Home		Martin Lammon The More Things Change
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		As I write, the anniversary of September 11, 2001, is just days away. As I wrote a year ago, when Arts & Letters Drama Editor David Muschell and I happened to be flying to LaGuardia and Dulles airports the week after 9-11, the best we can do when tragedy confronts us is to carry on. Our cover, white on white, a color that can signify in different cultures hope or death, acknowledges the memory of that terrible day. The past year, we’ve faced many changes at Arts & Letters, but as the saying goes, la plus ça change, la plus c’est la même chose. * This year we said farewell to our good friend and fiction editor, Kellie Wells. The fall 2002 and spring 2003 issues still represent her editorial influence (and hence she remains listed as our “fiction editor” on this issue’s masthead). One of the stories she had selected was Ruth Knafo Setton’s “The Shiver Test.” We liked Ruth’s fiction (she’s also the author of a novel, The Road to Fez), and we liked Ruth herself so much, we hired her to teach fiction writing in our new MFA program. With Kellie Wells departing, we could not have been more fortunate, having such a talented writer and reader as Ruth to take over as the fiction editor at Arts & Letters. Our Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program is yet another important change for us. This fall, we begin our first full year with 17 students taking classes. These writers have come from all over the United States to study here, where Flannery O’Connor got her start over half a century ago, before attending graduate school at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. If you’re interested in learning more, you can visit this web page: http://al.gcsu.edu/mfa.htm I’m also pleased to announce another new colleague has joined us, Susan Atefat-Peckham, who this year becomes the poetry editor at Arts & Letters. Her first book of poems, That Kind of Sleep, won the National Poetry Series Award in 2000. Like Ruth, Susan will teach in our new MFA program. You can see Susan read from her works with other recent National Poetry Series Award winners at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Baltimore, which convenes February 26-March 1, 2003. So many new faces, so many good people have come to Milledgeville. The more things change, the more they stay the same. * Dinty Moore has done it again. Over the years, Dinty has experienced his share of controversy (ask him one day about his appearance in the anthology Catholic Girls). Last March, Harper’s reprinted Curtis White’s essay “The Middle Mind,” which was originally published in the Dalkey Archive Press journal Context (which White edits). To his surprise, Dinty found his own book The Accidental Buddhist alluded to prominently in White’s essay as an example of “Middle Mind” culture. The allusion, as you might guess, is hardly flattering. Dinty and I have talked a lot about White’s essay, and his response to it. It’s always tricky business, responding to one’s critics, but I think Dinty manages to do so with his typical sense of humor. I would urge readers to check out Curtis White’s essay on-line at the Center for Book Culture web site: http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/index.html Finally, like so many critics, Curtis White knows what’s wrong with our culture but doesn’t really tell us why, or what alternative we should seek instead. Rather than create, he berates and belittles. But I hope Arts & Letters readers will look at White’s essay and Dinty’s response, then draw their own conclusions. * On a happier note, I’m pleased to announce the fourth annual Arts & Letters prizes in fiction, poetry, and drama. In this issue, we present Josh Rolnick’s story “Big Lake,” selected by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, and poems by Allan Peterson, selected by Judith Ortiz Cofer. We are also pleased to publish a poem by Corrinne Clegg Hales, whose work Cofer also selected for publication. Each of our winners receives a $1,000 prize. This fall, our 2002 prize winners and final judges travel to Milledgeville for special programs and readings in honor of their work. In the spring issue, we will feature our 2002 prize in drama, the one-act play Blood Memory by Chuck Spoler, selected by John Guare. The issue will also feature an interview with Guare (author of Six Degrees of Separation and other award-winning plays) by Arts & Letters assistant editor Wayne Thomas. Chuck Spoler will be our guest at the fifth annual Arts & Letters festival, which will feature a production of his play. Featured guests scheduled for March 20-22, 2003, festival will be poet Li-Young Lee and novelist Rosa Shand. * So it goes. We welcome your regular submissions September through April, and submissions to our 2003 competition from January 1-April 30. Bret Lott will be our fiction judge. Look for announcements in AWP’s Writer’s Chronicle and Poets & Writers for news about who the poetry and drama judges will be this year. And Kellie Wells will rejoin us to teach the short story class in our annual May workshops. Her short story collection Compression Scars, which won the 2001 Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction, is now available. I know that many of our readers have been waiting for that book. You can keep up with all the news at our web site, al.gcsu.edu. If you haven’t visited our site for awhile, you’ll find quite a few changes. And much, of course—blessedly—the same.
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