He is the author of the novel-in-stories Other Electricities (Sarabande Books, 2005), a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award in Fiction. He is also the author of the poetry collection Vacationland, which won the fourth Annual Tupelo Press First Book Editors’ Prize in 2005.

An essayist, poet, and fiction writer, Monson earned an MFA from the University of Alabama. He teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona and is the editor of the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press.He lives in Michigan His forthcoming collection of essays Vanishing Point (Graywolf Press) and his poetry collection The Available World (Sarabande Books) will both be released in 2010.Visit his web site at www.otherelectricities.com/neckdeep.

The Graywolf Press had this to say about Ander Monson’s Neck Deep:

“In this sparkling nonfiction debut, Monson uses unexpectedly nonliterary forms—the index, the Harvard Outline, the mathematical proof—to delve into an equally surprising mix of obsessions: disc golf, the history of mining in northern Michigan, car washes, topology, and more. He remembers the telegram, a disappearing form, and reflects on his outsider experience at an exclusive Detroit-area boarding school in the form of a criminal history.”

The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize is funded in part by endowed gifts from the Arsham Ohanessian Charitable Remainder Unitrust and the Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation.

More praise for Neck Deep and Other Predicaments

• “Puts most memoirs to shame.” — Time Out Chicago
• “Monson’s subjects are engaging and engaged.” — Water-Stone Review
• “A surprising alloy of caper and elegy.” — Frieze
• “Strange and delightful…cutting edge.” — Star Tribune
• “Neck Deep should be read by anyone who cares about new developments in nonfiction…” — The American Book Review
• “In this often amusing, inventive, and unconventional approach to autobiography, Monson comes at us sideways with personal revelations and observations that are alternately filled with infectious enthusiasm and shamefaced contrition.”­ — Rain Taxi Review of Books
• “A delightful read…the genius in Monson’s writing is in synchronistic balance of word crafting and visual form.” — Grand Rapids Press
• “The interrelated stories, set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the bleakest midwinter, represent a sort of inventory that drifts again and again into stretches of purely poetic language.” — The Rake
• “Wonderfully recondite and cunningly executed, Monson’s work will make a brilliant discovery for open-minded fans of narrative nonfiction.” — Publishers Weekly
• “Elizabeth Bishop often remarked that she wanted poems and prose that register the mind in motion rather than at rest. Bishop would have loved the work of Ander Monson, as much for his yearning mind as his quick, restless, precise motion…For Monson the essay is something like a schematics for our fiercest longings and most ecstatic inventions. Every time I turn to it I’m astonished all over again by the majesty of this book.” — Robert Polito, Judge

“Reading is the key to a successful education,” Governor Bredesen said. “While we have made reading a priority with early learning initiatives like Books from Birth, it’s now time to apply that same level of focus to keep reading on the forefront for middle and high school students as we increase standards this year.”

With a renewed focus on reading comprehension, the Department of Education recently created the Office of Reading Information and Proficiency. The office, comprised of existing education department professionals, will provide guidance and offer professional development for teachers on how to build on basic reading skills during the middle and high school years.

“It’s critical that our students have excellent reading skills if we expect them to be prepared for college and the workforce,” Commissioner Webb said. “That’s why reading remains important from kindergarten to graduation.”

During the summit, teams of educators from middle and high schools across the state will participate in various sessions detailing strategies to meet the reading needs of Tennessee’s students. Noted guests include Dr. Deborah Reed, Director of the Texas Adolescent Literacy Academies, from the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Dian Lapp, Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at San Diego State University.

Author William Gay

Award-winning novelist and short story writer William Gay will give a public reading of his work at Austin Peay State University on July 14. Gay will read from his work at 7 p.m., July 14 in Room 303 of the APSU Morgan University Center. This reading is free and open to the public.

Gay, a Tennessee native, emerged upon the literary scene later in life, not publishing his first novel, “The Long Home,” until after he was 40. Critics and readers, however, were quick to notice his talent, placing him among such luminaries as William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy.

Gay has been described as a master of the “southern gothic” novel with his stories focusing on rural characters and locales, and he’s earned numerous accolades to accompany this praise.

