The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

Third Annual Induction Ceremony

Sherwood Anderson's Great Grandson To Accept

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

By Donald G. Evans

David M. Spear has agreed to accept on behalf of his great grandfather Sherwood Anderson at our induction ceremony later this year. Spear, the son of Marion “Mimi” Anderson Spear, Sherwood Anderson’s daughter, will be traveling from Madison, NC with his wife, Karen, to attend the festivities.

We’re delighted, of course, that David can make the trip. While David has made his own name as a photographer, he has also devoted considerable energy into preserving the legacy of his famous ancestor.

David was among the first and second-generation members of Sherwood Anderson’s family to decide, in the mid-1980s, that royalties from their ancestor’s books should be used to help writers. That decision led to the establishment of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, a non-profit trust. According to the Foundation’s website, “It was an obvious decision that followed a course that Anderson himself took during his lifetime.” The website points out that Anderson helped both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner get published.

“We wanted to use this money to keep literature alive—good literature—in this country,” David said.

In the coming year, the award will increase to $20,000, placing it among the country’s major literary awards.

David was raised in back-country North Carolina and avoided the shadow of his famous grandfather until he was “outed” in a college English class. A young student announced David’s familial ties to Sherwood Anderson, at which point, “I almost died. After that I was more conscious of my family background.”

That David has embraced his family legacy and worked to honor it makes him uniquely suited to speak of his famous relative. That he has forged a wonderful artistic career of his own gives him even more insight into the subject.

“It is difficult to be in the shadow of someone as well know as Sherwood,” David said. “It tends to dampen the creative urge. But with time, I have learned to deal with it.”

David did escape the shadow of Sherwood Anderson. He has published several books of photography, one documenting a North Carolina family and the other his travels in Mexico. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Center. His work is found in permanent collections around the country, including the Museum of Modern Art and fine arts museums in Houston, Birmingham and New Orleans.

David is currently working on a memoir of his mother and father, “two Northerners who had the courage to come south during the Depression and struggle with a newspaper.”

In keeping with a tradition established in the CLHOF’s first two years, David will give a short acceptance speech upon presentation of the award statue.

http://www.davidmspear.com/

http://sherwoodandersonfoundation.org/

Donald G. Evans is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of the novel Good Money After Bad and editor of the anthology Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year. His short story collection An Off-White Christmas will be published by Simon & Schuster later this year. He is the current Senior Artist-in-Residence at Chicago's Cliff Dwellers Club and the Chicago editor of the upstart journal Great Lakes Cultural Review. He serves on the committee that selects the annual Harold Washington Literary Award recipient, as well as the Chicago Literary Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum.

By Liz Teahan

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is excited to partner with the Chicago Cultural Center for our 3^rd annual induction ceremony this November.Its beautiful 294-seat Claudia Cassidy Theater promises to be filled to capacity the night of the event, from local literary luminaries to out-of-town family members and everyone in between. The theater is located at 77 E. Washington Street, across from Millennium Park. All events at the CCC are free and open to the public, as will be the case with the CLHOF’s induction ceremony.

Opened in 1897, the landmark building was originally Chicago’s central library, but was converted into the Cultural Center in 1991 when the Harold Washington Library opened. Ever since this conversion, the center has remained among the top attractions of Chicago, drawing close to a million visitors last year. The Claudia Cassidy Theater has hosted a wide range of cultural events, including lectures, dance recitals, musical performances, art exhibits, improve sets, literary readings and more.

Tim Samuelson, a cultural historian for the city of Chicago describes the Cultural Center’s legacy: “The walls of the Chicago Cultural Center are a celebration of words and ideas. Wherever you look, quotations and names pay tribute to books and the written word, a legacy that goes back to 1897 when the building first opened as Chicago's first permanent public library. One hundred and fifteen years later, these same inscriptions make an appropriate setting for the far-reaching programs of the Chicago Cultural Center, and provide an especially fitting location for this year's Chicago Literary Hall of Fame event.”

