Delta Deep Down Wins MIAL Award

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters recently announced its 2009 award winners. Included among the award winners was Jane Rule Burdine whose book Delta Deep Down was honored in the photography category. The MIAL was formed in 1978 to support, nurture, and recognize Mississippi's artists and writers.

Since the early 1970s, Burdine has used the Mississippi Delta as her muse, traversing and documenting the ever-changing landscape in color photographs.With Delta Deep Down she has succeeded in capturing the region with clarity and warmth.

Novelist and Indianola native Steve Yarbrough offers a touching, personal introduction that explores how Burdine's photographs reveal the place he once called home, and how, through her photographs, the hold this fertile ground claims on his heart is reinforced. Wendy McDaris provides historical context and locates Burdine's work among current trends in fine art photography.

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters will hold a spring gala and awards ceremony in Laurel, Miss., at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art. The gala weekend will also serve to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the MIAL A complete list of 2009 winners can be viewed here.

Observing Eudora Welty

Eric Banks has a nice item over at Brainstorm, the blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Banks, a former editor at Bookforum and a member of the National Book Critics Circle board of directors, covers Eudora Welty's upcoming centennial birth celebration (April 13). Naturally, Eric drew a straight line from Welty to UPM.

UPM has two new books, Eudora Welty as Photographer and Occasions: Selected Writings to commemorate her centennial birth year.

On Occasions Banks notes:

The essays offer up a wry and knowing side of Welty’s writing, one that puts a small dent in the simplistic but pervasive view of her as a quaintly sheltered mascot of relatively genteel southern writing and something like what Claudia Roth Pierpont once called “a kind of Eleanor Roosevelt of literature.”

And on Eudora Welty as Photogapher, Banks writes:

[this book] continues the argument McHaney has made previously for seeing the author’s work behind the camera not merely as a propaedeutic incitement for writing but as a career path that she might have pursued but for the good fortune she found in getting her writing published.

Both books were edited by Pearl McHaney and are now available from UPM.

Praise for Iwao Takamoto

Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters was mentioned at the top of Billy Heller's Recommended Reading column in yesterday's New York Post :

You don't know the name, but you probably know the work. Los Angeles-born artistTakamoto was a Disney and Hanna-Barbera animator who brought Johnny Quest, the Jetsons' dog Astro and, most famously, Scooby-Doo to Saturday mornings with his drawings. Takamoto, who died shortly after his manuscript was finished, revealsScooby got his name from a TV exec who heard Frank Sinatra singing "dooby-doobydoo" at the end of "Strangers in the Night" and denies the Scooby/Shaggy pothead rumors. But what sets this book apart from other pop-culture bios is his account of spending WWII in an internment camp with other Japanese-Americans.

Iwao Takamoto (1925-2007) was a celebrated animation artist and character designer for Walt Disney Company and Hanna-Barbera Productions. My Life with a Thousand Characters, co-authored with Michael Mallory, is now available from UPM.

The Hungry Cowboy

Mary Challender at the Des Moines Register has a great piece on UPM author Karla Erickson. Erickson is the author of The Hungry Cowboy: Service and Community in a Neighborhood Restaurant.

The article covers Erickson's inspiration behind The Hungry Cowboy, the real life restaurant described in the book, and her transformation from a jaded sociologist to a compassionate restaurant insider.

During the day, in academia, all she heard about was how fragmented the world was becoming and how isolated people were."But at night I would go to the restaurant, put on an apron and be in a social world," she said. "People showed up all night just to enjoy each other's company.

The article also explores Erickson's latest research project-- the relationships between the elderly and the people paid to care for them. A topic she considers to be very similar to restaurant service industry.

I really believe we have a choice any time we have a service interaction to treat each other like machines or to treat each other as people.

Erickson is assistant professor of sociology at Grinnell College. The Hungry Cowboy is now available from UPM.