ArtSake

We’re excited to welcome guest blogger Jenny Milana, of DangerMilana, whose experience in contract negotiations, copyright issues, and other legal matters spans the publishing, theater, music, film and television industries. What’s more, while growing up in California, Jenny worked as an actor, so she knows the field from the creative side, too.

She’s generously agreed to field artists’ questions on legal matters relating to their work. (Incidentally, if you have any arts law questions, send them our way for a future “Ask an Arts Attorney” post.)

Please note: this post is for informational benefit only and should not be used in place of actual legal services. Also, as a state agency, the Massachusetts Cultural Council does not endorse any individual business or service.

So without further ado…

My questions may be a little different than what you may typically hear from artists concerning copyright. At this point I am not concerned about the copyright of my own work but the copyright of published books and illustrations. I love to work with paper and am interested in using books with illustrations as materials for a new project. First, I understand that any work published before 1923 is considered public domain, but if those works are re-published at a later date (ex: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland originally published in 1865 but the story re-published in 1946), is the 1946 publication considered public domain as well? Can I purchase that 1946 copy to be used in a new work of fine art? Thank you so much for any help!

Signed,
Let It Fly

Dear Let It Fly,
Your question is a bit tricky because it involves the doctrine of fair use. Works in the public domain do not have any copyright protection and can be freely used. However, if those works are re-published at a later date by a new author and they are not identical to the original works, then such work does have copyright protection in the new material. The new material could be a spin on the story’s ending or the illustrations.

The original story itself which is in the public domain can still be used, but the new publication typically has taken the original work and modified it somehow, repackaged it in such a way which gives the new publication copyright protection in those new elements. So in your example about Alice in Wonderland, if the 1946 publication is still copyrighted because it maintained its registration prior to the 1976 copyright law, then you could not take that book and use it in a work of fine art because you are creating a derivative work, a right held exclusively to the copyright owner. A derivative work is a modification, or new use of the original work. You could, however, create a derivative work using the 1865 original.

A few questions. The first has to do with music publishing: what should an indie artist be on the lookout for when trying to license their original music? The second is about gigs: is there a casual way of putting something in writing for a gig which is both legal, casual and easy? Possible uses: dj’ing a wedding, gig at a small club on a tour (making sure gear and staff agreed upon, etc. is there).

Signed,
Indie Songster in Somerville

Dear Indie Songster,
As in most things there is a long answer and a short answer. I’ll try to give you something in between. A musician looking to license their work should be on the lookout for a variety of things. The first and most important thing to watch out for is what rights you are licensing away. You don’t want to end up with your music as the theme song to a pornographic movie if your target market is teens, for example. You don’t want to give exclusive rights, either, otherwise you won’t be able to license your music for other purposes. There are also two kinds of licenses, master license and synch licenses. Most often, a music license needs to contain both. The master license is for the sound recording and a synchronization license is for the music and lyrics, or musical composition. Most licenses require both but some uses may not need both.

You want to make sure when negotiating rights that subsidiary rights like merchandising are talked about as well so it’s very clear what you are allowing the other party to do and not do with the music. Another thing to be on the lookout for is royalties. The royalties or cost to license the music should take into account every right or use you are granting. Some of these things may not be negotiable, though, when licensing to places such as iTunes. Most often, those contracts are not negotiable.

With regards to your second question, there is definitely a way to put something in writing that keeps thing casual but still protects your interests as best you can. Most parties do things on a handshake, and to involve lawyers and complicated contracts sometimes puts bad tastes in people’s mouths, which strains the relationships. At our firm DangerMilana, our primary goal in reviewing/drafting or negotiating any contract is to talk with the parties as though the contract is more like a collaboration agreement. Everyone’s goal is to continue working together and keep things moving, rather than slow things down going back and forth with negotiations. The contract should also be drafted in as plain English as possible, without all of the legalese. For small gigs like DJing weddings, etc., a contract is of utmost importance as it can be the difference in months of headaches and not getting paid. It also sets the expectations from the beginning.

Those types of contracts should be friendly, basic and no more than two pages at most if at all possible. I would still recommend a lawyer to draft this document, though, because they can maximize protecting your interests in as little wording as possible.

I recently won a publication contest for a book of short stories. I then received a contract to sign. This will be my first published book and so I had no agent and knew no lawyers with specialties in this area. I joined the Author’s Guild for an annual fee of $70 or so, and they reviewed the contract for me and sent me a lengthy response with proposed changes. I was then left more or less on my own to negotiate with the publisher based on their advice. Can you recommend a better way to do this?

Even after I won the prize, I still felt that I was extremely lucky to have found a good publisher for a collection of literary short stories, and although it seems to me the publisher negotiated in good faith, I still felt like I had very little leverage. Should I have acted tough? Should I have gone in swinging? Or should I just be grateful? And let’s say I had hired a lawyer, what should I have expected to pay?

Signed,
Published but perplexed

Dear Published,
First of all, congratulations on winning the publication contest.

Second, unfortunately there are not a lot of better options. The best option is to have a lawyer do the negotiating if possible. That can be difficult though as lawyers can be expensive. One option is to request the attorney to simply negotiate the really important clauses like price or rights. This can cut down on the cost immensely and protect your interests in the area you are most concerned about.

Regarding your second question, I wouldn’t suggest going in swinging or just being grateful either. As I mentioned in another answer, our goal with any contract negotiation is that the parties are going to be working together and likely want to preserve the ability to work together in the future. As to what you could expect to pay, firms charge all different types of rates, some flat, some hourly. To give you a sense, though, our firm’s hourly fee is typically $300. However, we charge a flat fee for certain services such as contract review. For a review of a contract of less than five pages, we have the artist come in to sit and talk about their concerns (which which typically takes a good hour or so). But our flat rate for that ($150) would be significantly lower than our hourly rate. So when you approach a lawyer be sure to clarify what the rate is – and which type of rate it is – for the service you require. Be aware that some services may have a minimum retainer.

At our firm, we try and work with artists, and depending on the project, can offer a pricing level to fit the artist’s situation. Every artist is different, as are their needs. Some lawyers will be a better fit than others, so don’t hesitate to ask around until you find representation that fits your needs.

Jenny Milana, a partner at DangerMilana, specializes in arts, media, and entertainment law.

If you have any questions for a future “Ask an Arts Attorney” post, send them here.

