venice, Athens, Sussex and Princeton.
Beyond his role in education, Fiedler is a provocative literary critic and internationally known author of numerous short stories, essays and novels. In 1948, he shocked scholars with his essay, "Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!" which brought out homosexual and erotic themes in the relationship between Huckleberry Finn and the slave Jim in Mark Twain’s novel. He also confronted racism. A recipient of the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for "excellence in creative writing," Fiedler has been a Fulbright scholar, a Guggenheim fellow and a judge for the National Book Awards. In addition, he has won the Furioso Poetry Prize and received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Lifetime Contribution to American Arts and Letters.
Fiedler earned a Bachelor of Arts from New York University as well as his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He did post-doctoral work at Harvard University.
Robert Hirst was born in 1941 in New York City and raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Harvard University in 1963 and a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 . This led eventually to his Ph.D. in 1976, writing a dissertation on "The Making of The Innocents Abroad" for Henry Nash Smith.
In graduate school, he was a teaching assistant for two years, but lost that job when he failed to pass the required reading test for German. He then became a proofreader and "checker" in the Mark Twain Papers, where he gradually learned the craft of scholarly editing. In 1976, he joined the English Department at UCLA but continued to commute to the Papers in Berkeley. In 1980, Hirst became general editor of the Mark Twain Project, so-called because it embraced both the ongoing edition of Mark Twain’s Papers and the ongoing edition, begun at Iowa City, of Mark Twain’s Works. Hirst is also curator of the Mark Twain Papers in Bancroft and an adjunct professor in the English Department at Berkeley.
The Mark Twain Project is based in the archive of Mark Twain’s personal papers, which came to The Bancroft Library at Berkeley in 1949. The Project is creating a comprehensive scholarly edition of all Mark Twain’s writings—everything from his notebooks, letters, autobiography, and unpublished literary manuscripts to critical editions of his published books, articles, and scattered journalism. The University of California Press publishes all volumes in The Mark Twain Papers and Works of Mark Twain. The Project is among the largest and longest running of the various scholarly editions devoted to major American writers and political figures which were begun in the 1960s. Twenty-five, of an estimated seventy-five volumes, have been published to date.
Garrison
Keillor
Garrison was born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942 and began his radio career as a freshman at
the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1966.
He went to work for
Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A
Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul.
(The show ended in 1987, resumed in 1989 in New
York as The American Radio Company, returned to Minnesota, and in 1993 resumed the name A
Prairie Home Companion.)
Keillor hosts a daily five-minute radio program, The
Writer's Almanac, is a frequent contributor to Time and writes a biweekly column of advice
to the lovelorn for Salon, the online magazine. He is the author of 11 books, including
Lake Wobegon Days (1985), The Book of Guys (1993), The Old Man Who Loved Cheese (1996),
Wobegon Boy (1997), and Me, By Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente (1999).
He is a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recently was presented with a National
Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Connie Porter
Having grown up in a Buffalo housing project with eight siblings, Connie Porter set her
first novel, All-Bright Court, in her hometown. In 1991, the American Library
Association (ALA) named the novel a Notable Book, and the New York Times
distinguished it as one of its "Best Books." She is the author of the Addy
series of historical children's novels from American Girl. Porter’s essays have
appeared in Glamour and Seventeen and her book reviews in The Boston
Globe and New York Times.
Porter returns to Buffalo’s inner city in her latest novel, Imani All Mine
(Houghton Mifflin; 1999). The novel has received numerous awards including being named an
Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the ALA, winning an Alex Award from the Young Adult
Services Association of the ALA and being chosen as one of the Best Books for Young Adults
by the ALA.
Young Writers Competition Panel
Charles Anzalone has written for and edited The Buffalo News' Sunday magazines for almost 20 years. After writing prize-winning magazine stories on subjects ranging from local sports to an extensive profile of author Tom Wolfe, he was named editor of "Buffalo," The News' weekly Sunday magazine. In 1997, he conceived and launched "First Sunday," The News' monthly magazine, which he still edits and contributes to today. "First Sunday" is now in its fifth year of publication, carrying on the Sunday magazine tradition of literary and in-depth journalism. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from Syracuse University, and a Master's Degree in History and English from the University at Buffalo.
