[3.03.06]
Guilford College has been presenting "A Year of Spirit and Spirituality" for 2005-2006. Upcoming contributions to that event include lectures by both Amy Tan (March 30) and Linda Hogan (March 31). For more info

[3.03.06]
Adam Begley, for The New York Observer, reports that Houghton Mifflin will release Cynthia Ozick's fifth collection of essays, The Din in the Head, in June.

[3.01.06]
Jessa Crispin of Bookslut.com gives Rebecca Brown’s latest book, The Last Time I Saw You, a big thumbs up, comparing her work to Kathy Acker's, in a recent column in The Book Standard.. "In the end, the book didn’t have Acker’s sharpness, but her stories did remind me why I won’t be renewing my subscription to the New Yorker: It should be publishing stories as fearless and nonlinear as Brown’s, not the pat white-people-getting-a-divorce stories they go for."

[2.27.06]
On April 30, novelist Sandra Cisneros will be presented with the First Annual Distinguished Gloria Anzaldua Scholar/Activist Award by the UC Santa Cruz at the campus's Chicano/Latino Research Center (CLRC). For more info

[2.26.06]
Fans of Zora Neale Hurston might be interested in this interview in The Detroit News with her niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, who presented a talk about her aunt before the State University of New York at Albany. The talk, which contributed to the Department of Africana Studies' commemoration of Black History Month, discussed Zora Neale Hurston's involvement as an anthropologist, among other things. The younger Hurston is a professor of sociology at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT. She has produced a documentary about her aunt and has directed stage productions of her works as well as authored the biography, Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (2004).

[2.24.06]
Carol Emshwiller's short story, "I Live With You," which appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in March 2005, has made the final ballot for the Nebula Awards, according to Locus Online

[2.23.06]
Author Aimee Bender will appear before Penn State University's Erie Campus School of Humanities and Social Sciences as part of their Creative Writers Speaker Series celebration of Women's History Month on March 16. For more info

[2.16.06]
Cinema Blend reports that the controversial director Bernardo Bertolucci will write and direct the film adaptation of Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. No word on cast or release date thus far.

[2.05.06]
Louise Erdrich's novel, The Painted Drum, is up for a Minnesota Book Award this year. The 18th annual Book Awards ceremony will be held in Minneapolis on April 29.