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Ilie Ruby is a Boston-area writer and painter whose about-to-be-published novel, The Language of Trees, has gotten some choice praise from the likes of Gregory Maguire (Wicked) and Publishers Weekly. In Massachusetts, Ilie has upcoming readings at Brookline Booksmith (7/27), Newtonville Books (8/3), and Concord Bookshop (9/12).

Here’s a nano-interview with Ilie, an artist at a pivotal time in her career (and life, as it turns out)!

What’s the best/worst day job you’ve ever had?
Best, writing reviews on PBS documentaries for 8 hours a day. What could be better than watching documentaries and then writing about them? The worst job, handing out flyers in Boston’s Faneuil Hall on Christmas Day when I was 23. I stood outside in the snow for 8 hours without a hat and contracted the worst flu I’d ever had.

Who wins the poets vs. prose writers paint ball war?
Poets. They think fast and know how to hit you where it counts.

Do you secretly dream of being a) a pop icon, b) an algebra teacher, and/or c) a crime-solver/writer a la Jessica Fletcher?
A pop star. Whatever you do, do not search for IlieRubyBand on MySpace.

What’s the most surprising response to your work you’ve ever received?
I once had a short story ravaged by wolves in a writing workshop. When I left, barely able to speak, a friend suggested that the best revenge was revision. I looked over the story, dotted some i’s, crossed some t’s, and decided I was happy with it as it was. The situation really could not get any worse, I thought. Then I haphazardly tossed the story into a box marked “contest,” (not knowing what contest it actually was). A few weeks later I received a phone call: “Congratulations, your story has just won the Edwin L. Moses Award for Fiction chosen by T.C. Boyle! The biggest award at USC.” I received a huge prize, a small amount of satisfaction, and learned never again to listen to wolves.

Like, what does your work MEAN?
I don’t intentionally set out to convey a message, but what usually comes through is the idea that people can make the biggest mistakes of their lives and still come out okay. Life is an animal that can turn in an instant… in a good way. There is life after life. People need to have hope in the face of tragedy. This much I know.

Share a surprise twist in the “Ilie Ruby story.”
Well, talk about a confluence of events, not two months after my husband and I decided to adopt 3 children from Africa, I received word that my novel had been accepted for publication. I had waited for both things for such a long time. As synchronicity would have it, they both came along at once! So, I became a new mom and a new author within the span of a few months! What followed was a whole lot of learning, growing, and editing manuscripts while sitting at my daughter’s soccer practice and on the bench at the playground. It is a juggling act to say the least — but one I wouldn’t change for the world! This has undoubtedly been one of the most magical times of my life.

Ilie’s book tour for The Language of Trees launches at Borders NYC Columbus Circle on July 22 at 7 PM. Massachusetts readings include Brookline Booksmith on July 27, 7 PM; Newtonville Books on August 3 at 7 PM; and the Concord Bookshop on September 12 at 3 PM.

Ilie Ruby is a painter and author. She lives near Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and the three children they adopted from Africa.

Images: Ilie Ruby, photo by Steve Lifshatz; cover art for THE LANGUAGE OF TREES by Ilie Ruby (Avon HarperCollins, 2010).

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Jonathan Papernick’s short story collection There Is No Other has just been published, and Jonathan recently wrote an essay about that crucial step after you publish your book: promoting it with all available resources (mainly you).

Jonathan has generously allowed us to re-post the essay, which originally appeared in Beyond the Margins, a superb blog by writers connected to the writers’ service organization Grub Street.

Within weeks of publication of my first collection of short stories eight years ago, I received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and a full-page rave review in the New York Times. My name was mentioned in the same breath as other successful young, Jewish authors - bestsellers and award winners, names you would immediately recognize. I felt that I was on my way. Only I wasn’t - not really.

Nobody ever told me that the real work begins once a book is finished and that you need to spend a good six months to a year getting out there and promoting your own work, otherwise it risks dying on the vine. By the time my book started disappearing from bookshelves a few months after publication it was too late for me to traction those early positive reviews into sales. In the end, my collection sold fairly well for a first-time author, but the sales numbers were not high enough for the publishing industry to take notice. After many rounds of submissions, I finally gave up on U.S. publishers and instead opted to publish with a small Canadian publisher who expressed great interest in the book.

Now that my second collection of stories is out, I am taking the hard lessons I learned from relying on a disinterested publisher who did next to nothing after the book was orphaned by the acquiring editor, and have set up a war plan, a campaign to follow through to the bitter end.

Not a day has gone by since December when I have not done something to promote the book, whether I was contacting bookstores about carrying my book, or setting up readings in support of the collection.

Six months ago I started gathering names of potential reviewers, people who had shown favor to my writing in the past, as well as names I was able to gather from supportive writer friends, and sources on the internet. I sent personalized e-mails with a description of my collection and blurbs to each potential reviewer and let them know that the book would be coming in May. By making the personal connection with potential reviewers and creating a sense of anticipation, I raised the likelihood that the book would actually be reviewed.

I convinced my publisher to give me fifty review copies and I told him that I would send out review copies on my own, rather than relying on him to do it on my behalf. Sure it cost me for envelopes and postage, but I know that I am my own top priority, whereas any publisher has numerous authors it needs to consider at any given time. In fact, I did try hiring two former students to work under my guidance as publicity associates, but neither of them ultimately felt they were up to the task - I guess they just didn’t think they had enough skin in the game. I grew up listening to independent punk rock bands and I understand the power of a DIY ethos - there is no shame in doing it myself. In the end, I labeled and stamped envelopes myself, made sure to put in a press release and clippings with each review copy and I fired off another e-mail letting reviewers know that my book was on its way.

No matter how uncomfortable or not-in-your-nature it may be, it’s critical to get out there and talk to people about your work, as you are your own best resource and promoter. I attended several conferences (AWP, Muse and the Marketplace, Jewish Book Network, Book Expo America) in the months prior to publication meeting other writers, reviewers, agents and editors, putting my name (hopefully) into the zeitgeist so that my name would be familiar next time they encounter it. One influential book blogger did not receive my review copy in the mail the first two times I sent it. I could easily have given up at that point, and I was tempted to out of sheer frustration, but I knew that she was going to be at the Book Expo in New York. I sought her out at the table where she was signing books, introduced myself, and personally placed my book into her bag. She was very appreciative of my persistence, and wrote to me yesterday: “Brilliant collection. Truly amazing.” She plans on pushing my book on her blog in the coming days. (Ed. note: read the interview between Jonathan and said blogger, writer Caroline Leavitt.)

