Traverse City Record-Eagle

Grand Traverse County

December 31, 2009

Editorial: Writers series is good news

Best-selling author Doug Stanton has the write idea.

The Traverse City National Writers Series he launched in May is a great story for the city, region, and aspiring young writers who need more scholarships and opportunities to rub elbows with noted and gifted writers.

Stanton's announcement last week of speakers for the year-round book festival was a stunning way to bring in 2010.

The writers series will build downtown's ongoing cultural renaissance, which over the last decades includes: the restoration of the City Opera House, renovation of the Park Place Hotel: Horizon Books' decision in the early 1990s to stay downtown and expand into the renovated old J.C. Penney building; and the 2005 birth of the Traverse City Film Festival in the reborn State Theatre.

The speakers list was released just three days after Film Festival co-founder Michael Moore announced the festival would host an inaugural weekend-long Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival on Feb. 19-21 to lighten up the long winter.

The series, other downtown activities and energetic leadership strengthen the region's cultural backbone and already strong connections to Interlochen Center for the Arts, Traverse Area District Library, and area schools systems, Traverse City Symphony, Northwestern Michigan College and its University Center.

Stanton -- a Traverse City resident -- and local supporters envision the evenings as lively conversations between readers and best-selling authors, journalists, poets, screenwriters, television producers as well as a community-wide discussion of books, writers and the arts.

First on the list of 17 confirmed guests is humorist Amy Alkon, author of "I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society," who will speak Feb. 11.

Among the others are: news anchor and author Tom Brokaw ("The Greatest Generation"); memoirist Mary Karr ("The Liar's Club," "Lit"); historian James Bradley ("Flags Of Our Fathers"); National Book Award winner and Paris Review co-founder, Peter Matthiessen ("The Snow Leopard," "Shadow Country"); Pulitzer-winner David Finkel ("The Good Soldiers"); and television producers Betsy Beers, of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," and Janet Leahy, of ABC's "Boston Legal."

All of this, however, realizes only part of Stanton's years-long dream of this series.

He credits the beginning of his writing career to the day in 1977 when he, then in his teens, met novelist Jim Harrison. Stanton has never forgotten the impact of that day, which is why he and supporters are launching a campaign to raise $50,000 over five years for college scholarships to aspiring young writers. Many of the visiting writers waived public-speaking fees to help out.

The motto for the national writers series is "Make it Live!"

The series and scholarship fund show every promise of living up to it.

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