RIP: Barry Hannah

The Alabama Writer's Forum remembers Barry Hannah: In Memoriam: Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah Author and educator Barry Hannah died at his home in Oxford, Miss., on March 1. He was 67. Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Mississippi, he published eight novels and four short story collections. His novels include Yonder Stands Your Orphan, High Lonesome, Bats Out of Hell, and Never Die. His novel Ray was written and set in Tuscaloosa, where Hannah helped bring the University of Alabama Creative Writing Program to national prominence during his tenure there. Hannah was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his short story collection High Lonesome. His first novel, Geronimo Rex, won the William Faulkner Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the modern South, won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. Hannah also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, a PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and a prestigious Award in Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. "He was the rarest of things: He truly was an original," writer Brad Watson told the Tuscaloosa News. "Whatever his many influences, he had entirely digested them; they came out Barry Hannah." Watson studied creative writing with Hannah at the University of Alabama. The Alabama Writers' Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, promotes writers and writing in Alabama, with an emphasis on arts education programs for young writers. If you're planning to be in or near Montgomery on 4/17, the AWF produced Alabama Book Festival takes place from 10 a.m-4 p.m downtown at Old Alabama Town. More than fifty authors, storytellers, publishers, illustrators, and performers will gather to celebrate reading, writing, and literature.

SCENE: Alabama Book Festival - Montgomery AL 4/18

On Saturday, April 18, more than fifty fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, artists, illustrators, playwrights, and children's writers will converge on the grounds of Old Alabama Town for the fourth annual Alabama Book Festival (ABF). The state-wide literary event will kick off readings and activities at 10 a.m. and go until 5 p.m. The event is free and open to all.

This year's festival will include readings and signings by Harper Lee Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, Alabama's beloved Kathryn Tucker Windham, acclaimed photographer Beth Maynor Young, and chef Frank Stitt. A dedicated children's area will feature Magic Tree House author Mary Pope Osborne, among others.

Again this year, the Alabama Writers' Forum will sponsor the Poetry South/West Tent on the grounds of its Haigler House headquarters.

A special concluding event from 4 to 5 p.m. will feature the national debut of Warren St. John's new book, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town.

April is National Poetry Month. Celebrate at events such as the Alabama Book Festival, the Montevallo Literary Festival, the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival, and the Alabama Writers Symposium.

BOOK: The Seasons Bear Us by Jeanie Thompson

From wandering the rivers and valleys of her upbringing, to veering off the beaten paths in Italy, for her fourth collection of poems, award-winning poet Jeanie Thompson carries the meditations of her heart across the span of a year. Returning to familiar subjects – love, motherhood, her elegiac Southern landscape, and the continuing search for a deeper connection “running with” her blood, Thompson’s poems bear lessons grounded in her favorite earth, rich with her most important people, and full of grace. Following the late James Wright’s counsel that writing is like the seasons, and “the seasons bear us,” Thompson refocuses her lens on the longings of the human heart. Masterfully crafted, poem after poem searches out the reader, each moment rich in its own season, bearing the good fruits of honesty and grace from a brilliant poet and a life well lived. -- River City Publishing

EAT: “Craque” Is For Lovers

It goes by many names: White Trash, Puppy Chow, Muddy Buddies…but Montgomery, AL native, and current New Yorker, Freida Orange calls her version of this “very southern snack” Craque.


“For years now my sister Freida has been making a delicious treat for almost every special occasion,” says sister Maxine Orange. “... she takes it to parties, she gives it as gifts, la la la. So this year, she decided to package it up and sell it so you can give it to your friends and serve it at your parties! Her friends were calling it crack – I suppose because it is so addictive! To make it a little more catchy, (and because we are not crack-heads...) we've re-named it CRAQUE!”

So what is it?? Craque consists of bite-sized pieces of chocolate and peanut butter (Skippy, NOT the stuff that was recalled!) in crunchy shells covered in powdered sugar. It's delicious and, yes, addictive!!

Freida was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama where she still has a rather large and wonderful family. She has a degree in Journalism from The University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) in Athens. Freida moved to New York in 2000 and has had amazing experiences working in film and television since. She’s been making these delicious snacks for years and had been told numerous times she should package and sell them. She finally had time to do it during the 2008 holiday season and “Craque” has taken on a life of its own.

Freida peddles her “Craque” online on Etsy and at Bonsignour in NYC’s West Village. It’s the perfect fix for Valentine’s Day (which happens to be Freida’s b-day as well)!!