Author Bret Lott (Jewel, A Song I Knew By Heart) is to receive The Denise Levertov Award on May 8, 2007, at the Seattle Art Museum. He is the fourth to receive this honor. “The Levertov Award is presented annually in May to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition,” reports Image Journal.

In related news, literary awards are important cues for readers who might not notice or hear of a book otherwise, according to Maya Jaggi. She writes, “Good fiction is a dialogue between story and reader, to which a reader brings not only personal history but imaginative experience of other books. Judging is as much about being open to others’ readings as trying to persuade them of your own.”

Sometimes when you hear someone has boarded his flight to the great beyond, you are surprised it hasn’t happened already. Famous authors get that wrap often, as I understand, often accused of death or something like it before settling into their terminal bed. Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five and many other books, had the honor of being just such a famous author. I’m sure many high school and college students thought he had been dead for a while now, along George Orwell (1903-1950), William Golding (1911-1993), Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), and J.D. Salinger (1919-?? He’s not dead yet??)

Now the students’ mistake has been corrected. Vonnegut died of brain injuries last night in New York. I need to read some of his work. He wasn’t all bad, so I hear.

Author Glenn Lucke points out personal story from that great poli-blogger La Shawn Barber. Yesterday, La Shawn blogged on some history teachers who don’t want to offend students who can’t handle the truth about 20th Century history.

Following a new collection of Wilder plays from the Library of America, Jeremy McCarter writes this essay on playwright Thornton Wilder.

Great reputations, we tend to think, should be held aloft by imposing columns of major works. But producing one magnum opus after another was never Wilder’s style. Much of his energy went into writing one-acts, the kind of little pieces that many playwrights treat as fodder for the next company that asks for help with a fund-raiser. For Wilder, who disdained kitchen-sink drama in favor of the absolutes — finding the universe in a grain of sand, then reversing the lens to view the whole cathedral of existence — the short plays were as likely to be masterpieces as the long.

[HT to Sarah of Confessions]

Have you heard about teenage abolitionist Zach Hunter who is stirring up students and adults to do what they can to free people who are ensalved around the world? He has written, Be the Change, and his publisher, Zondervan, has an info webpage with samples and news links.

NEA Chairman Dana Gioia announces the Longfellow Commemorative Stamp, the 23rd such stamp from the USPS. “Longfellow is not only a great poet, he also did as much as any author or politician of his time to shape the way 19th-century Americans saw themselves, their nation and their past,” said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia.

Ella exposes the old literary plot to hide the fact that the author know as Thomas Hardy was in fact two men, Tragic and Cherry. She needs to write a novel about this evil hidden truth. I’m sure Raphael worked codes into his paintings to ensure those in the know could remember the truth.

Yesterday, I heard a challenging message on lessons from Martin Luther’s life by John Piper. Perhaps you’ll want to take some time for it this weekend.

Luther said, “Let the man who would hear God speak, read Holy Scripture.” Amen.

That’s a good question. Dan is asking what defines a novelist in light of Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists that includes 21 authors, including 7 that have not published a single novel between them.”

Frank Wilson says A.S. Byatt is the greatest living British author. As you may know by now, I don’t have the experience to argue this point. (What did they teach me in that school I attended?)