The Writing Life explores the works of prominent authors from around the globe.  Brought to you by the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society(HoCoPoLitSo), from four Maryland Poets Laureate to a pair of Nobel Laureates - Saul Bellow and Seamus Heaney - more than fifty poets and writers have appeared in HoCoPoLitSo's Cable TV series since 1986.  The half hour shows are hosted by such well-known area writers as: Lucille Clifton, Michael Collier, Roland Flint, Linda Pastan, Mark Strand and Henry Taylor.  Guests range from interesting new writers to the most distinguished names in contemporary letters: Michael Harper, W.S. Merwin, Grace Pauley and Richard Wilbur.  The Writing Life has been honored by the National Hometown Video Festival and the BRAVO Network's "Arts For Change" Award.  It has won funding from the Maryland Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, and such private sponsors as The Columbia Foundation, The First National Bank of Maryland, the Columbia Festival of the Arts, the Rouse Company Foundation and the Friends of HoCoPoLitSo.

This month - Grove Press and the Freedom to Read.  In this debut edition of HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life, book critic Michael Dirda speaks with Jeannette Seaver, wife of an editor at Grove Press when it was publishing some of the most controversial and banned books in America. Seaver edited the memoir written by her husband, Dick Seaver, called The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the '50s, New York in the '60s: A Memoir of Publishing's Golden Age (2012). In the 1950s, Dick went to Paris to write his thesis on James Joyce, and discovered avant garde writers like Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. He longed to publish them, and teamed up with publisher Barney Rosset to bring Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett and Malcolm X to American readers. “Dick was very much for the underdog and the suppressed,” Jeannette Seaver remembers. “Those two were a dynamic duo, improbable, but very close.”

The Writing Life airs Tuesdays at 11am, 4pm and 7pm, and Saturdays at 8pm.

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