Wunderkind Carson McCullers: A Film by Claudia Müller, the first-ever documentary about the world-famous author, aired on Georgia Public Broadcasting on December 1. The film, which was co-produced by the Carson McCullers Center, is to be screened at the Columbus Public Library on Thursday, February 19—Carson's 109th birthday—at 6:00 pm. The screening will feature a pre-recorded introduction from acclaimed director Claudia Müller and will be followed by a staged conversation between GPB broadcaster Orlando Montoya and McCullers Center Director Nick Norwood.

Acclaimed poet Tim Seibles will read from his work in Arnold Hall Auditorium on Wednesday, February 11, at 5:00 pm, in the Georgia Poetry Circuit.

Born in Philadelphia in 1955, Seibles was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016 to 2018. His eight books of poetry include Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, Buffalo Head Solos, and Fast Animal, a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Poetry. One Turn Around the Sun, an extensive examination of his immediate family and their social circumstances was published in 2017. 

The virtual ceremony celebrating winners of this year’s Carson McCullers Literary Awards will be held on Saturday, February 21, at 1:00 pm. Every year these awards grant cash prizes totalling over $7,000 in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, formal essay, playwriting, and screenwriting through two parallel contests—one for high school students from Georgia and Alabama, the other for students at Columbus State University. 

Renovation of the Carson McCullers House in Nyack, New York, is entering its fourth phase, the most substantial yet: rebuilding the foundation under the garden apartment and the screened back porch, demolition of the old porch and construction of an entirely new structure, “bumping out” the back wall of the house to accommodate a larger kitchen suitable for servicing public functions, and construction of an elevator shaft on the exterior of the house adjoining the screened porch. The elevator will provide access to the back garden and garden-level apartment for those requiring such accommodation. Some of the demolition work on this phase is already complete. Further demolition is to begin soon, and the phase is expected to reach completion by sometime this summer.

The renovation work on the house has uncovered many surprises, the lack of adequate foundation being one of them, remnants of a fire during Carson’s time living in the house another. One happy discovery during recent demolition work on the second floor was the existence of what are believed to be 19th-century artifacts hidden in the walls. Children’s toys, glass bottles, tools, dishes: a treasure trove of items that will soon be packed up for safe keeping and later displayed in proper museum-grade display cases in the Main Floor apartment once the renovation is complete.

On Saturday, September 6, South Nyack’s Guy Kern-Martin and Lucian Simmons hosted a fundraising event to support the renovation campaign for the Carson McCullers House at their lovely historic home, the Ross-Hand Mansion, on Franklin Street. The weather cleared right on cue, and guests were able to enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on the front lawn, while Columbus State University Schwob School of Music graduate Mike Hardy performed on classical guitar. The McCullers Center is deeply grateful to Guy and Lucian for their wonderful hospitality and to all the guests who came out to support the campaign.

The McCullers Center hosted several literary events in the fall. On Wednesday, October 8, the first of the semester’s two David Diamond Reading & Recital Events took place in Studio Theatre of the River Center for the Performing Arts, featuring a performance by Schwob School of Music piano student Caleb Ferreira and CSU creative writing student Sal Woessner. The second of the semester’s two DD R&R events was held on Wednesday, October 29, and featured the CSU Horn Studio and CSU creative writing student Evie Fletcher. Named in honor of Carson McCullers’s close friend, world-renowned composer David Diamond, the David Diamond Reading & Recital Series pairs a Columbus State University creative writing student with a soloist or small ensemble from the Schwob School of Music for a reading of original work by the writer and a performance of reportorial pieces by the musicians.

On Tuesday, October 21, the McCullers Center hosted an appearance by acclaimed Irish poet and writer Padraig Rooney, whose new book Rebel Angel: The Life and Times of Annemarie Schwarzenbach was just released last year. Schwarzenbach was one of the great loves of Carson McCullers’s life, and McCullers dedicated her second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, to the Swiss heiress, writer, and photojournalist. The event, which featured a short presentation by Rooney, followed by a staged conversation with McCullers Center director Nick Norwood, a Q&A with the audience, and a book signing, was held at the Columbus Public Library.

Poet Diamond Forde gave a reading on CSU’s Main Campus on Tuesday, November 4, in the Georgia Poetry Circuit. Dr. Forde is the author of two poetry collections, Mother Body (Saturnalia Books, 2021) and The Book of Alice (forthcoming with Scribner Books, January 2026). She has received a doctorate in African American poetics and fat studies at Florida State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Alabama. Forde has received recognition in the Furious Flower Poetry Prize, nomination as a Kate Tufts Discovery award finalist, and earned a Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellowship. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Obsidian, Callaloo, and elsewhere.

On Wednesday, November 12, Monica Macansantos, the 20th Annual Marguerite and Lamar Smith Writer in Residence at the Carson McCullers Center, gave her end-of-residency performance at the Lummus Chapel in Historic Linwood Cemetery. Macansantos read from her own original work, then entertained questions from the audience.

Monica Macansantos is the author of Returning to My Father's Kitchen: Essays, and Love and Other Rituals: Stories (2022). Her honors include a 2024-25 Shearing Fellowship with the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and residencies at Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, Storyknife Writers Retreat, and Monson Arts. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, Michener Center for Writers, and a PhD from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, River Styx, Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, Electric Lit, and Lit Hub, among others, and has been named Notable in the Best American Essays 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2016. Monica reports that, while at the Smith-McCullers House, she was able to produce a great deal of work, including revisions to a novel she resubmitted and received a favorable response.

Named in honor of Carson's parents, The Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers was inspired by McCullers's experience at the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Vermont and, especially, the Yaddo Arts Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. To honor the contribution of these residency fellowships to McCullers's work, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians awards fellowships for writers to spend time in McCullers's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The fellowships are intended to afford the writers in residence uninterrupted time to dedicate to their work, free from the distractions of daily life and other professional responsibilities.

On November 15, the McCullers Center co-sponsored Nyack’s All Ways Writing’s “An Evening of Poetry Featuring Leila Chatti and Isabella DeSendi” at Big Red Books on Main Street in Nyack. All Ways director Lily Greenberg organized the event and served as the evening’s emcee. Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) as well as four chapbooks. Isabella DeSendi is a Latina poet and educator whose debut poetry collection, Someone Else’s Hunger, will be published by Four Way Books in 2025.

The McCullers Center keeps plowing ahead. Work on the renovation of the Carson McCullers House in Nyack is ongoing. The progress is slow but steady, the work being done by Aurell Garcia Architects and David Sirois Construction absolutely first class. Meanwhile, we are continuing our programming in Columbus with the Carson McCullers Literary Awards, the David Diamond Reading & Recital Series, readings in the Georgia Poetry Circuit, and other events. We are thrilled to have the first-ever documentary about Carson McCullers—Claudia Müller’s beautiful film Wunderkind Carson McCullers—on GPB and to be screening it again in Columbus on Carson’s birthday, February 19, at the Columbus Public Library. Most of all, we are thrilled to have the support of our friends new and old in Columbus, Georgia, Nyack, New York, and all around the world. Thank you!