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2005 APH Conference
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Conference Main Page Welcome Schedule Guest Speakers Highlights Saturday Night Live Workshops Volunteer Help Needed Scholarship Fund Travel Information Hotel Information Registration Information |
Keynote Address
Sarah Anne Johnson is the author of Conversations with American Women Writers (University Press of New England, 2004), The Art of the Author Interview (UPNE, March 2005), and More Conversations with American Writers (UPNE 2006). Her interviews have appeared in The Writer, The Writer's Chronicle, Provincetown Arts, and Glimmertrain Stories. Her fiction has appeared in Other Voices, and she's received fiction residencies from Vermont Studio Centers and Jentel Artists Residency Program. Sarah is a contributing editor at The Writer, and teaches "The Art of the Author Interview" in the MFA program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at conferences nationwide. (www.sarahannejohnson.com)
Saturday, November 5, 8:30 am
Gordon Olson
"Confessions of a City Historian"
Gordon Olson, one of the best-known figures in Grand Rapids, served for 25 years as the Grand Rapids City Historian, a valuable and much utilized addition to the city's resources. Gordon will let us look at the city and its environs through many lenses: that of personal history, ethnic history, community history, business and government history—and more.
Gordon is the author of numerous books, including local history works as well as business and organizational histories. He has worked with local schools and written a textbook read by every third grader in the city. He has been involved in many oral history projects, including ones that concentrate on local ethnic groups. One of his most recent projects, for example, resulted in both the video "From Saigon to Sanctuary: A History of the Vietnamese Resettlement in West Michigan" and the book, Flight to Freedom. He has completed personal histories for local foundations, videotaped interviews of federal judges, coordinated oral history projects between students and veterans, and many similar projects.
Sunday, November 6, 9:00 am
Jennifer Morrison
"A Walk With Gwen Frostic"
Gwen Frostic was born in Michigan in 1906. In her first year of life she contracted a mysterious illness that left her with a profound physical handicap. Teachers predicted she would never be able to write her own name. At the time she died on April 25, 2001, one day before her 95th birthday, she had become an internationally popular and prolific nature artist with her own thriving business. She left Western Michigan University thirteen million dollars, its largest single gift ever. Gwen Frostic's life is an amazing story involving art, attitude, and a red-winged black bird. Personal historians will be encouraged and educated by this example of a woman who turned her creative passion into a business that supported her and others.
Jennifer Morrison conducted a series of interviews with Gwen Frostic when Jennifer was curator of the Benzie Area Historical Museum in Benzonia, Michigan. Jennifer is now in her eighth year at the Grand Rapids Public Library in their Grand Rapids History and Special Collections Center. She has a master's degree in public history and more than twenty years experience working in historical organizations throughout Michigan. Jennifer and her husband, John, own AfterWord Professional Historians LLC.