XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference

Call for Papers

The XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference
April 20-22, 2013 Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts' hometown), KY

The XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 20-22, 2013, at St. Catharine College (Springfield, KY) and the Beaumont Inn (Harrodsburg, KY). We welcome papers that deal intertextually with Roberts and other writers; Roberts in the context of the Southern Renascence; Roberts viewed from regional and historical perspectives; Roberts and Modernism; Roberts and Southern history; Roberts and Religion, etc. First-time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are strongly encouraged. Conference directors also welcome papers on recently published works by Roberts. In 2012, the Reading Roberts Series published Roberts’ unfinished novel Flood (ed. Vicki Barker), manuscript fragments and poems in Reading Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect (eds. William Boyle, H. R. Stoneback, and Matthew Nickel), and Daniel Boone variants in Kentucky: Poets of Place (ed. Matthew Nickel).

Titles and abstracts are due January 7, 2013. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College in Springfield. The conference headquarters is the lovely and legendary Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg.

Email title and abstract to Jessica Mackenzie Conti (SUNY New Paltz), Program Chair at jesmackenzie@hotmail.com.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Co-Conference Directors: Matthew Nickel (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at mattcnickel@gmail.com and H. R. Stoneback, (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at hrs714@gmail.com.

A New Edition of Roberts' The Great Meadow

Hesperus Press (UK, http://www.hesperuspress.com/web/) will be publishing a new edition of The Great Meadow.

Below is their press release information:

THE GREAT MEADOW

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Introduction by competition winner

Michael Wynne

 

31 October 2012

9781843913887

B format PB

200pp

£8.99

Hesperus Press is very proud to be celebrating its 10^th anniversary this autumn.

To honour the occasion, In June 2012 Hesperus Press launched a competition asking members of the public to nominate one out-of-print book they would like to see back in print.

The winning book, which will be published in October 2012 by Hesperus is

The Great Meadow by Elizabeth Madox Roberts.

First published in 1930 and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, The Great Meadow is a historical novel set in the early days of Kentucky settlement. Intertwined with a flowing romantic saga of young love on the Kentucky trail, are richly painted scenes colonial America.

Diony Hall has waited for many years for her betrothed to return to marry her. Trying to fathom the nature of identity and her place in the vast newly created America, Diony spends her time at the family hearthside, combining her love of reading with her roles within the family circle and the daily tasks on the homestead. When Berk Jarvis returns and they are married, they both bid farewell to Virginia, family, community and security to head out to found a new family and a new life together in the wilderness of Kentucky

What follows is a breathtaking story of love and death, as the settlers cross the Appalachian mountains and struggle to carve a new life on the unforgiving frontier at the mercy of shortages, harsh winters and the perpetual danger of Indian attack. This astonishing novel, with its rhythmic prose, has too long been forgotten

The winning entry came from Michael Wynne and the new Hesperus edition of The Great Meadow will contain a 500 word introduction written by him.

Reading Roberts Series

The Reading Roberts Series is a project committed to publishing a wide range of scholarly and literary volumes devoted to the work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, including previously unpublished Roberts manuscripts, critical monographs on Roberts, collections of critical essays on Roberts and her legacy, volumes of poetry and other creative endeavors that illuminate the terroir of Roberts' work, reissued volumes of importance to Roberts Scholarship, and other works.
 

We currently have three books available for purchase now (and others currently under production--check back for news). 

1. Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flood (an unpublished unfinished novel by Roberts). Editor, Vicki Barker

 

2. Reading Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect (a collection of essays on Roberts and her work). Editors, H. R. Stoneback, William Boyle, and Matthew Nickel

3. Kentucky: Poets of Place (and anthology of poetry). Editor, Matthew Nickel. 

The list price of the books in the series is $20 each. Send your order with updated mailing address (and check payable to “Tina Iraca”) to the EMRS Treasurer, Tina Iraca, 16 Montgomery St., Tivoli, NY 12583. Please encourage your library to order these books as well.

Kentucky Poets of Place

Kentucky: Poets of Place, a new anthology published by The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, edited by Matthew Nickel, and including poems by famous Kentucky writers like Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Robert Penn Warren, H. R. Stoneback, and others (Dave Smith, Matthew Haughton, Ricardo Nazario y Colon, Ron Smith, Vivian Shipley, Jessica Conti, Gregg Neikirk, Shawn Rubenfeld, Chris Paolini, Chris Lawrence, Matthew Nickel, etc.), will be premiered during Kentucky Writers Day at Penn's Store in Gravel Switch, KY, Sunday April 22, between 3-4 pm. Some poets included in the anthology will be reading. See you there!

CFP SAMLA

CFP: SAMLA 2012
Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry

Papers for this session should deal with Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry. Suggested topics include an analysis of the contrasting images and poems in In The Great Steep’s Garden, Roberts’ poetry as children’s verse (especially throughout Under the Tree and even Song in the Meadow), the historic and folkloric—even mythic—contexts of her poems, Roberts as mystical poet, Roberts and the ballad form, Roberts as an Imagist, intertextualities between Roberts and other poets, Roberts’s philosophy on poetry and art, and Roberts’s prose and dialogue as poetry. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long. By June 1, 2011, please submit a title and a 250-word abstract to James Stamant, Texas A&M University, at stam202@tamu.edu.

CFP: SAMLA 2012
New Work By/About Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Especially desired are papers on Roberts' just-published FLOOD manuscript and other works in the Reading Roberts Series of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society. Other topics dealing with the life or works of Roberts will also be considered. Please send a brief abstract which reveals the focus of your paper by May 25, 2012 to Prof. Gregg Neikirk. Microsoft Word attachments are preferred (gneikirk@westfield.ma.edu (or mail to Dept. of English, Westfield State University, Westfield, MA 01086). Papers should not exceed 15 minutes in delivery.