Such a dynamic backdrop is sure to make this event an unforgettable one.

Liz Teahan is a junior at DePaul University majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. She is currently helping to coordinate new projects as an intern for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, such as starting a book club and fundraising for a sculpture project.

She is also researching topics that live literary variety shows could be performed around as an intern for The Encyclopedia Show, as well as working as an intern for RHINO, a poetry publishing house.

In 2004, her short story was published in an Anthology of Young Authors, and in the winter of 2012, she plans to study travel writing while abroad in Morocco.

By Donald G. Evans

It is a good while yet until Nov. 30—we still have a fair amount of drought to get through, Labor Day, Halloween, and then Thanksgiving. By the time we have our ceremony, the kids will not only be back in school but ready, nearly, for their winter break.

So it seems we have plenty of time. But not really. An event of this magnitude has so many moving parts—people with busy calendars, venues with protocol to follow, partners difficult to pin down, statues to reproduce, caterers to consult, travel arrangements to fix. Here we are, four months out, and the orchestra is being cued.

We’ve had two of these ceremonies now and each, in their own way, was quite spectacular. But not without their faults. Hopefully, we learned a bit about what added value to the occasion and what didn’t.

The first one, we learned that the presence of family—three generations of Hansberrys in from Los Angeles, Greg Bellow and his wife here from San Francisco, Nora Brooks Blakely reminiscing about her mom, Dana Smith and other Richard Wright descendants snapping photos for the family album, Dan Terkell glowing about his father—was not only touching but connected the past with the present. We learned that for some presenters and accepters, time limits are arbitrary and that a REALLY LONG ceremony begins to make people grumpy. We learned that asking young writers to participate made the event more inclusive, and that charging for the ceremony made it less so.

The second one, we learned that hanging out after the ceremony was almost more fun than the ceremony itself. We learned that Tuesday nights are a bad night for a big event, especially in the winter. We learned that partners like Elysabeth Alfano bring an incredible amount of energy and creativity to the program, and that making people aware of the event is incredibly difficult.

Our challenge in these months leading up the ceremony is to incorporate all those lessons into an even better, more fitting tribute to our great writers.

Family members will be a big part of the festivities again, but the ceremony will be tighter. We’re working to make our young writers an even bigger part of the evening, and for the second straight year will make the event free and open to the public. We’re doing this on a Friday night, talking to partners about ways to help us improve all facets of the evening and, as evidenced by this blog and our newly launched newsletter, trying to be more systematic in our promotional work.

It’s exciting to watch the plans and goals, piece by piece, become reality, and to overcome the challenges inherent in running a grassroots organization.

Keep reading the blog, forward it to friends, pop over to our website and Facebook page, like us, save the date, and generally be a part of this.

Hello Readers!

The 3^rd Annual Induction Ceremony is set to take place on Friday, Nov. 30^th at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater. The ceremony will begin promptly at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. At that time, the following writers will be honored:

Jane Addams

Sherwood Anderson

James T. Farrell

Ernest Hemingway

Langston Hughes

Carolyn Rodgers

We’re in the process now of securing commitments from presenters, performers, accepters and other special guests. We’re working out details of various happenings in the weeks and days before the event, and on the day of the event itself.

In order to keep you apprised of all the news surrounding this important ceremony, we’ve started this blog. We’ll post frequently, so check back soon.

Meanwhile, mark your calendar, make a note in your planner or set a reminder on your phone—we’d love for you to share this evening with you!

Maggie Crnkovich is a senior at DePaul University majoring in English with a concentration in literary studies. She is from a very small suburb located right outside of the city but has recently moved to the heart of Lincoln Park. She is currently interning at the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Her primary project focuses on the induction ceremony that will take place in November. Crnkovich is very enthusiastic about the projects she will be working on and assisting with at the CLHOF.

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is thrilled to announce that its 3rd annual induction ceremony will be held Nov. 30 at the Chicago Cultural Center's Claudia Cassidy Theater as part of the city's 150th Birthday Celebration.

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