It is important to make sure that you have an attractive, updated website, a blog, a Goodreads profile, a Facebook fan page, a personal Facebook page that you use selectively to promote your work, (I’m not yet sold on Twitter, but I’m not ruling it out either) update your Amazon author page and make sure that your book page on Amazon.com has updated reviews as well as the Search Inside the Book feature and availability on Kindle. Unfortunately, I’ve been asking my publisher since December to make sure that the Search Inside the Book feature and Kindle is ready ASAP, and nearly six months later neither are up on the Amazon site. I’ve actually called Amazon myself and the book’s distributor, but it seems in this case that will and persistence are not enough and I can only hope that it will be taken care of soon.

Many of you might think that Amazon.com is the evil empire, and perhaps it is in some ways, but Amazon is also a writer’s best friend as it is a simple way for readers to buy your books, especially backlist titles that are likely not available in bookstores. I am encouraging my readers to post reviews on Amazon.com and have promised to send out a free copy of my novel to anyone who does so. I think people are more likely to buy (and review) a book that has been reviewed positively by a whole pile of people rather than by one or two of the author’s close relatives.

Your writing – and bank account – might take a hit during the months that you’re a promoting your work, but you need to honor your book and give it a fighting chance. It will certainly be time well spent, as little by little your writing emerges from the shadows. There are ways to continue writing in service of your promotional campaign as well. I strongly suggest writing for blogs, websites, newspapers etc. on any subject that you feel you have the remotest level of competence, and whenever possible, ask that your article/review/essay is linked directly to your website or an online source where your book can be purchased. I have some other promotional ideas in mind for the fall, but I’ll keep them to myself for now as they’re still in the planning stages.

Jonathan will read from There Is No Other on Thursday, July 22 2010, at 6 PM, as part of the Stories Uncorked program at the Marriott Rooftop Garden, near MIT in Cambridge, MA.

Jonathan Papernick is the author of the short story collection The Ascent of Eli Israel, and Who by Fire, Who by Blood. Please encourage your local independent bookstore to order his new collection of short stories There Is No Other. He teaches fiction writing at Emerson College and lives outside Boston with his wife and two sons.

Images: Jonathan Papernick, photo by Gary Alpert; cover art for THERE IS NO OTHER by Jonathan Papernick (Exile Editions, 2010).

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Sometimes the light comes in tiny points,

shark-toothed and smaller than stars;
sometimes, it sprays over everything.

- from Nancy K. Pearson’s To the High School Prom Queen

The above is from one of the many poems, prose excerpts, and dance clips recently added to our Gallery@MCC. You see, every time we award new Artist Fellows and Finalists, we feed a sampling of their art into the adorable, irascible robot that doubles as our Artist Fellowships computer. Several futuristic sound effects later, you have an updated Gallery@MCC: a historical record, if you will, of the awesomeness of Massachusetts artists.

Among the other recent additions:

• In Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, Preston Gralla’s olfactory entrepreneur has a can’t-lose scheme and Jung H. Yun’s teenaged, Vietnamese protagonist tracks her unwanted suitors by the American states they come from
• In Poetry, Anna Ross juxtaposes the personal against the scale of civilizations and Leslie Williams writes stirring poems that recently won her the Bellday Books Prize & Poetry Society of America Robert H. Winner Memorial Award!
• And, in Choreography, watch this clip from Sarah Slifer’s my own personal (#2), with its idiosyncratic references to rec center sports:

See more at the Gallery@MCC.

Credits: Excerpt from To the High School Prom Queen by Nancy K. Pearson; video excerpt from my own personal (#2) by Sara Slifer.

Nancy K. Pearson reads at the Wellfleet Library, Thursday, July 29, 8 PM (CANCELLED: due to unforeseen circumstances, Nancy has had to cancel this appearance).

Sarah Slifer will perform a new duet with dancer Jimena Bermejo in a group evening of pieces that play with perception, on August 5th at Club Oberon in Cambridge.

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Fiction writer Joan Leegant’s work has won her, among other honors, a Winship/PEN New England Book Award and a 2000 MCC fellowship, and opportunities including a guest lectureship at the U.S. State Department in Israel. Her new novel Wherever You Go is about to be published by W.W. Norton & Co; we advise, if at all possible, that you hear her read from the book at a local event (see list below).

We asked Joan, recently returned from a semester teaching in Israel, about Wherever You Go and about her process (and life) as a writer. Always a pleasure to talk shop with someone so deeply engaged in the craft!

ArtSake: I’m curious about what drew you to this story of three Americans in Israel whose lives are shaken by radical extremism. Where does a story start for you?

Joan: The story began with the characters. From the characters a plot arose. That is, I follow the characters to see what they do, and hope they do something interesting enough to keep a reader engaged and turning the pages.

That said, I did set out to write a book about Israel, and specifically about Americans in Israel, because that interests me a great deal. I’ve spent a lot of time in Israel, lived there for some years in the late 70s, and since 2007 have spent half the year in Tel Aviv where I’ve been the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University. So while I didn’t set out to write a book about the attraction to a cause and the pull of radical Jewish extremism, the fact is that extremism is part of the political reality in Israel — and of the whole Middle East. It’s naturally something I think about, have read a great deal about, and care deeply about. So it’s not a surprise that some of the characters in my book are drawn to it. In this respect, character and subject developed simultaneously.

ArtSake: You came to fiction writing after years of practicing law. Do you think this “pause” before launching head-on into a writing career affects the way you approach your writing now?

Joan: It’s nice of you to call the years of practicing law a “pause” rather than a delay. Or a “late start.” Or identifying me as the patronizing “late bloomer,” a term I don’t like because it implies we “bloom” only once, and only early in our lives. I was just shy of 40 when I began to write fiction, which I imagine is different from starting at 25. For one thing, I didn’t have some of the pressures younger writers have when they are just beginning and not publishing, and family members are telling them to give up and go to, say, law school. Because I already did that. This allows for a certain amount of psychological freedom and, perhaps, patience. I also had two small children by then, which I think provided a helpful balance. Life was full and complicated and sometimes overwhelming - I also had part-time jobs - but it also helped me keep perspective. Writing was important, but it wasn’t everything. Having children helped me stay grounded.

