Pages from the Ashes: Publishing the Watts Writers Workshop
The five days of rioting that erupted in Watts in August 1965 set the city of Los Angeles on fire and shook the nation. Just days after the violence ended, in an attempt to relieve the despair and anger of the community, novelist and film producer Budd Schulberg established the Watts Writers Workshop, engaging young men and women in a writing project that would quickly become a model for similar groups around the country. The Workshop, which launched the careers of Quincy Troupe, Wanda Coleman, Jimmy Sherman, and Stanley Crouch, among others, produced three significant publications (From the Ashes: Voices of Watts 1967, Anthology (directed by Q. Troupe), 1970, and a special issue of the Antioch Review, Fall 1967), now considered milestones in the development of ethnic literary and political writing. These collective works, remarkable for their powerful tone and vision, reflect the life and revolt of a community in writing. In my talk, I will focus on the history and nature of these publications.
Keywords:
Watts Writers Workshop, African-American Literature, Literary community, Creative Writing, history of cultural institutions, publishing African-American writers
Stream:
Books, Writing and Reading
Presentation Type:
30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper:
A paper has not yet been submitted.
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Dr Béatrice Mousli Bennett
Director, USC Francophone Resource Center, University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California, UNITED STATES
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Béatrice Mousli-Bennett received her doctorate from the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne in 1993. Her work has three main focuses: the history of literary institutions and networks in France and in the United States, transatlantic literary exchanges, and French XXth century literature. She has published many books among which Intentions, histoire d'une revue littéraire des années vingt (Ent’revues 1996), Les Editions du Sagittaire 1919-1979 (IMEC, 2003), Valery Larbaud (Flammarion, 1998, Grand Prix de la Biographie de l'Académie Française), Virginia Woolf (Ed. du Rocher, 2001), Max Jacob (Flammarion, 2005). With her husband Guy Bennett, she wrote Charting the Here of There: French & American Poetry in Translation published in literary magazines (1850-2002) (Granary Books, 2002; French translation Ent’revues, 2004), and they have curated several exhibits, “Reviews of Two Worlds; French and American Literary Periodicals, 1945-2002” at the New York Public Library (Fall 2002), “Charting the Here of There: A French and American Dialogue in Poetry” at the Doheny Memorial Library at the University of Southern California (Spring 2003). They also organized several conferences, among which “Review of Two Worlds”, (USC-Otis, 2003), and “Los Angeles, A Different Look at a Different City”, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris, June 2006)
Ref: B06P0197
