Illumination & Praise: Poems for Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Kentucky

Des Hymnagistes Press is proud to announce its most recent publication of Illumination & Praise: Poems for Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Kentucky. This volume, edited by Matthew Nickel, contains poets: H. R. Stoneback, Charlie Hughes, Ron Whitehead, Charles Semones, Lynn Behrendt, Ed Butler, William Boyle, Alex Andriesse Shakespeare, Brad McDuffie, James Stamant, Gregg Neikirk, Michael Beilfuss, Damian Carpenter, Steven Florczyk, and Matthew Nickel. This past weekend at Penn's Store outside Gravel Switch, KY, the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society members included in the book read their poems in dedication to the writer and her native soil of Kentucky. There are still a few copies available for sale (1 book for $12 or 2 books for $20). Please contact deshymnagistes@gmail.com for further information.

Roberts Sessions at SAMLA, November 7-9, 2008 in Louisville, KY

Papers may deal with all aspects of Roberts’s work and life. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: Roberts in the context of Southern literature, Roberts and other writers (i.e. Roberts and Faulkner, Roberts and Yeats, Roberts and James Still, Roberts and Wendell Berry, Roberts and John Burroughs), Roberts and Southern Agrarianism, Roberts’s literary and stylistic influences (i.e. Synge, Hardy, Joyce, Homer, Hopkins, Beethoven), Roberts and nature writing, Roberts and Modernism, Roberts and the novel, Roberts as poet, Roberts as writer of short fiction, Roberts and regionalism, Roberts and the politics of literary reputation, Roberts and feminism, Roberts and Kentucky. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long. Please submit a title and 250 word abstract to Steven Florczyk (florczyk@uga.edu) or Goretti Vianney-Benca (VianneyG@aol.com). The deadline for proposals is May 15, 2008.

Robert Penn Warren Circle Seeking Papers on Roberts/Warren Connection

Robert Penn Warren Circle CFP's--SAMLA 2008

Warren’s was a critical voice that either explicitly or implicitly provided analysis of and approbation for women writers such as Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter, among many others; on the other hand, Warren himself admitted the influence of more than one woman’s expertise in writing on his own. This panel seeks to examine the sources, outcomes, and/or significances of Warren’s critical or artistic appreciations of such women writers as revealed through his personal, critical, or artistic relationships with any or all of the women whose writing careers overlapped with or intersected his own. By email only, send proposals of 250-500 words, suitable for 15-20 minute presentations, to Pat Bradley, , by 12 May 2008. Questions on the topic may also be directed to that email address.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation, edited by H.R. Stoneback and Steven Florczyk, may be purchased from your local bookstore, on-line vendors such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher.


Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation (2008), 335 pages. ISBN 978-1-893239-77-7 $20.00

Wind Publications
600 Overbrook Dr
Nicholasville, KY 40356

This volume is the first book-length collection of critical essays to deal with the life and work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts. It is also the first book of any kind, in many years, to be devoted to the study of Roberts, and it is the hope of the editors and the many contributors here that this book will serve to redress the neglect of a writer whom we believe to be one of the most important Kentucky — and Southern and American — writers.

This publication coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, which holds its annual spring conferences at Saint Catharine College (and in Harrodsburg and Springfield, Kentucky). The work of this society has been, as the title of this volume indicates, to reassess and to reclaim a writer who, though widely known and well-regarded by her contemporaries, is little known today.

When her first novel, The Time of Man, appeared in 1926, it was hailed by a national — indeed international — chorus of writers and critics as one of the finest American novels ever. Remarkably, such critical esteem was echoed by great popular success. While neither critical favor nor fame ensures any writer’s canonical endurance, the way that Roberts has fallen off the literary map since her death in 1941 presents a curious case to ponder. It is to be hoped that this volume will contribute to a new cartography, a redrawn map of twentieth-century American literature with Roberts securely placed and located.