On the other hand, I do feel mortality pressing down. There is a palpable urgency, a need to not waste time, to bear down on the truth, and to come out and say what I think is important. Maybe all writers feel this way regardless of their age; I can’t say.

ArtSake: On your Web site, you note that you wrote much of your novel at artist colonies (Yaddo and MacDowell), and revised it while in Tel Aviv. How important is your physical setting, as a writer, to your process? Was there something about those localities that led themselves to the tasks at hand?

Joan: Artist colonies are wonderful. I had the great fortune to go to MacDowell four times and to Yaddo once, for stays that ranged from three to six weeks. What colonies offer above all is solitude and time, with no distractions or obligations. At MacDowell, for instance, you are given your own studio in the woods with perhaps one other studio in sight. You’re left alone to work at whatever hours you choose, no interruptions except what you seek out, meals provided but even those aren’t mandatory. When I was there, in the early 2000s, there was no cell phone service and no internet in the studios; you checked your email in the main building outside the dining room on one of two shared computers.

What this gives you as a writer is not only the time to write without distraction but the ability to sink deeply into your work — because you don’t have to continually surface back into the everyday. You don’t have to keep finding your way back in because you never have to climb out. It’s this sustained attention that is very hard to achieve in regular life.

As for the physical settings, Yaddo and MacDowell are both located in beautiful wooded areas where there’s lots of quiet. They’re also in lovely towns you can go to when you need a break from that intense inward focus. You can go to a cafe or a drugstore or the movies and get away from yourself for a little while.

ArtSake: Do you share works-in-progress with other writers? How important is it to you and your work to maintain that connection with other artists?

Joan: Three writer friends looked at the manuscript of Wherever You Go at different stages and gave me terrifically helpful feedback. I have done, and continue to do, the same for other writers. I think it’s wonderful if writers can help each other this way. I also value these connections for the psychic support they provide for the writing effort itself. I’m not in a writing group and don’t socialize with a lot of writers, not on principle but just because that’s how my life has been, so these connections are especially important to me. They make me feel less alone, more part of a community, even if the community consists of people solitary by nature and necessity, and even if it’s cultivated to a large degree by email.

Along these lines, I deeply appreciate and admire those writers, prominent writers, who are generous about reading a book by a new writer - or simply a fellow writer they don’t personally know– to provide a blurb. Blurbs, those endorsements on the back of a book, are simply a reality of the business of publishing. Publishers rely on them to sell books. But not all writers have vast networks of fellow writers they count as friends and from whom they can comfortably solicit a blurb. I think writers should try to help each other in this regard. The marketing part of publishing is directed at getting people to read books, and to buy books and support the publishing industry — which in turn enables writers to write and publish. The more people read, the better it is for all of us.

Watch Joan discuss why she writes fiction.

ArtSake: In a video interview, you mention that the hours between midnight and 5 AM often are the hours of the greatest clarity and access for your writing. Have you found it challenging to balance the unconventional challenges of a writer’s life with other aspects of your life?

Joan: Those crazy late night hours are an inconvenient aspect of my writing life that I’ve more or less learned to live with. Sure, every now and then I tell myself that now, this time, I’ll write during the day, but invariably the experiment falls apart after a few days or a week when everything I attempt comes out wooden, and I’m pulling teeth and grumbling at everyone in my path. So then I’m back to keeping hours that make it hard to do a “regular” life and require all kinds of compromises. There are times, for instance, when I don’t go out with people in the evening because it takes too many hours afterward to unwind and get down to work. There are other times when I don’t write at all, weeks or months, because I’m teaching and need to have a more normal sleeping schedule, or I can’t throw myself into the teaching and the writing at the same time. There are still other times when I’ve chosen not to write because there are other opportunities I don’t want to ignore. This year, for example, I was the visiting writer at an Israeli university, teaching the fiction workshop in a master’s program. The workload wasn’t onerous; there was time for me to do some of my own writing. But I chose instead to teach English two nights a week at an African refugee center in south Tel Aviv to people who’d fled Sudan, Congo, Eritrea. There are 14,000 African refugees in Israel, many of whom walked there, barely escaping with their lives, often shot at in Egypt before reaching the Israeli border. I found the teaching incredibly rewarding and a lot of fun. Many of the students were in their early 20s, the same ages as my sons. I learned a huge amount from them. I wrote less but had a life-changing experience.

What has helped me with this question of balance - or, more accurately, perhaps, the lack of balance - is to try to fully embrace whatever it is that is keeping me from the writing, including things I didn’t choose, things that are difficult or painful but are simply part of the messy business of life.

ArtSake: Can you point to any one decision you’ve made as an artist that has had the most impact on your career?

Joan: Probably the smartest thing I did was to enroll in a master’s program in writing, a low-residency MFA at Vermont College, now the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I was 47 years old and had been writing for 7 or 8 years and needed a more rigorous way of dealing with what I was doing. The beauty of the low-residency model is that, other than going to the campus twice a year for 10-day residencies, you are basically on your own, writing a lot of fiction, but with a mentor, a serious working writer who becomes your dedicated reader. After 2 years of this, with 4 different mentors, you can learn a lot about yourself as a writer. I had wonderful mentors in this program, all of whom wanted me to become a better writer. It was an extraordinary gift. It wasn’t like a typical graduate school with hierarchies and ego stuff; in fact, the faculty treated the students as equals in part because so many of the students were older and accomplished in other fields. It was - and still is - an amazing place.

ArtSake: What are you writing now?

Joan: I’ve generated some very preliminary material for another novel and have the beginnings of several short stories. It’ll be awhile before you - or anyone else - sees any of it in print!

Joan will read from Wherever You Go at a number of upcoming Massachusetts events:
Thursday, July 15, 7:00 pm, Newtonville Books in Newton
Tuesday, July 20, 7:45 pm, Newbridge on the Charles in Dedham
Monday, July 26, 7:30 pm, Lasell Village in Newton
Monday, August 2, 7:00 pm, Brookline Booksmith in Brookline
Thursday, August 5, 6:00 pm, Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis

Read a full list of events.

