The Food Network's Alton Brown, writing in the Feb. 6-7, 2010 edition of The Wall Street Journal, has included Michael Ruhlman's cookbook, Ratio, in his list of the five best cookbooks. I assume he means the five best of all time since he has included the 1936 edition of The Joy of Cooking in this short list. Ruhlman, who is frequently featured at Chautauqua, has been a prose workshop leader for the Chautauqua Writers' Center as well as an Amp speaker. 

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Naseem Rakha

The Crying Tree, a novel by Chautauquan Naseem Rakha, which illuminates the debate surrounding capital punishment, is one of five recipients of the 2010 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. The award has been given since 1965. Winners have included Raymond Carver, David James Duncan, Diane Abu-Jaber, David Guterson and Sherman Alexie.

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Bill Heyen, frequent workshop leader at the Chautauqua Writers' Center and professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at the College of Brockport, has been chosen to receive the Arts & Cultural Council of Greater Rochester Award as Literary Artist of the Year. Heyen's most recent book of poetry, A Poetics of Hiroshima, is one of the nine books selected for the 2010 author's lecture series of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. He will read from his work and sign copies at Chautauqua on July 22.

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A new collection of poems, O Body Swayed, by Berwyn Moore has been released from Cherry Grove Collections. Moore is associate professor of English at Gannon University in Erie and a regular Chautauquan.

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Mary Karr (Festival faculty member) has a wonderful essay in today's (Sunday, Dec. 27) New York Times. You'll find it in the Week in Review section as part of a series of essays called "The Decade We Had." She was selected to write the piece commemorating 2009; it's entitled "The End" and it's worth a read.

Happy New Year!

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