Poet Jane O. Wayne has been chosen as the recipient of the 2015 Tradition of Literary Excellence Award which will be presented at the Gala Opening Event of the Lit in the Lou festival, 7 p.m. October 2 at University City Hall’s fifth floor.
The award, which was created in 2014 and is funded by the Municipal Commission of Arts & Letters of University City, is given “to honor the work of a living local author whose literary achievement has won national and international acclaim and, in so doing, has contributed to the distinction of the St. Louis area, upholding its tradition as a center of literary excellence.”
Jane O. Wayne is one of St. Louis’s best known poets. Her poetry collections include Looking Both Ways (University of Missouri Press, 1985), which received the Devins Award for Poetry; A Strange Heart(Helicon Nine Editions, 1996), recipient of the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the Society of Midland Authors Award; From the Night Album (Pecan Grove Press, 2007); and The Other Place You Live(Mayapple Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, among them The Iowa Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Ploughshares, Boulevard, and River Styx. Wayne edited the anthology Poetry to Make You Smile(Spruce, 2014). She has taught creative writing at Webster University and Washington University in St. Louis.
Tickets to the gala are $25 on line with brownpapertickets.com or at the door. Food and drink and included. Parking is on the west rear of the building along with handicap parking and entrance. Additional parking is at the University City Library just east of city hall.
The Lit in the Lou festival runs from October 2 to 4 in the Julia Goldstein Early Childhood Center at 737 Kingsland Avenue and will explore the theme “Literature In(Forms) our Lives: Race, Religion, Gender and Inequality.”
Four guest authors will present, supported by multiple panels of local and regional authors addressing issues through poetry, plays, fiction, comics, memoir and more.
Admission is free. There will be coffee and books on sale and an auction of signed t-shirts. An after party (with an open mic option) is scheduled Sunday, October 4 at 7 p.m. in the Eclipse Restaurant and Bar at the Moonrise Hotel. Your donation and admission to the party go to the Ready Readers organization.
Vendor space is only $45 for a table and signage. Authors, poets, artists are welcome and should contact the consortium for more information by calling 314.447.3888.
A partial list of local writers participating this year includes:
Caroline Frederickson – Under the Bus
Jose Faus – Primera Pagina
(Latino Writers Collective)
DuEwa Frazier – Deanne in the Middle;
Check the Rhyme
Christi Griffin – Incarcerations in Black and White
Jane Ellen Ibur – Both Wings Flappin’, Still Not Flyin’
Maryam Karshani
Carol Swartout Klein – Painting for Peace
Miguel Morales – Primera Pagina
(Latino Writers Collective)
Terry Mulligan – Sugar Hill; Afterlife in Harlem
Margaret O’Gorman – Living True
Eugene Redmond – Arkansippi Memwars
MK Stallings
Aaron Williams – Poetry on Our Terms
John Wright – Ethnic St. Louis
University City Arts & Letters Commission 