Poet and biographer Foster Dickson, author of I Just Make People Up: Ramblings with Clark Walker (NewSouth Books 2008) and The Life and Poetry of John Beecher (1904-1980) (Edwin Mellen Press 2009) will give a lecture entitled “Southern Exposure” at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on October at 4:00 pm. Dickson will discuss his complete body of work as Southern studies of oft-neglected people.

I Just Make People Up, based on a series of conversations with author Dickson when he and artist Clark Walker were neighbors, uses Walker’s life and art as prisms to look at creativity, relationships, the ways of seeing, the nature of community, and more. It is the only book about the work of this popular Montgomery, AL artist.

The Life and Poetry of John Beecher explores the work of a man who rebelled against his background as son of a steel executive and, during the Great Depression, began to write powerful, radical, activist poetry. Blacklisted during McCarty era, Beecher later chronicled the outrages of racial segregation. NewSouth Books published a collection of Beecher’s long out of print poetry, One More River to Cross, in 2003.

For more about the Ottawa International Writers Festival, visit the organization website: www.writersfestival.org

Posted in I Just Make People Up |