Joan Leegant is also the author of An Hour in Paradise, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

Images: Joan Leegant, photo by Eli Katzoff; Book jacket image for WHEREVER YOU GO by Joan Leegant (W.W. Norton & Co. 2010).

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We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good - not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

MCC Painters in Cape Cod Exhibition: The Massachusetts Cultural Council is proud to partner with the Cultural Center of Cape Cod for a small works exhibition featuring 2010 fellows/finalists in Painting, on display at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth, July 13 - August 8, 2010. This exhibit will celebrate the work of artists Liza Bingham, Christopher Faust, Rebecca Doughty, Yanick Lapuh, Scott Listfield, Joshua Meyer, Anne Neely, Monica Nydam, Harold Reddicliffe, Matthew Rich, and Michael Zelehoski. There will be an opening reception Saturday, July 17th from 5:00 - 7:00 PM.

Three past fellows/finalists are participating in Pioneer Women in Wonderland at the Paper City Project Space in Holyoke, Mass. The exhibition includes work by Cynthia Consentino (Crafts Fellow ‘07), Karen Dolmanisth (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘03), and Sandy Litchfield (Painting Fellow ‘06), and is on view through July 31, 2010.

Steve Almond (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) presents Rock & Roll Will Save Your Life: The Musical, billed as “An evening of words, music, drinks, dancing, and bad hair,” on Thursday, July 8, at 8 PM. The event takes place at Club Oberon in Harvard Square, and will feature Steve reading from his new book and music by Dayna Kurtz. Buy tickets and/or check out the event’s Facebook page.

Congratulations to Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ‘07), selected as the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward 2010 Award Winner! Her work will be featured in the Flash Forward 2010 book, and in the Flash Forward Festival, scheduled for October. Meanwhile, see Claire’s arresting photography in the show In Training: Soldiers Before War at the Gallery 303 at The New England Institute of Art in Brookline. The show runs July 19-September 8, with an opening reception Monday, July 19, 5:30-7:30 PM.

Liza Bingham (Painting Finalist ‘10) is in a three person show with Alice Denison and Cathleen Daley at the Alden Gallery in Provincetown. The show opens Friday, July 16, 2010 (reception 7 to 9 PM) and shows through July 29.

Kristin Bock (Poetry Fellow ‘06) joins fellow poet Lee Sharkey for a reading on Thursday, July 1 at 7 PM, as part of the Collected Poets Series. The reading takes place at Mocha Maya’s Coffee House in Shelburne Falls.

William Ciccariello (Painting Fellow ‘06) joins artists Eileen Wagner and Robin Winfield for a show of new works at Rice/Polak Gallery in Provincetown, July 2 - July 15, with a preview Thursday, July 1, 9-10 PM and an opening reception Friday, July 2, 7:00 PM.

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ‘08) joins Laura Williams McCaffery and M. Evelina Galang for a reading at the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, MA.

Rebecca Doughty (Painting Finalist ‘10) is among the artists in a group exhibition of new work at the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown. The show runs July 16-August 4, 2010.

Michael Dowling (Playwriting Fellow ‘09) will have a staged reading of his new play Tamarack House at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. The reading, which is presented by the Berkshire Playwrights Lab in association with the Atlantic Theater Company, will take place on Wednesday, July 14, at 8 PM. The play is about a boarding house – run down but harboring potential - in a bucolic New England town. As developers encroach, the house’s residents need to act, and quick. Recently, the film version of Michael’s play Speck’s Last screened at Boston International Film Festival and the Berkshire International Film Festival. In other work as a theatre artist, Michael is directing Molly Sweeney, performing this month by the Chester Theatre Company in Western, Mass.

This coming year, Pagan Kennedy (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘10) will be in residence at MIT as a Knight Fellow in Science Journalism.

Kathryn Kulpa (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ‘10) is the editor of Newport Review and has organized upcoming reading events at Barrington (RI) Public Library on Wednesday, July 28, at 7 PM and Baker Books in Dartmouth, MA on Saturday, August 14 at 7 PM.

Dawn Lane (Choreography Fellow ‘10) choreographed and directed “common ground” at the Harmon Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C., in June. Dawn’s Moving Company, a troupe of Community Access to the Arts in Great Barrington, was selected to perform at the International VSA Festival, which showcases the accomplishments of artists with disabilities. The Moving Company, the only Massachusetts performing arts group selected to appear at the D.C. event, also recently performed at the She’s Got Moxie Awards and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Work by Scott Listfield (Painting Finalist ‘10) is included in Crazy 4 Cult at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, CA. The show, which features artists re-interpreting cult classics, runs July 9-30. An opening reception on July 9, 7-10 PM, will feature an appearance by Kevin Smith!

Anne Neely’s (Painting Finalist ‘10) work is included in the Northeast competition edition of New American Paintings. Juror Monica Ramirez-Montagut, Curator of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, writes of Anne’s work: “Her paintings imagine an environment that goes beyond the human surface into the underground, exploring the possible colors and textures of sediment and strata. They depict wonderful surprises, like large bodies of water, yet the richness and possibility evident in these invented landscapes exist on planes not accessible to us.”

Nancy K. Pearson (Poetry Finalist ‘10) will join novelist and short story writer Heidi Jon Schmidt for a reading at the Wellfleet Library, Thursday, July 29, 8 PM (CANCELLED: due to unforeseen circumstances, Nancy has had to cancel this appearance).

Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘04, ‘10) new book Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories is now available. She’ll read from the book as part of the Summer Salon at the Salem Athenaeum in Salem, MA, on July 16, 5 PM.

Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ‘10) has work in The Pencil of Nature, a group exhibition exploring the dialogue between drawings and photographs, at Julie Saul Gallery in NYC. The show runs July 1-August 20, 2010, with an opening reception on Thursday, July 8, 6 to 8 PM.

Sarah Slifer (Choreography Fellow ‘10) joins U.K.-based interdisciplinary performer Vincent Cacialano for Plex at the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, July 9th, 7PM. On August 11th, she will perform a new duet with dancer Jimena Bermejo in a group evening of pieces that play with perception, at Club Oberon in Cambridge.

My Name is Art, a short play by Peter Snoad (Playwriting Fellow ‘09) will be performed at the Short and Sweet Festival in Singapore July 21-25, and at Salem Theatre Company in Salem, MA in its “Moments of Play” festival July 22-25. Peter’s new full-length play, Identity Crisis, a comedy about race and identity, is one of four finalists in the annual new play contest of Centre Stage-South Carolina and will receive a staged reading in Greenville, SC in October. More information at: www.petersnoad.com.