He was awarded the 1999 William Peden Award, the 2000 James A. Michener Memorial Prize, a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Ford Foundation U.S. Artist grant.

Gay is the author of three novels, “The Long Home,” “Provinces of Night” and “Twilight,” and the short story collections, “I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down” and “Wittgenstein’s Lolita.” A fourth novel, “The Lost Country,” is due out sometime this year. His short stories have also appeared in numerous magazines, such as Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, GQ and New Stories from the South 1999 and 2000.

For more information, please contact Susan Wallace with the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 221-7031.

Apart from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter phenomenon, the most challenged books of the 21st century (2000-2005) include a number of books taught as classic and “relevant” books in terms of content and history.

In celebrating Banned Books Week (September 23-30, 2006), the American Library Association (ALA) compiled the top 10 most challenged books from 2000-2005, with the Harry Potter series of books leading the pack. The 10 most challenged books of the 21st Century (2000-2005) are:

1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
5. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
6. “Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers
7. “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
10. “Forever” by Judy Blume

All but three of these books also were in the top 10 of the most challenged books of the 1990s. The ALA reports there were more than 3,000 attempts to remove books from schools and public libraries between 2000 and 2005. Challenges are defined as formal, written complaints filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.

I scan this perpetually developing list, and am continually confounded by the titles that emerge. Start with John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize-winning Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers in Great Depression-era California.

Based on Steinbeck’s own experiences as a bindle stiff in the 1920s (before the arrival of the Okies he would vividly describe in The Grapes of Wrath), the title is taken from Robert Burns’s poem, To a Mouse, which is often quoted as: “The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry,” though the phrase in the original Scots of the poem is “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley.”

Required reading in many high schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for what some consider offensive and vulgar language. Yes in high school, reading this text, along with The Pearl and Cannery Row, charted a new course in reading and in the understanding of the human condition.

Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is a story about the pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society and how profoundly such a society shapes the character of an individual and the dynamics of a family.  It is a story of how one girl strived to surmount such pressures in rural Arkansas. Her story is representative of many African-Americans in the South at that time.

One out of 5,718 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, as compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom does not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges. Research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported.

Becca and Rochelle await the midnight hour and the last Harry Potter book

Some time ago, three generations of my family, myself included, some of us costumed to honor favored characters, stormed the bookstores for the midnight release of the final Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. My granddaughter, in her Harry Potter Sorting Hat, and a friend stood guard at the shop’s storeroom door hoping for glimpse of,  … Oh my! Can it be? A book! Not a rock star. Not a movie idol. A BOOK.

Granted it was a big book. A special book. It was a book with all the answers to all the questions derived from the first six books in the series. Thus, somewhere around 2 a.m., five copies of the pre-ordered book in our house — everyone wanted “my own” copy, and we could not all read the same book at the same time.

J.K. Rowling, with her first scrawled story, got an entire generation of children to read books. Not read…devour, with an insatiable hunger for more.

I couldn’t help but remember years ago, when my daughter was little, how we always had books, and how a friend of mine was concerned about her young son’s disinterest in and difficulty with reading. The solution came in the form of comic book and a few heavily illustrated magazines on a subject he was engrossed in. Okay, he looked more at the photos in the beginning, but then he developed a craving to know what the printed words said.

Peak his interest first, I counseled. We can develop a bit more quality as we go along.

When my grandson was less than enthusiastic about books during the time I home schooled him, I used a similar strategy; he loved Jack London’s Call of the Wild, and that was my cue. I also developed an extensive list of “boy books” for a young teenager. The deal was, he had to read one of mine, and write a book report about it. Then he could pick a book, any book, any subject, from the library, read it and do a small book report on that. The freedom to choose was the impetus he needed.

I had him read Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, and I found a few adventure/creature stories by several authors he now craves. Buy one of those author’s book, new or used, and the entire 400-500 pages is done in a week. The concept of exploring new authors and genre’s has been planted, successfully.

What amuses me is the fact that many of the books on my “teen lest” are those “dangerous” banned books.

I tell my grandson to read them just to find out what the censors don’t want him to know. After all, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (for them). For the rest of us, well, we just can’t get to the bookstore fast enough.