Gabrielle Burton is the author of the non-fiction book I’m Running Away From Home, But I’m Not Allowed to Cross the Street (Know, Inc.; 1972). Her novel Heartbreak Hotel (Charles Scribner's Sons; 1986) was awarded the Maxwell Perkins Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Originally published by Charles Scribner & Sons, it was also published by Trevi in Sweden, as a King Penguin Original in the United Kingdom, a Viking Penguin Contemporary Classic and was reprinted in July, 1999, by the prestigious Dalkey Archive Press. Her articles and reviews have appeared in numerous national magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Family Circle and The Buffalo News. She recently received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Film Institute, where two of her short films were produced. Her awards include the Mary Pickford Prize for screenwriting, a Buffalo Arts Council grant for writing Manna From Heaven, and she won the 1999 Austin Film Festival’s top prize for screenwriting the same weekend she was selected to attend the Equinoxe Screenwriting Conference in Bordeaux, France. She was just awarded the Nicholl Fellowship by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her screenplay, Manna From Heaven, filmed in Buffalo by Five Sisters Productions, will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, in March.
Mick Cochrane is writer-in-residence and professor of English at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is the author of two novels: Flesh Wounds (Doubleday; 1997), named a finalist in Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers competition, and Sport (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press; 2001). A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, he earned an undergraduate degree from the College of St. Thomas and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota.
Celeste Lawson has been involved in the arts for more than 20 years and was appointed Executive Director of the Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County in 1996. Prior to this, she served as Executive Director of the King Urban Life Center, a project that converted the old St. Mary of Sorrows Church into an early childhood school and community center.
Lawson has served as an advisor to the New York State Council on the Arts on its Technical Assistance Programs and Special Arts Services panels. She has been part of the National Endowment on the Arts Expansion Arts Program panel and has recently become involved with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Additionally, she serves as a director of the New York State Alliance of Arts Organizations.
She is a commissioner with the Buffalo Arts Commission and has been appointed by the Mayor of Buffalo to serve on the Board of the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center. Additional civic activities include her role as a board member of the Atlantic Corridor, an international economic and cultural trade initiative; a member of the executive committee of Project Flight, which is a family literacy program helping children and families to improve literacy skills; and she is the newly elected vice president of the Western New York Grantmakers Association. Ms. Lawson serves on the Board of Directors of Leadership Buffalo and is a past chair of the United Way’s Women in Governance Project.
In 1992, Lawson was one of the 13 candidates nationwide to graduate from Leadership 2000, an executive training program sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Business, the National Endowment on the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1994, she was a delegate to the United Nations Region Five European Economic Commission Conference held in Vienna, Austria. In 1995, she was a delegate and presenter at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China.
A former dancer/choreographer, in 1997, she published a collection of poems entitled "I Was Born This Way" based on her experiences in Beijing, China. She has been a featured poet for National Poetry Month and National Library Month sponsored by the American Academy of Poets. Lawson is also a contributing writer to HER magazine and a columnist for Artvoice, a weekly cultural and community newspaper. Her work has appeared in The Buffalo News and several regional publications.
Celeste spent her formative years living in Europe with her family as a result of her father’s military career in the United States airforce. She was educated in Germany and England where she finished school at the Stratton Academy and College of Liberal Arts.
Tom Reigstad is a professor of English at Buffalo State College, where he has taught for the last 19 years. He specializes in Mark Twain and writing courses. He has presented papers at conferences on Mark Twain and has published several articles on Twain (including in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia and the Mark Twain Society Bulletin), often focusing on Twain's tenure in Buffalo. Currently, he is working on a book that describes Twain's life and times in Buffalo.
Reigstad is also a journalist, having worked as a copy editor and writer for the now-defunct Buffalo Courier-Express, Niagara Gazette, Business First of Buffalo and Bills Insider. He earned graduate degrees from the University of Missouri and Canisius College and a Ph.D. from the University of Buffalo.
Chuck Stoddart is the Superintendent of Orchard Park Central Schools and has been employed by the school system for 39 years. His leadership roles include executive board member and past president of the Niagara Frontier Industry Education Council, chair of the Ethics Committee of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, executive committee member of the Erie County Association of School Boards and president of the Western New York Education Service Council. Stoddart earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Northern Colorado.