Julia Story (Poetry Finalist ‘10) will read from her book of poems, Post Moxie, as part of the Deep Moat Reading Series. The reading will take place on July 24, at 7 PM, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge.

Poetry by Daniel Tobin (Poetry Finalist ‘10) is included in the most recent issue of Salamander.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09, Drawing Fellow ‘04) is featured in the June/July/August 2010 issue of Art New England (pictured above), is participating in the exhibition Incognito: The Hidden Self-Portrait, July 15 - August 27, 2010, at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in NYC, and is showing new work in the group exhibition At the Edge at the Portsmouth Museum of Art, in Portsmouth NH, through July 11, 2010. More good news: the Baltimore Museum of Art has acquired one of Rachel’s fruit sticker drawings for its permanent collection. You can follow Rachel’s near-daily performances on Twitter.

Judith Wombwell (Choreography Fellow ‘10) recently joined with Kathryn Alter to present Intersect/Integrate, an evening of works that explore different stages and phases in life and relationships, at the Dance Complex in Cambridge. Both choreographers presented new work, and Kathryn Alter (a NYC-based dancer working with the Limón Company) danced in Judith’s work “Shed.”

Kevin Young’s (Poetry Fellow ‘10) poetry collection Dear Darkness will be published in paperback in July 2010.

Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ‘05) documentary The Two Escobars has been getting ecstatic reviews, including an A grade from the hard-to-get-A’s-from-people at The Onion’s AV Club! Check out more on the film’s Facebook page.

Past Fellows Notes
June 2010
May 2010
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images and media: Scott Listfield, GRAND CANYON (2008), Oil on canvas, 24×48 in; Rebecca Doughty, FETCH (2010), acrylic on wood, 5×5 in; Cover of June/July/August 2010 issue of Art New England, featuring work by Rachel Perry Welty; excerpt of GRASS, choreographed by Judith Wombwell.

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Further adventures in movies
Yesterday, we talked about adapting novels to film and past MCC awardees who have done so. Today, ArtSake returns to Hollyword (i.e. the special place movies of books get made).

The following is a list of books by past state fellows in literature that have been made into movies.

Andre Dubus (Fellow ‘76) wrote Finding a Girl in America (1980). One of the stories, “Killings,” is the source material for the 2001 movie In the Bedroom.

Tim O’Brien (’76) wrote the short story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” included in his seminal book The Things They Carried (1980). “Sweetheart” was later adapted into the movie A Soldier’s Sweetheart (1998), which starred Kiefer Sutherland.

Rita Mae Brown (’77) is the author of the Mrs. Murphy “cat” mysteries, and she adapted her novel Murder, She Meowed (1996) into the 1998 TV movie Murder She Purred: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery. (Fun fact: Brown has written a number of other screenplays and teleplays, including the script to the 1982 film Slumber Party Massacre. According to IMDB, she wrote the script as a parody, but the producers decided to film it straight-faced!)

Denis Johnson’s (’83) Jesus’ Son (1992) became a movie of the same name in 1999. Johnson himself has a cameo as a man who arrives at an emergency room with a knife in his eye.

Sue Miller’s (’84) novel The Good Mother (1986) was made into a movie in 1988; same goes for Inventing the Abbotts (1987) in 1997.

Stephen Dobyns (’85) wrote the novel Cold Dog Soup (1985), which was adapted to an American film of the same name in 1990 and a 1999 French film called Doggy Bag. Also, his novel Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (1988) spawned the film Two Deaths in 1995.

Tom Perrotta (’98) published Election (1998) while the movie version was being made (it was released in 1999). Little Children (2004) became a movie, too, in 2006.

Honorable Mentions
Sabina Murray (’02) wrote the lauded short story collection The Caprices. While her books have yet to be adapted to the screen, film director Terrence Malick commissioned her to write the screenplay for the film Beautiful Country.

Regie O’Hare Gibson (’10), and his poetry, appear in the 1997 movie Love Jones. According to a Taunton Daily Gazette interview, the film was actually loosely based on events from Regie’s life. A meta-adaptation?

We wish
Those are the adaptations we know of (tell us if we’ve missed any), but there are others we’d pay good American currency (or bartered lawn-mowing services) to see:

Francie Lin’s (’06) The Foreigner. The 2008 literary thriller won an Edgar Award for Best First Book, and if this smart, atmospheric, compulsively readable book isn’t optioned and filmed soon, then somebody, somewhere, should be fired (or at least get a noogie).

Pagan Kennedy’s (’10) The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex, a biography of Alex Comfort, creator of The Joy of Sex. Biopics are total Oscar-nip, and this has one has “eccentric, over the top performance” written all over it, so get on it, Leo (or whoever else wants to finally win one).

Steve Almond’s (’08) Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. So many ways this nonfiction book about musical superfandom could go as a movie. Documentary about fanatics and the bands that fanaticize them? Freaks and Geeks-esque TV dramedy, soundtrack heavy on the Toto? (Experience Steve’s deconstruction of Toto’s “Africa” to see why.) Perhaps a liberally fictionalized story of dude being superfan of Styx, dude getting sick and needing kidney transplant, Styx donating its kidney to dude, saving his life, that’s right rock and roll literally saving dude’s life so he can actually join Styx and ROCK THE UNIVERSE?

(Instead of waiting for this movie to be made, you can check out Steve and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life at a multi-media rock-stravaganza at Club Oberon in Cambridge on Thursday, July 8, at 8 PM. Literature, music, and bad hair are promised!)

What books would you add to the wish list?

Images: Harold Reddicliffe, PROJECTOR AND LIGHT STAND (2009), Oil on canvas, 18×16 in (photo credit Clements/Howcroft).

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The National Endowment for the Arts has a nifty Writers’ Corner page that lists movies adapted from the books of past NEA fellows. Authors like Sherman Alexie, Jane Smiley, and Tobias Wolff all received NEA support over the years, and at some point saw their work transformed for the silver screen.

When I saw the list, I thought, cool, let’s steal from the Feds.

