November 2, 2009
Austin, TX
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is celebrating the writing of Edgar Allan Poe with a range of activities, including poetry readings, film screenings, and an exhibition, to name a few. Today’s Roadshow and Tell features just a few of the posters that the Ransom Center has created to promote Poe and The Big Read in and around Austin. Visit The Big Read website to learn more about the center’s Texas-sized calendar of events.
September 22, 2009
Oak Park, Illinois
Thanks to library staffers Jeanne Friedell, Irene Balks, and Debby Preiser, the raven has landed at the Oak Park Public Library to celebrate its Big Read of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and stories. Scroll down to watch the raven (designed by Jeanne) take flight—from backyard to library lobby. According to Debby, “Everyone who came by—little kids, moms, teenage girls, our security guard—were all wowed!” Don’t forget to check out the library’s calendar of events for upcoming Big Read activities.
August 25, 2009
Washington, DC
Between this September and next June, 24 different communities across the country will be celebrating the fiction and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s fans have included Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jorge Luis Borges, and Alfred Hitchcock, who said, “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.” From the introduction to the Poe Reader’s Guide , here’s more about the prolific—and pioneering—Boston native.
Poe’s most satisfying escape was into his writing, where generations of readers have followed him ever since. His sheer versatility continues to astonish. Without Poe, the literary arts of horror, adventure, detective, and science fiction, and, arguably, the short story itself, would have developed very differently. In addition to fiction in several genres, he wrote as famous a poem as American literature can claim. He practiced literary criticism as fine art, blood sport, and, with a series of female poets, the highest form of flirtation. If the movies had existed in the nineteenth century, he might have written screenplays as well—and bedeviled his producers as reliably as he did most of his editors.
Check out The Big Read calendar to find out who’s hosting an Edgar Allan Poe Big Read near you!
July 14, 2009
Washington, DC
William Michael Harnett, American, 1848-1892, "Mortality and Immortality" (1876). Oil on canvas. Roland P. Murdock Collection.
No man is an island, and neither is any Big Read. As any Big Reader will tell you, each project is all about partnership. Today I’m giving a shout-out to Wichita Public Library’s collaboration with the Wichita Art Museum, one of the many partners that is already working to make the city’s Big Read of Edgar Allan Poe a rousing success.
From July 19-November 15, the museum will feature an exhibition of “chilling works of art” from its collection of more than 7,000 objects. One of the included works is “Mortality and Immortality” by William Michael Harnett, an American (by way of Ireland) painter born just a year before Poe died, and best known for his trompe l’oeil still lifes.
Here’s a bit from museum spokesperson Crystal Walter: “One of our goals at the Wichita Art Museum is to broaden the horizons of the community. Both reading and art help expand the mind, so it was only natural that the museum would partner with The Big Read to help the people of Wichita expand their horizons and pick up a book. Mortality and Immortality, by William Michael Harnett, sets a chilling mood. Poe’s writings will surely give you a good evening of reading…. but probably not a good night of sleep.”