This is a special issue of the Campus Chronicle to highlight the Celebration of the Literary Arts. This annual DMACC event will be April 16 to 18 with different activities at each campus. Inside: Profiles of featured writers appearing at the Ankeny campus Excerpts from writers' works Full schedule of events at all campuses
A professor from Tennessee is traveling back to Iowa where he began his career as a teacher more than 14 years ago. Gaylord Brewer, who has written more 500 poems as well as many plays, will share his expertise at DMACC's Celebration of the Literary Arts in mid-April at the Boone campus and at the Ankeny campus.
Marcia Douglas, 45, has been a writer for as long as she can remember. Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, she was raised in a culture of storytelling. She loved language, words and storytelling growing up and has taken the Caribbean culture of oral storytelling and put it on paper.
An award-winning poet will travel northward to read her work at the DMACC literary festival on April 16 and 18. Beth Ann Fennelly, an assistant English professor at the University of Mississippi, is among the lineup of poets and a prose writers who will appear at the Celebration of the Literary Arts.
Award-winning poet Albert Garcia has authored two books of poems, Skunk Talk (Bear Star Press), and Rainshadow (Copper Beech Press). He also wrote Digging In: Literature for Developing Writers (Prentice Hall). Garcia's poems have appeared in many notable publications, including Prairie Schooner, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, Mid-American Review, Yankee, The North American Review, and several others.
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS laughter. God was lying down at the bottom of the sea, taking an afternoon nap--her plaits set in motion by the rhythm of warm water, seaweed brushing against her skin. She was minding her own business as God often does; her arms circled her stomach and she dreamed of giving birth to a child who would be born laughing.
A LIGHT rain was coming down misting everything, and Madda Shilling stood waiting by the gate, shading herself with a banana leaf. She was a short round woman in her sixties, her ankles swollen over her canvas slippers. She smelled of moss and damp earth and the day I arrived, her teeth had been sent away to be fixed, her lips collapsed inwards, her words spoken with a lisp.
Improbable Illinois---so flat you'd see a whole train, engine to caboose, crossing the prairie at a distance--- seems a lifetime away. But it was not so long ago I kept a newspaper on a passenger seat for when the freight train beat me to the crossing--- ten minutes of my life gone, twelve.
In this California valley, ice on a puddle is a novelty for children who stand awkward in their jackets waiting for the school bus. They lift off thin slabs to hold up in the early light like pieces of stained glass. They run around, throw them at each other, lick them, laughing as their pink tongues stick to the cold, their breath fogging the morning gray.