Well, maybe steal is the wrong word (he says, somersaulting away from federal agents). Let’s say localize. Because Massachusetts has been awarding fellowships to writers since the early ’70s, and along the way, we’ve amassed our own bodacious list of writers whose works have been adapted to film.

Now, without getting into the whole, which is better the book or the movie thing (Really? That’s in doubt?), it’s hard to deny that movies bring attention to the books that might not have come otherwise. In discussing the film adaptation of his novel Breakfast with Scot, Michael Downing, a past Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist from MCC’s Artist Fellowships Program, notes that “A heck of a lot more people know about (the novel) because of Tom Cavanaugh’s performance.” (Cavanaugh, known for portraying the title character of the NBC comedy Ed, played the novel’s central character in the film version.)

And if Ed can sell a novel, imagine what Ferris Bueller can do!
It’s interesting to note the chronology behind the book/movie Election by Tom Perrotta (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘98), another past MCC awardee who has leapt from page to screen. Perrotta actually sold the option on Election before the book was published. Momentum from the subsequent film-in-progress by Alexander Payne, starring Matthew Broderick, helped get the novel published in 1998 (the same year Perrotta won an MCC fellowship).

With Perrotta’s rising star came the prospect of more adaptations. But adaptations are tricky things for authors, because for better or worse, stuff from the book often gets changed in the film. Will those changes allow the story stay true to itself? Or will the book get lost in the tinsel?

In his next adaptation, Perrotta took a head-on approach to the issue of changes: he made them himself. As co-writer of the film adaptation of his novel Little Children, he either endorsed any adjustments made to the original story or actually came up with them.

Michael Downing didn’t write his own adaptation, but at least he found filmmakers who shared his vision of Breakfast with Scot. Eventually. When the novel was published, it was swiftly optioned by a major American production company. Michael says he met with the company’s appointed screenwriter, only to learn that the screenwriter felt the movie version needed a “third act.” Michael jokingly suggested he kill off one of the major characters. Readily and without apparent irony, the screenwriter agreed.

Michael’s heart sank. “It just felt so crushingly off the spirit of the project,” he says. Within the year, the company had given up the option, which gave Michael the chance to work with Canadian producer Paul Brown. The book is about two gay men who adopt the son of a deceased friend, and Brown was drawn to the story because of his own experience adopting a child.

That’s not to say the story emigrated to the screen without alteration: in the movie, the story’s setting shifted from Cambridge, Mass. to Canada, and the sport of hockey, nowhere to be found in the novel, became central to the plot. So did these changes bother Michael?

“They just seemed like a good, interesting choices.” He says he was much more possessive of details, tiny gestures or the way an actor would deliver a line taken directly from the book. “And I’d think, that’s not how Mildred would say that!” He adds, wryly, “Though nobody was asking me how to read a line.”

Line readings aside, he says he found the process gratifying (”You’ve got hundreds of people at work on something adapted from your book - it’s not the usual response to one’s work!”), and by the time the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, it was nothing but a pleasure. “When my partner and I were sitting in the theatre, and the place went dark, I thought, this is just about the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Coming up: Part Two of Page to Screen, with a full list of past fellows’ books with movie adaptations.

Images: Cover art from the original edition of BREAKFAST WITH SCOT (Counterpoint, 2000); cover art from the movie tie-in edition (Counterpoint, 2008).

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June 2010

We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good - not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

Two past fellows are featured in Solstice: a Magazine for Diverse Voices. Poetry by Ben Berman (Poetry Fellow ‘08) and short fiction by Grace Talusan (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘02) were included in the Winter/Spring 2010 issue.

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ‘08) joins stage/screen writer Sinan Ünel (Playwriting Finalist ‘07) for a reading at the Lesley University MFA Program summer residency, in the Marran Theater in Cambridge, on Sunday, June 27 at 7 PM. The full reading series schedule also includes Rachel Kadish (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction ‘08) on June 28 at 7 PM, and later, NPR writer David Rakoff.

Two past fellows/finalists recently received funding from The LEF Foundation’s Moving Image Fund. Marlo Poras (Film & Video Fellow ‘05) received a $15,000 production grant to work on The Mosuo Sisters, about two sisters who lose their jobs in Beijing and return home to a remote Himalayan village to help keep their family afloat. Jeff Daniel Silva (Film & Video Finalist ‘09) was awarded a $25,000 post-production grant for his film Ivan and Ivana, about a couple from war-torn Kosovo, now making a life in the US. Congratulations!

Irina Rozovsky (Photography Finalist ‘09) is among the artists exhibiting in Familiar Bodies at Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston. The exhibition, which includes the work of photographers who focus their cameras on the nearest people in their lives, also includes Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (Photography Fellow ‘01), Camilo Ramirez (Photography Fellow ‘09), and Sage Sohier (Photography Finalist ‘05). The show runs through June 26, with an opening reception June 4th, 5:30-7:30 PM.

Brian Corey (Painting Fellow ‘08) has a solo show at Kingston Gallery in Boston, called The Terrain That Remains. The show runs June 2-27, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, June 4, 5-7:30 PM, and an artist’s talk Saturday, June 12, 4 PM.

Denver Office of Cultural Affairs: we applaud your good taste in public artists. They recently commissioned Janet Echelman (Crafts & Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09) to create a Biennial of the Americas installation.

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick (Music Composition Fellow ‘09) premiered Kinderkreuzzug, his dramatic cantata for children’s voices and small chamber ensemble, in April (read about it on ArtSake). Boston College has put together a fabulous audio slideshow about the performances.

Michael Hoerman (Poetry Fellow ‘04) will read on June 17 for ThoughtCrime, a reading series at Khon’s Wine Bar and Darts, 2808 Milam in Houston, Texas. He joins the roster of the 5th Annual Word Around Town Tour for a weeklong series of readings around Houston in July. On September 10 and 11 he will be a featured performer at Houston Fringe Fest, an annual performing arts festival presented by FrenetiCore at Frenetic Theater in Houston’s East End.

Lisa Kessler’s (Photography Finalist ‘05) solo exhibition Seeing Pink is at the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY. The show, which explores the idea of the color pink in American, runs June 3-June 27, with an opening reception Saturday June 12, 6-8 PM.

Yanick Lapuh (Painting Fellow ‘10) is among the artists in Eye Spy: Playing with Perception at the Peabody Essex Museum, June 19, 2010 to June 1, 2011.