I like to think they get their love of reading from me. Growing up, my family lived in a four room house, very big rooms, but only two bedrooms. At a certain age, my dad partioned one bedroom; my brother and I would each get half. As the eldest, I got first dibs. I left the room with the heat (a radiator for those New England winters) for him and chose the room with a cubby and a large closet, not for clothes hanging space, but for the ceiling to floor bookshelves I had my dad install along each wall. The simple act of taking stacked books from the floor, the windowsill and under my bed, filled two walls on that very first day. The lack of heat in that room was remedied with the purchase of an electric blanket.

My daughter always had books, and continues to forage for them at bookstores, thrift stores and yard sales. My “new baby” gifts for friends was always a collection of fairy tales or nursery rhymes; giving a child that first book became a trademark with me.

A dear friend of mine never really understood my addiction to the printed word. It wasn’t until tragedy wrapped itself around him, and he found that a book would make the time pass, could make the day brighter, could change his view of the world, that he began reading. “What took me so long,” he asked me, bemoaning the fact that there were so many books and so little time.

Trieu D. Tran (top) and Wesley John in EQUUS. Photo by Michael Lamont.

I tell Rochelle and her brother, Bobby, that this love of books is a “genetic thing,” that it is “all my fault,” passed on to them through their mother, from me. My other granddaughter, doesn’t care books, but has my “theater” and “arts” gene, and that’s fine too. I tell her about the time I took her mother, as the tender age of nine, to see “Equus” at the Williston Academy in Massachusetts. Viewing that play led to tremendous discussion on myriad subjects and helped instill a love of theater in her. It parallels the relationship we have with books; I can’t imagine our lives without books, without the arts and theater in all its forms.

Each year, when the American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week, I make it a point to read a banned book (but it’s hard to find one since I’ve read most  on the list). I not only read Maya Angelou, for example, I stood at the back of a packed hall to hear her speak; on that night the program was delayed long enough to pipe the sound outside to a throng of 5,000 people who stood in the cold, waiting, wanting to hear her words and her readings. Of Mice and Men and all the Steinbeck works impressed me so much that when in California, I had my picture taken on the real “Cannery Row.”

At one point my daughter and had some 3,000 books, a number that was rudely edited by our house fire a few years ago. We have an ongoing search to replace old favorites, though the first editions and the autographed copies are, sadly, gone. We are slowly biulding back that personal library.

When I look at the passion and the relationship my family has with books, I smile. Books are not just paper and cloth covers or leather bindings, or the inexpesive newsprint paperbacks. Books, at least in my family, are friends. Best friends.

Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book about two male penguins caring for an orphaned egg, topped the list of American Library Association’s (ALA) 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007. A year ago. This year’s tally of challenges has three more months to go.

Three books are new to the list “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes; “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman; and “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle.“Free access to information is a core American value that should be protected,” said Judith F. Krug, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Not every book is right for each reader, but an individual’s interpretation of a book should not take away my right to select reading materials for my family or myself.”For more than 15 years, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has received reports on book challenges. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school, requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. In 2007 the OIF received 420 reports on efforts to abolish materials from school curriculum and library bookshelves.

The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2007″ reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell. Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier. Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes. Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman. Reasons:  Religious Viewpoint

5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain. Reasons:  Racism

6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker. Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle. Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou. Reasons:  Sexually Explicit

9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris. Reasons:  Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky. Reasons:  Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Off the list this year, are two books by author Toni Morrison. “The Bluest Eye” and  “Beloved,” both challenged for sexual content and offensive language.

For more information on book challenges and censorship, please visit the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom’s Banned Books Web site at www.ala.org/bbooks.

The Office for Intellectual Freedom is charged with implementing ALA policies concerning the concept of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, the Association’s basic policy on free access to libraries and library
materials. The goal of the office is to educate librarians and the general public about the nature and importance of intellectual freedom in libraries.

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
50 E. Huron Chicago, IL 60611 Call Us Toll Free 1-800-545-2433

Public libraries, schools and school libraries report challenges to OIF, but a majority of challenges go unreported.