Columbus State University’s Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; to nurturing writers and musicians and educating young people; and to fostering literary, musical, artistic, and intellectual culture in the United States and abroad.

The McCullers Center will co-host the Carson McCullers Literary Festival February 21 and 22 in collaboration with Chattahoochee Valley Libraries. This is the third time the center has collaborated with the library on the festival and the third time, through the library’s successful application of an NEA Big Read grant, that we will be featuring a Big Read writer. This year that writer is novelist Tayari Jones.

As always, the festival will be held on the weekend nearest Carson’s birthday (February 19). In addition to a reading, book signing, and panel discussion participation by  Jones, the event will also include readings and book signings by novelists and former McCullers Center Writers in Residence Lauren Green, Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, Melissa Pritchard, and Snowden Wright, and a musical performance by former writing fellow, singer-songwriter Aimee Bobruk. All of the above will also participate in the panel discussion and Q&A.

The celebration will conclude Saturday afternoon with the awards ceremony for the annual Carson McCullers Literary Awards.

All events are on the Main Stage of the Riverside Theatre Complex and the Bo Bartlett Center, Corner of West 10th Street and Bay Avenue in Uptown Columbus, and are free and open to the public.

Tayari Jones’s novel Silver Sparrow, set in an upper-middleclass African American neighborhood of Atlanta in the 1980s, is a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection and copies will be available free for patrons of the library who attend preliminary events . Additional copies will be available to buy and have signed by the author at the reading on Friday, Feb 21.

The festival schedule comprises the following:

Friday, February 21

4:30 pm – Samuel Kọ́láwọlé and Melissa Pritchard reading, Riverside Theatre

5:30 pm – Reception and book signing Riverside Theatre

6:30 pm – Tayari Jones reading followed by book signing, Riverside Theatre

8:30pm – Concert by Aimee Bobruk in the Bo Bartlett center

Saturday, February 22

9:30 am – Coffee Reception, Riverside Theatre

10:00 am – Authors panel Q&A, Riverside Theatre

11:00 am – Lauren Green and Snowden Wright reading, Riverside Theatre

12:30 pm – Awards Ceremony, Carson McCullers Literary Awards, Riverside Theatre

Claudia Müller’s Wunderkind Carson McCullers, the first-ever documentary film about the world-famous author, had its official American premiere at the Paley Center for Media in New York on Tuesday, October 29. The event also included a screening of Karen Allen’s short-film adaptation of McCullers’s story “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.” Both films were co-produced by the Carson McCullers Center, and both were introduced by their respective directors. Members of the Rivertown Film Society were treated to a sneak peek of Müller’s film in Nyack on Wednesday, October 23rd, a screening that was followed by a Q&A with Müller and McCullers Center director Nick Norwood.

Müller’s documentary, which includes filmed interviews with McCullers scholar and McCullers Center founding director Dr. Carlos Dews, biographer Mary Dearborn, film critic and television personality Rex Reed, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, playwright and screen writer Natalia Temesgen, writer and gay-rights activist Sarah Schulman, and Norwood, as well as archival film clips, voice over readings of selected passages from McCullers’s work, and establishing shots of Columbus, Nyack, and New York, was very warmly received at both events. Many Columbus and New York dignitaries were in attendance at the Paley Center, and a gala atmosphere prevailed.

The film’s Georgia premiere will occur on Sunday, February 2nd at 2:00 pm at the Columbus Museum. That event is free and open to the public.

Rivertown Film Society sneak peek

Phase 1 of the renovation of the Carson McCullers House in Nyack is complete. David Sirois Construction commenced the work over the summer following designs by Aurell Garcia Architects and included reconstruction of the foundation under the home’s front porch, a new copper roof over the porch, removal of the overgrown landscaping in the front yard, and installation of ADA-compliant path from the sidewalk to the front door. Original porch support columns were retrofitted with iron cores, and an exact replica of the custom porch bench was crafted to replace the original. The work also involved leveling the floor of the second story apartments and replacing that level’s front windows. A new coat of paint completed the work.

The next phases of the project will include foundation work on the back of the house, rebuilding both the northside (kitchen) porch and the screened porch on the back of the house, as well as installation of an ADA-compliant elevator that will provide access from the first story to the garden level.

The Ann Cox Strub Parlors in the Smith-McCullers House, Carson McCullers’s childhood home in Columbus, were formally dedicated in October. The plaque commemorates Ann Cox Strub’s contribution to the McCullers Center’s renovation project and highlights her birth and history in Columbus, as well as her accomplishments as an artist and philanthropist.

Howard Fishman, winner of the 19th annual Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers, assumed residency at the Smith-McCullers House on December 1. As the fellowship recipient, Howard will live and work in Carson McCullers’s childhood home, the Smith-McCullers House, in Columbus, Georgia, for three months—December, January, and March.
 
Fishman is the author of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton). He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, which has published his essays on music, film, theater, literature, travel, and culture, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Artforum, San Francisco Chronicle, Mojo, and The Boston Globe. His play, A Star Has Burnt My Eye, was a New York Times “Critics Pick.” As a performing songwriter and bandleader, Fishman has toured internationally as a headlining artist for over two decades. He has released eleven albums to date and is the producer of the album Connie’s Piano Songs: The Art Songs of Elizabeth “Connie” Converse. He is based in Brooklyn, NY.

On Friday, November 8, the McCullers Center hosted GPC poet Leslie Sainz for a reading in Arnold Hall Auditorium on Columbus State University’s Main Campus. Sainz met with students in Crystal Woods’s Introduction to Poetry Writing class, then presented a reading from her work and sat for a Q&A with students, faculty, and members of the general public.

On Monday, February 3, the McCullers Center will host poet Shane McCrae, who will read from his work in Arnold Hall Auditorium at 11:00 a.m.

Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023), winner of the 2024 Audre Lorde Award and a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, the New England Book Award, and the Vermont Book Award. The daughter of Cuban exiles, her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s received fellowships, scholarships, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, the Miami Writers Institute, the Adroit Journal, and the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University. A former guest host of the award-winning podcast The Slowdown, she currently works as the managing editor of New England Review and teaches in the Newport MFA program at Salve Regina University.

Shane McCrae’s most recent books of poems are Cain Named the Animal, a finalist for the Forward Prize and longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award, and The Many Hundreds of the Scent. New and Collected Hell, his next book of poems, will be published in February, 2025. His memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, was published in 2023. Also in 2023, he was awarded the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his other awards include a Lannan Literary Award and a Whiting Writer's Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

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For information on making gifts, contact the Carson McCullers Center at:

phone: 706-565-1200

email: mccullerscenter@columbusstate.edu

Or mail contributions to:

The Carson McCullers Center

English Department

Columbus State University

4225 University Avenue

Columbus, GA 31907

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