Jane D. Marsching (Photography Finalist ‘03) has a host of Spring/Summer exhibitions and events. She’s part of Resurrectine at the Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC, through June 28, a large-scale group show that embraces the notion of transformation. In April, Jane opened a dual photo exhibition (with Andrea Juan) called Tribute Phase II: Polar Encounter. Sites for the exhibition, which was curated by Veronica Willenberg, CEO of Art in Lobby, include the International Book Fair, the PanAmerican Hotel, and Botanica Gardens, all in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jane will also take part in an alumni exhibition of art at Hampshire College’s Johnson Gallery (June 11-July 30, 2010, reception June 12, 4-6 PM).

Tara L. Masih’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ‘96) Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction was awarded a bronze medal from the 2009 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards in the writing category.

Congratulations to Cynthia Maurice (Drawing Fellow ‘02), who received the Jurors First Prize from the Danforth Museum 2010 Off The Wall Juried Exhibit. The prize was selected by Jen Mergel, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, MFA and Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator of the ICA.

Nathalie Miebach (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09) is among the artists exhibiting in The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft at the Fuller Craft Museum, through February 6, 2011. Artists in this show use new technologies in tandem with traditional craft materials – clay, glass, wood, metal and fiber – to forge new artistic directions.

Liz Nofziger (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘05) has a solo show, Underwater, at the Melle Finelli Studio, June 4-July 16, 2010, opening reception: June 4, 5 - 8 PM.

Monica Nydam (Painting Fellow ‘10) has a solo show of new paintings at LaMontagne Gallery in Boston, through June 19.

Linda Price-Sneddon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘01) has a solo show at HallSpace in Boston, Soon… Our Salvation. The show, which opens Saturday, June 5 (reception 3-6 PM) and runs to July, is inspired by the UFO Mythos, Armageddon evangelism and small town parades.

Monica Raymond’s (Playwriting Finalist ‘07, Poetry Finalist ‘08) radio play The Telemarketer will be performed on Shoestring Radio Theater on KUSF 90.3 FM in San Francisco. The performance will air at 6:30 PM Eastern time, June 30, and listeners outside the San Francisco area can access a live Internet stream. The performance will also stream for one week following the live broadcast, on Shoestring Theatre’s Web site.

Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘06) was named as one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction writers to watch.

Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ‘95) has a mixed-media sculpture in a furniture exhibition at the Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge. The exhibition runs June 15-July 31st, with an opening reception June 17, 6-8 PM.

Orbiting Mars, a full-length comedy by Peter Snoad (Playwriting Fellow ‘09), will receive a staged reading at the Penobscot Theatre in Bangor, ME June 23 in its Northern Writes New Play Festival. The play recently won the annual new play contest of Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre in Santa Cruz, CA. Several of Peter’s short plays have been staged recently or are slated for upcoming productions. The Greening of Bridget Kelly and My Name is Art will feature in the London Fringe August 11-14, part of a repeat of Liminal Productions’ “American Bytes” series by emerging American playwrights that was first produced in April at the New Wimbledon Studio in Wimbledon, London. Stone’s Soup Theatre in Seattle included The Greening of Bridget Kelly in its short play festival in May, and My Name is Art can be seen at the Raconteur Theatre in Columbus, OH through June 12. Boston Actors’ Theatre produced Either Or in its SLAMBoston festival on May 19. Peter has a new website where you can check out his work: www.petersnoad.com.

Cam Terwilliger (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) was featured in a recent Boston Globe article by Danielle Dreilinger about a memoir writing workshop he ran for seniors living at the Somerville Home. Cam was supported in the effort by a Somerville Arts Council grant.

Debra Weisberg (Drawing Fellow ‘08) is among the artists in By Hand at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, June 6-26, opening reception Sunday, June 6, 6-8 PM.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09, Drawing Fellow ‘04) was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to create a limited edition benefit artwork.

Deb Todd Wheeler (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03) has a solo exhibition, BLEW, at the Miller Block Gallery in Boston. The show, which runs through June 26, features blown film polyethylene – aka plastic. Read a nano-interview with Deb on ArtSake.

Tracy Winn’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) short story collection Mrs. Somebody Somebody comes out this month in paperback, and she’ll be reading at the Salem Athenaeum on June 11 at 5 PM, at Newtonville Books on June 17 at 7 PM, at Barnes & Noble in Lowell on June 18 at 7 PM, at The Book Rack in Newburyport on June 19 at 3 PM, and at Gibson Books in Concord, New Hampshire on July 1 at 7 PM.

Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ‘05) documentary The Two Escobars, a film about the convergent stories of murdered soccer star Andrés Escobar and Columbian drug baron Pablo Escobar, will have a Hometown Screening in the historic Academy of Music in Northampton on Sunday, June 20 at 7:30 PM, followed by a post-screening Q&A. The film, which was commissioned to celebrate ESPN’s 30th anniversary with 30 documentary films, will have its ESPN premiere on June 22. It also premieres in Florida and screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival this month (on Friday, June 18th and Sunday, June 20th) and recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Cannes International Film Festival.

Past Fellows Notes
May 2010
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images: Linda Price-Sneddon, drawing from the SOON…OUR SALVATION suite; Brian Corey, COORDINATES UNKNOWN (2010), Ink, Acrylic, on Paper,7×8 in; Lisa Kessler, CODE PINK, from SEEING PINK; Deb Todd Wheeler, image from BLEW.

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The 2010 MCC Artist Fellowship awards have been announced for Choreography, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry. Applications for the MCC’s Artist Fellowship Program were open to all eligible Massachusetts artists.

A total number of 967 eligible applications were received; 58 in Choreography, 530 in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and 379 in Poetry. See a complete list of this year’s fellows and finalists.

Read profiles of the fellows/finalist on Gallery@MCC.

Images: Cover art from books by MCC fellows/finalists. Top, l to r: Cold Snap by Cynthia Morrison Phoel (SMU Press 2010); For the Confederate Dead by Kevin Young (Knopf, 2008); Edinburgh by Alexander Chee (paperback edition, Picador, 2002); Bottom, l to r: Post Moxie by Julia Story (Sarabande Books, 2010); The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2008); Scattershot by David Lovelace (paperback edition, Plume, 2009).

Video: an excerpt from THE BEHOLDING by Deborah Abel (Choreography Fellow ‘10).

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