Edison State Presents Author Discussions

Larry Hamilton, Christina DeLaet Burns, and Linda Hamilton.

Four area authors who explore diverse subjects and employ a variety of approaches, will be featured at the Creative Writing Club/Coalition at Edison State Community College during the spring semester. The public is invited to join college students and faculty during these monthly sessions.

All programs will be from 6-7 p.m. in Room 331 and are scheduled for the fourth Wednesday of the months of January, February, March, and April. Following the presentations by the authors, attendees will be invited to present their writing for group critiquing.

The selection of authors is designed to expose the audience to possibilities, strategies and diverse viewpoints with opportunities for dialogue with authors following their thirty-minute presentations.

The January 23 program will feature a Piqua trio: a historian, a writer, and an artist. Larry Hamilton, Christina DeLaet Burns, and Linda Hamilton will discuss their collaboration in producing accounts of the African American experience with a focus on Hamilton’s great, great grandmother Lucy Sams Ross., one of a group of fugitive slaves at Camp Nelson, Kentucky. Hamilton became interested in genealogy in 1975 after hearing Alex Haley discuss Roots at Wright State University. With degrees from Central State University and Wright State University, Hamilton served as genealogy researcher for “Slave Banjo” on the PBS series “The History Detectives” and has been recognized in a host of areas based on his work in African American history.

Tipp City resident Steve Marlowe, attorney, professor, and author, will be featured on February 27. With undergraduate degrees from Miami University, a law degree from the University of Toledo, and an M.F.A. from the prestigious creative writing program at the University of Iowa, Marlowe has written 20 plus columns and literary analyses. He will share the ways in which he uses his Appalachian heritage in his novel “Digging up the Bones” to earn a host of positive reviews: “Marlowe adeptly weaves a complex tale of the ways in which the often horrific behavior we heap upon each other reverberates across generations. His prose is harshly lyrical, demanding and dynamic, and evokes with exquisite accuracy this Kentucky holler from which no one emerges unscathed.” – Colette Sartor

Terry Pellman of Sidney spent his first work life as a social services administrator before beginning a second career as a prolific author who self publishes his work. On March 27, Pellman will discuss the self-publishing process as well as the marketing strategies he uses for his novels. A Republican who is politically active in the party, Pellman endorses a philosophy that maintains there are dangers in the political and cultural divide in the U.S. which could result in a breaking away of states to form a nation based on strict adherence to the original Constitution.

A native of Alabama, a retired college professor with dozens of publications in scholarly journals, and a frequent presenter on NPR, Piqua poet Jane Kretschman is scheduled for April 24 and will discuss her latest project, a study of lynchings in Alabama. She will elucidate the ways in which historical data can serve as a springboard for the production of poetry in which the poet delves deeply into the historic circumstances, the biographical information, and her creative powers to give voice to this horrific part of American history.

For more information on these programs, contact Dr. Vivian Blevins: vblevins@edisonohio.edu (937) 778-3815.