If you’re a regular reader of my national African-American cultural arts column, you may have noticed that I have not been posting articles as frequently as I once did. The reason is simple enough. Having reached a certain point in the research for my current book-in-progress (at least one of them anyway) I had to reduce as many additional writing obligations as possible to fully concentrate on completion of the work. For me, this is the part of authorship when the lyrical muse sings and the creative pen dances. The greater bulk of the more rigid tasks of verification and documentation have been satisfied, and imagination may be allowed to take over the processes of narrative construction. The resulting musical flow of image and language stamp the work with its own unique identity. And its own self-defined meanings destined to merge with different readers’ interpretations of the same. The Writer and the Times I started the national African-American  cultural arts colu

                                  Author Philip Roth in New York City . (Reuters file photograph) In his September 7, 2012, “Open Letter to Wikipedia,” acclaimed author Philip Roth made an appeal to the editors of Wikipedia. Posted in his blog for The New Yorker , he asked them to correct a statement he identified as misleading in the site’s article on his novel, The Human Stain . Roth––whose literary honors include a Pulitzer Prize, American Book Award, and Man Booker International Prize––stated the following: “ The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.” He noted further that he had attempted through an official interlocutor to address the issue but was informed that site administrators required “secondary sources” to verify the proposed corrections. “ Thus was created the occasion for this open

"Interpretation of Harlem Jazz" a.k.a. "Drawing in Two Colors" art by German artist of the Harlem Renaissance Winold Reiss. (circa 1917, public domain) “Life calls the tune, we dance.”   ―   John Galsworthy , from Five Tales It was almost enough for me to simply join PEN American Center and set up a profile page without doing much else to qualify its existence. Such a page alone could allow me to relax inside the satisfaction of knowing I had remained true enough to my literary calling to place my name beside that of authors whose lives and craftsmanship had so often empowered my own. That idea, of course, faded very quickly as I further allowed myself to acknowledge something I have long known: you do not claim rights to an honored tradition just because a few books allowed you to bring them into the world or because you managed to cough up the obligatory dues. One claims a right to such traditions very much the way runners on a winning Olympic relay

The new Literary Savannah magazine . The title “Literary Savannah” over the past decade has deservedly been associated with the Hill Street Press travel anthology edited by Patrick Allen, so readers may at first experience some difficulty distinguishing it from the recent online publication of Literary Savannah magazine. But the magazine has indeed made its debut and features work by some of the Southeast’s most gifted writers, poets, and artists. To continue reading please click this link : Literary Savannah magazine launches with winter edition - National African-American Art | Examiner.com