The Florida State Department's Division of Cultural Affairs has awarded the Key West Literary Seminar a grant for more than $20,000. The award, part of the DCA's Culture Builds Florida Grant Program, is designated for the expansion and enhancement of the KWLS Audio Archives Project.

Begun in late 2007, the Audio Archives Project aims to preserve and promote the recorded history of the Key West Literary Seminar, which contain more than 20 years of unique presentations by some of the world's most influential writers. More than 50 such recordings have already been digitized and released through the project, which is freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

Together with matching funds from KWLS, the Florida Builds Culture grant marks a significant investment in the project and will ensure its viability for years to come. Funds will be used to digitize fragile analog recordings and develop a mobile-optimized platform that will allow iPhone and other mobile device users greater access to the archives. The award will support KWLS investment in audio production equipment, as well as the development of initiatives and partnerships aimed at increasing use of the archives among educators, students, and readers worldwide.

The Audio Archives Project is one of more than 100 project-specific grants awarded statewide by the Division in 2009. Granted projects demonstrate cultural excellence and innovation, sustainability, and effective program management in support of the Florida Council on Arts and Culture’s strategic plan for the continuing development of arts and culture in the State of Florida.

We are delighted to announce the theme for the 2011 Key West Literary Seminar. "The Hungry Muse: an exploration of food in literature" will bring together dozens of today's most compelling, thought-provoking, and funniest writers– memoirists, novelists, poets, historians, journalists, and all manner of lettered gastronome, gourmand, and epicure– to explore food and its place in contemporary literature. Confirmed speakers for the 29th annual event include humorists Calvin Trillin and Roy Blount, Jr., acclaimed memoirist and Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, novelists Bich Minh Nguyen and Diana Abu-Jaber, American Food Writing editor Molly O'Neill, and poet Kevin Young.

The subject of what we eat- and how and why we eat it- lies at the heart of good writing of all genres. When asked why she wrote about food, the incomparable M.F.K. Fisher answered, "It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and intertwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one."

With demand for this Seminar high, "The Hungry Muse" will encompass two independent Seminars, from January 6-9 and January 13-16, as well as a slate of writers' workshops January 10-13. Many more speakers, as well as writers' workshop faculty members, will be announced in the coming months. Registration is now open. Advance registration is strongly encouraged, as an early sell-out is likely.

photo by Nick Rosza Jane Hirshfield has been added to the roster of speakers for the sold-out Key West Literary Seminar this January. She will also offer an advanced writers' workshop, bringing the total number of workshops offered to seven.

Hirshfield's most recent book of poetry, After, was named a "best book of 2006" by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England's Financial Times. She has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets.

The workshop, January 11-14, 2010, will be limited to 12 students and will include writing experiments, close-reading responses to poems, and conversation on craft. The goal, according to Hirshfield, is "to bring an open, intimate, and tenacious looking to words, worlds, and the craft-informed relationship between them where poetry begins," and to become aware of "the nameable elements of craft that underlie poetry's power to conjure, transform, delve, evoke, counter, move, unravel, expose, augment, and surprise."

From top left: Richard Wilbur, Natasha
Trethewey, James Tate, Mary Jo Salter, Mark
Strand, Kay Ryan, Timothy Steele, Robert
Pinsky, Maxine Kumin, Brad Leithauser, Paul
Muldoon, Harvey Shapiro, Yusef Komunyakaa,
Matthea Harvey, Rachel Hadas, Dan Gerber,
Rhina P. Espaillat, Rita Dove, Erica Dawson,
Kirby Congdon, and Billy Collins. A steady flow of registrations and a last-minute surge of extraordinarily talented applicants for the Scholarship Program has brought registration for the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar and Writers' Workshop Program to an official close. Those interested in attending may still sign up for the waiting list by sending an email to mail@kwls.org, and locals are reminded of the open-to-the-public session held on the Seminar's final Sunday.

The complete schedule for the 28th annual event– Clearing the Sill of the World, a celebration of 60 years of American poetry in honor of Richard Wilbur– is now available as a downloadable .pdf. Highlights of the January 7-10 program will include three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's keynote address, "Modernism and Memory"; a panel discussion on translation including Wilbur, Mark Strand, and Rachel Hadas; a production of Wilbur's translation of Jean Racine's "The Suitors" by the Red Barn Theatre; and a conversation including Matthea Harvey and James Tate on "Giving shape and form and voice to the madness and strangeness and wonder of everyday life." The event will also feature readings and lectures by current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, and Pulitzer Prize winners Yusef Komunyakaa and Natasha Trethewey.