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In his new book Dreamworlds of Alabama—an evocative remembrance of the beauty and mystery of the rural South—Buff State sociology professor Allen Shelton explores physical, historical, and social landscapes of northeastern Alabama. His homeplace near the Appalachian foothills provides the setting for a rich examination of cultural practices, a place where the language—and images—of place and things resonate with as much vitality and emotional urgency as the language of humans: wisteria draped on a soldierÕs coffin, sent home to Alabama from a Virginia battlefield; the oldest standing house in the county, painted gray and flanked by a pecan orchard; a black steel fence tool perched atop a pile of books like a prehistoric bird of prey. Throughout the book, Shelton demonstrates how deeply culture is inscribed in the land and in the most intimate spaces of the personÑplaces of belonging and loss, insight and memory.

Born and raised in Jacksonville, Alabama, Allen Shelton is associate professor of sociology at Buffalo State College.

University of Minnesota Press | 240 pages | 8 b & w photos | November 2007

$25*

With this rare appearance by (at this writing) the most recent Nobel Laureate in Literature—Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk—Just Buffalo Literary Center—in partnership with Hallwalls and the International Institute, and with a major grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation—inaugurates Babel, a three-year series of readings in Downtown BuffaloÕs splendid Asbury Hall by a dozen of todayÕs leading figures of world literature.

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernized district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul (first published in English translation by Knopf in 2005), from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23, Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write.

His first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later, in 1982. The novel is the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nisantasi. The novel was awarded both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. The White Castle (1985) about the frictions and friendship between a Venetian slave and an Ottoman scholar was published in English and many other languages from 1990 onwards, bringing Pamuk his first international fame. The same year, Pamuk went to America, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University from 1985 to 1988.

It was in New York that he wrote most of his novel The Black Book, in which the streets, past, chemistry and texture of Istanbul are described through the story of a lawyer seeking his missing wife. This novel was published in Turkey in 1990, and in French translation won the Prix France Culture. The Black Book enlarged Pamuk's fame both in Turkey and internationally as an author at once popular and experimental, and able to write about past and present with the same intensity. In 1991 Pamuk's daughter Rüya was born. That year saw the production of a film Hidden Face, whose script, by Pamuk, was based on a one-page story in The Black Book.

PamukÕs novel The New Life, about young university students influenced by a mysterious book, was published in Turkey in 1994 and itself became one of the most widely read and influential books in Turkish literary history. My Name Is Red—about Ottoman and Persian artists and their ways of seeing and portraying the non-western world, told through a love story and family storyÑwas published in 1998. This novel won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Italian Grinzane Cavour (2002), and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award (2003).

From the mid-1990s Pamuk took a publicly critical stance towards the Turkish state in articles about human rights and freedom of thought, although he took little interest in politics. Snow, which he describes as Òmy first and last political novel,Ó was published in 2002. In this book, set in the small border city of Kars in northeastern Turkey, he experimented with a new type of Òpolitical novel,Ó telling the story of violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. In 1999 a selection of his articles on literature and culture written for newspapers and magazines in Turkey and abroad, together with a selection of writings from his private notebooks, was published under the title Other Colors.

PamukÕs most recent book, Istanbul: Memories & The City (Vintage paperback, 2006) is a poetical work that is hard to classify, combining the authorÕs early memoirs up to the age of 22, and an essay about the city of Istanbul, illustrated with photographs from his own album, and pictures by western painters and Turkish photographers.

Apart from three years in New York, Orhan Pamuk has spent all his life in the same streets and district of Istanbul, living in the building where he was raised. Pamuk has been writing novels for 30 years and never done any other job except writing. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages. In October 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

*The single event ticket price for Orhan Pamuk and each of the other three 2007Ð2008 Babel readings is $25. Discounted early-bird series subscriptions for members at the price of $60 have sold out, but series subscriptions are still available for $75 for four readings, and discounted series subscriptions are available at a group rate for book clubs. Call Just Buffalo at 832-5400 to purchase series subscriptions at the book club rate.

Besides major grant support from The John R. Oishei Foundation, the organizers of Babel thank Artvoice, Buffalo Spree, & WBFO 88.7 for their media sponsorship; Righteous Babe Records for the use of Asbury Hall at Babeville; Talking Leaves…Books; The Mansion; and New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Erie County, for their support of Just BuffaloÕs and HallwallsÕ programs.

Paul Hogan was an active member of the Buffalo literary community for many years, though life path changes have led him farther away recently than he has wished. He was the producer and host of Spoken Arts Radio on WBFO when it was a 30-minute weekly interview and reading series featuring a wide range of local and national writers. (He recently donated over 120 taped programs to UBÕs Poetry Collection). Along with Nancy Parisi, Paul coordinated the WriterÕs Cramp reading series at the Central Park Grill for nearly six years. He was also one of the editors of Buffalo Press, which released several books in its short existence, including Olga KarmenÕs collection Border Crossing.

Paul received his MA in Creative Writing from UB—a member of the last class to do so before UB eliminated it as a concentration in English. He was offered and accepted the Gray Chair Fellowship in Poetry & Letters under Robert Creeley, and held it for two years before deciding to leave academia to begin work in the non-profit sector. He worked for Just Buffalo Literary Center as the first full-time director of the Writers-in-Education program, and he has also worked with or been a consultant to several arts organizations over the years.

Paul has received an Academy of American Poets College Competition award, a SUNY-wide creative writing award from SUNY at Albany, and an Individual ArtistÕs Fellowship from the Arts Council in Buffalo & Erie County. He has scattered publications in small magazines, mainly regional, and had five poems included in the White Pine Press anthology The Legend of Being Irish, edited by David Lampe. Although he has read his work widely and often in the area, this is his first reading in nearly a decade.

Max Wickert has published two collections of poetry—All the Weight of the Still Midnight and Pat Sonnets—as well as over two hundred poems and verse translations in major journals, including American Poetry, Chicago Review, Choice, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and Shenandoah. His work has twice been featured in EarthÕs Daughters. The Liberation of Jerusalem—a verse translation of Torquato TassoÕs Renaissance epic, Gerusalemme Liberata—will be published next year by Oxford University Press. In the 1960s and Ô70s he was the founder and director of the Outriders Poetry Program. He is Associate Professor Emeritus in the UB English Department.

Continuing publication of Earth's Daughters magazine is made possible by a Decentralization grant from the Arts Council in Buffalo & Erie County, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. The Gray Hair Series is co-sponsored by Hallwalls, Just Buffalo Literary Center, & Talking Leaves...Books.

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Poet Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He obtained his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Stanford. He has taught and lived in Santa Cruz since 1979.

In the realm of experimental fiction, Mackey has published three volumes of an ongoing prose project entitled From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993), and Bedouin Hornbook (1986).

"…Mackey's series of improvisatory jazz-inspired fictions locates a ground between invention and listening that he defines as the source of culture itself. All culture, for Mackey, is a form of listening to what 'we' are collectively improvising" (Barrett Watten).

MackeyÕs poetry combines African mythology, African-American musical traditions, and Modernist poetic experiment. His several ongoing serial projects explore the relationship of poetry and historical memory, as well as the ritual power of poetry and song. His books of poetry include Four for Trane (1978); Septet for the End of Time (1983); Eroding Witness (1985), selected for the National Poetry Series; Outlandish (1992); School of Udhra (1993); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); Whatsaid Serif (1998); and, most recently, Splay Anthem, which was awarded the 2006 National Book Award in poetry.

Mackey will read from both his fiction and poetry. This reading is co-sponsored by UBÕs Poetics Program & Poetics Plus Reading Series.