This week’s Bookshelf is about the distinguished Ellmann Lectures at Emory University, the winners of the Southern Book Prize and Lucid House Publishing’s role in a campaign against circumcision.
In memoriam. Former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey returns to Emory University as one of two speakers delivering this year’s prestigious Ellmann Lectures. Formerly the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory, the poet and memoirist is now director of the creative writing program at Northwestern University.
Trethewey will be joined by Fintan O’Toole, the official biographer of Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, the inaugural Ellmann Lecturer. Together Trethewey and O’Toole will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Heaney’s death.
The lectures consist of three events. On March 3, Trethewey presents “The House of Being: Why I Write” and O’Toole delivers “Crediting Marvels: Experience, Imagination and the Biographer’s Dilemma” on March 4. Both authors are joined by associate professor Geraldine Higgins on March 5 for “Creativity Conversation.” The lectures will be held in Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are free but must be reserved at ellmann.emory.edu/tickets.html.
The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature are named after the National Book Award-winning biographer of James Joyce, W.B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. From 1980 until his death in 1987, Ellman served as Emory University’s first Robert W. Woodruff Professor.
Previous Ellmann Lecturers have included Henry Louis Gates Jr., A.S. Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Mario Vargas Llosa, Margaret Atwood and Colm Tóibín.
Credit: Amazon
Credit: Amazon
And the winner is... Ann Patchett’s dual timeline novel “Tom Lake,” about a woman’s teenage summer romance juxtaposed against her long, comfortable marriage, has won the Southern Book Prize for fiction. Margaret Renkl’s meditation on the passing of the seasons in her backyard, “The Comfort of Crows,” won the prize for nonfiction. And the winner in the children’s book category is Gillian McDunn’s “When Sea Becomes Sky,” about siblings spending a summer in a salt marsh threatened by climate change and development.
The Southern Book Prize is awarded by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Nominees are selected by independent booksellers and the winners are voted on by their customers.
Credit: Lucid House
Credit: Lucid House
Taking on circumcision. Atlanta-based Lucid House Publishing has taken a stance in the movement to stop the routine circumcision of newborn boys with the Feb. 20 publication of two memoirs on the topic.
Georganne Chapin’s book, “The Penis Business,” starts out as a straight memoir about her life growing up in a socially conscious home, but halfway through it focuses on circumcision.
Her first exposure to the medical procedure occurred when her newborn brother came home from the hospital.
“He had to be taken back to the doctor because his urethra had closed up, which I found out later was a complication that only occurred in boys who were circumcised. It was very traumatic for my mother.”
Over the years, as Chapin pursued a career in health administration, her concern over the procedure transformed into a cause to stop “baby boy genital cutting,” because it is unnecessary and can lead to medical complications, she said. In 2008, Chapin co-founded Intact America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping routine circumcisions.
Credit: Lucid House
Credit: Lucid House
Alongside Chapin’s book, Lucid House has published Marilyn Fayre Milos’ “Please Don’t Cut the Baby! A Nurse’s Memoir.” In nursing school, Milos witnessed her first circumcision, after which she tried but failed to soothe the inconsolable child. She was horrified when the doctor told her there was no medical reason for the procedure, she said, thereby launching her journey toward activism.
Lucid House co-founding CEO Echo Montgomery Garrett, a mother of two sons whom she regrets having circumcised, said she supports the cause wholeheartedly.
“From the second I spoke with Georganne about circumcision and Intact America, this cause resonated deep in my soul,” said Garrett. “I had questioned the practice at the birth of both of my sons. I was horrified to understand the surgery was painful, irreversible and medically unnecessary.”
The books’ publication marks the launch of an advocacy campaign called Skin in the Game, a storytelling project that shares the personal stories of those negatively affected by circumcision.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at suzanne.vanatten@ajc.com.
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