National Book Foundation Names New Leader
Ruth Dickey, the executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures, is succeeding Lisa Lucas, who left the organization to become the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken.
“As a queer kid growing up in a small town, books brought me the world,” Ruth Dickey said.Credit.via Ruth E. Dickey
Feb. 11, 2021
The National Book Foundation said on Thursday that Ruth Dickey, the executive director of the literary nonprofit Seattle Arts & Lectures, will become the organization’s new executive director.
An award-winning poet and essayist, Dickey served as a fiction judge for the National Book Awards in 2019. For the past 25 years, she has worked at arts organizations and nonprofits across the United States, a background that she could draw on to help the foundation expand.
David George Moore
It’s been my privilege to be in the personal spaces of several writers. Among others, Pulitzer winner Tony Horwitz warmly welcomed me at his home on Martha’s Vineyard as did William F. Buckley at his place on Long Island Sound.
I have interviewed over 200 authors. Everyone has their own style with reading, capturing what they have read, research, and then writing. As I writer myself, I have settled on an approach I feel comfortable with.
Moore: Do you still acquire books as you get older or have you slowed down a bit?
Balmer: I’ve slowed down considerably, especially from my early days as a scholar when I felt almost frantic to build my library (lots of trips to the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan). Now, I’m even to the point of divesting. Moving helps a lot; Dartmouth is currently renovating our building, and I was able to donate twenty-five boxes of books.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday) and Vaughn Hardacker (Friday).
In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:
We thought you would enjoy this review of Charlotte’s Web:
Eudora Welty’s review of this timeless tale is a sheer delight, starting from its headline (“Life in the Barn Was Very Good”) and its first sentence (“E.B. White has written his book for children, which is nice for us older ones as it calls for big type”). Unlike contemporary reviews that get future classics “wrong,” Welty who worked briefly as an editor at the Book Review during World War II saw this accomplishment clear in the moment. “What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time,”
How Travel Restrictions Work
Good morning. Travel restrictions have been one of the most effective pandemic responses if they’re strict.
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John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.Credit.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
One of the biggest lessons of the pandemic has been the success of travel restrictions at reducing its spread. And this is a moment when they have the potential to be particularly effective in the U.S., given the emergence of frightening coronavirus variants in other countries.
President Biden seems to realize this, and quickly reinstated some travel restrictions that President Donald Trump had lifted just before leaving office. But it’s not yet clear whether Biden is willing to impose the kind of strict rules that have worked best elsewhere. So far, he has not done so and instead chosen a middle ground between Trump’s approach and the approach with the best global track record.
JACKSON
⢠A nonprofit set up to fund Gov. Tate Reevesâ inauguration last year paid nearly $150,000 to a business owned by the governorâs brother and sister-in-law, documents show.
Leigh Reeves served as executive director for the now-dissolved inaugural nonprofit while her company, Snapshot Publishing LLC, was paid for marketing materials, gifts, printing and designs, according to documents filed with the IRS last month.
The filing says Leigh Reeves, who is married to Todd Reeves, did not collect a salary in her director role. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the governor said ânearly allâ of the nonprofitâs payment to Snapshot went directly to materials for the inauguration, and Leigh Reevesâ work planning the events was âlargely voluntary.â