Writer and mentor Lary Bloom to receive 2010 award for Lifetime Achievement to Literary Community | Press Releases

Image: Larry Bloom Lary Bloom, a faculty member in Fairfield University's MFA in Creative Writing Program and one of Connecticut's most beloved literary masters, will be honored with the 2010 award for Lifetime Achievement in Service to the Literary Community at the ninth annual Connecticut Book Awards on Sunday, September 19 at 2 p.m. at the Hartford Public Library. The event is open to the public.

Bloom's work has had direct ties to the state with the publication of his Lary Bloom's Connecticut Notebook, a compilation of his best stories of Connecticut traditions and lore, politics, big and small business, criminal justice, sports, the changing physical landscape, health, and the arts. In Letters From Nuremberg, which he co-authored with Connecticut's U.S. Senator, Christopher J. Dodd, the world gets to see the drama of the Nuremberg Trials unfold through the eyes of Dodd's father, Thomas J. Dodd, then a young attorney whose inquisition of the brilliant Hermann Göring provided the centerpiece of the trials.

The author of The Writer Within and one of America's leading Sunday magazine editors for 30 years, Bloom has nurtured writers such as Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, Madeleine Blais, David Hays and Susan M. Dodd. He has taught memoir writing at Trinity College and Wesleyan University's Graduate Liberal Studies Program and has lectured on writing at Yale. Michael White, director of Fairfield's MFA in Creative Writing program said, "We are delighted that our students have the opportunity to learn from Lary Bloom because he is not only a skilled professional writer and experienced editor, he is a wonderfully supportive teacher and generous mentor who has helped our MFA students get their work published."

Matt Poland, chief executive officer of Hartford Public Library, will be master of ceremonies for the tribute to Connecticut's stellar literary community. To be considered for an award, the author, illustrator, or designer must be native-born or have been a legal resident of Connecticut for at least three years, or the book must have a Connecticut setting.

Author Dani Shapiro will deliver the keynote and winners in each of the following categories will be announced for the first time: Biography or Memoir, Children's Author, Children's Illustrator, Design, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.

The awards program is free and open to the public. The reception which follows from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. with book signings by finalists and winners will be $50 per person; tickets will be held at the door. Call Kat Lyons at (860) 695-6320 or e-mail klyons@hplct.org by 15 September to reserve, or purchase tickets online at http://ctbookawards.eventbrite.com .

Connecticut Center for the Book is a program of Hartford Public Library, and is Connecticut's affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The program is made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.