Bruce Race
Monday-Tuesday, September 8-9, 2003

Bruce Race, FAIA, AICP, and Ball Stat University Alum, is the founder of RACESTUDIO, a practice that provides planning and design services to a wide range of public, instructional and private clients primarily in California. However, Bruce has also created international planning projects in Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, China and Panama. Bruce worked with the students in Tony Costello’s seminar as they conducted a week-long “charrette” for Muncie’s Southside neighborhood. He also gave a public lecture at the College of Architecture and Planning on Tuesday, September 9th, at 7:30 PM.

David Wagoner
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
David Wagoner has published seventeen books of poems, most recently The House of Song (2002), and ten novels, one of which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola. He won the Lilly Prize in 1991, has been nominated twice for the national book award, and has won the Zabel Prize, the Blumenthal-Leviton-Blonder Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the English-Speaking Union Prize, the Levinson Prize, and the Union League Prize of Poetry (Chicago), and the William Stafford Memorial Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for 23 years. He has taught at the University of Washington since 1954 and was the editor of Poetry Northwest till its end in 2002. David worked with students from Barb Stedman's class concerning literature and the environment.

Brian Price
Friday, October 4
& Saturday, October 5, 2002
Brian Price did his undergraduate and graduate work in American Studies, studying in Ireland and England for his BA and at Purdue University for his MA and PhD. He has been a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College for 15 years, and is currently Dean of First-Year Studies. He taught first-year students for ten of his years as a faculty member. Working in team-taught, year-long interdisciplinary programs, he was fortunate enough to be able to teach out of the questions on the tip of his tongue, questions that have emerged from his evolving explorations in political economy, history, literature, field natural history, landscape art and environmental sculpture. Brian chaired Evergreen's General Education reform committee through two years of college-wide discussions and, having been appointed dean, is now responsible for implementing the recommendations approved by the college. Brian gave a lecture, sponsored by the Core Curriculum Task Force, "The Depth of Breadth: General Education and the Core Curriculum," in AJ 175 on Friday, October 4 at 3:00 p.m. On Saturday, he conducted a retreat for past and current Virginia Ball fellows and members of the Core Curriculum Task Force.

Christine McQuade
Tuesday, September 3, 2002
Christine McQuade is co-editor, with her father, Donald McQuade, of Seeing & Writing (Bedford/St. Martins, 2000), a college composition reader that uses images and ideas from popular culture to teach writing. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Christine spent three years performing and touring with the modern dance company STREB, which, in the words of its founder and choreographer, "refutes the primacy of the floor in dance" by experimenting with velocity, gravity, and the potential of bodies in space. Christine has also been an editor for Steven Brill's Contentville and, most recently, an information architect for Courtroom Television. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Christine worked with Michael O'Hara's students regarding the teaching of theatre.

Sheila Coghill
Monday, March 25, 2002
Sheila Coghill is Professor of English and former chair of the Department of the English at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where she teaches seminars in Flannery O'Conner and Eudora Welty, Henry James and Edith Wharton, and a senior capstone course in Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. A member of the Graduate Faculty and Honors Faculty, Coghill teaches Psychoanalysis and Literature: Archetypes of Midlife, and Good and Evil in Literature. She is also the former Director of the Women's Studies Program and Coordinator of the Core Program in Liberal Studies. Last September, she was the recipient of MSUM's 2001 Excellence in Teaching Award. Coghill collaborated with Thom Tammaro to edit Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson (University of Iowa Press, 2000), winner of a Minnesota Book Award and one of the nation's top-twenty best sellers in poetry in 2000-2001. Coghill and Tammaro are currently editing Dear Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman to be published by the University of Iowa Press in the spring of 2003. Sheila worked with students at the Center on March 25.

Thom Tammaro
Monday, March 25, 2002
Thom Tammaro teaches writing and humanities at Minnesota State University Moorhead where he has received the Merit Teaching Award, the Excellence in Research Award, and the Beth and Roland Dille Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award. His books include When the Italians Came to My Home Town (1995), a collection of poems and Minnesota Suite, a chapbook of poems (1987). He co-edited two award-winning anthologies, Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest (1995) and Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest (1993) both winners of the Minnesota Book Award. He also edited Remembering James Wright by Robert Bly (1991), and Roving Across Fields: A Conversation with William Stafford and Uncollected Poems, 1942-82. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines. Thom worked with students at the Center on March 25.

Sharon Hamilton
Monday, February 25 and Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Sharon Hamilton is the author of numerous articles and books on higher education. But she may be best known for her memoir, My Name’s Not Susie: A Life Transformed By Literacy, a heart-wrenching account of an abused child’s lonely—and virtually autistic—existence in a series of foster homes. Portions of Sharon’s book have been adopted for the stage. She currently serves as the Director of Indiana University-Purdue University’s Urban Universities Portfolio Project. She joined Lou Ann Walker for a reading, 7:00, Monday evening, February 25, at the Kennedy Branch of the Muncie Public Library. This reading was part of the ARTSable Project—a series of events that focus on the relationship of creativity and disability. On Tuesday, February 26, Sharon worked with the students at the Center on the problems of researching and writing family history.

Lou Ann Walker
Monday, February 25, 2002
Lou Ann Walker is best known for her articles, books and films about America’s deaf people. Her books include Amy: The Story of a Deaf Child (1985), Hand, Heart and Mind: The Story of the Education of America’s Deaf People (1994) and her award-winning memoir, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family. Lou Ann is a former Ball State University Honors student and currently lives in Sag Harbor, New York, working as a freelance writer/editor. She has also worked as an American Sign Language interpreter for the New York City courts and several Broadway plays, including "Driving Miss Daisy," "Les Miz," and "Shirley Valentine." On Monday afternoon, Lou Ann worked with students at the Center on the problems of researching and writing family history. Then at 7:00 on Monday evening, February 25, Lou Ann will join Sharon Hamiltongave a reading at the Kennedy Branch of the Muncie Public Library. This reading was part of the ARTSable Project—a series of events that focus on the relationship of creativity and disability.

Robert Reid
Monday, February 18, 2002
Robert Reid is Professor of History and Vice President for Academic Affairs at University of Southern Indiana. Bob has served as Trustee of the Indiana Historical Society and Chair of the Indiana Humanities Council. He has written widely on history, family, and photography. His books include Pilgrims on the Ohio: The River Journey and Photographs of Reuben Gold Thwaites; Picturing Texas: The FSA-OWI Photographs in the Lone Star State; and Picturing Minnesota: Photographs from the Farm Security Administration. Bob worked with students at the Center on the problems of memory, memoire, and photography.

Paulette Roeske
Monday, February 18, 2002
Paulette Roeske is Professor of English at College of Lake County, Editor of Willow Review, and Director of the College of Lake County Reading Series. Paulette is an accomplished poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her poetry has been collected in Anvil, Clock and Last; Divine Attention [winner of the Carl Sandburg Book Award for Poetry]; and The Body Can Ascend No Higher [winner of the Illinois Writers, Inc. chapbook competition]. Her essays and stories have appeared in journals such as The Georgia Review, Glimmer Train, and The Short Story Review. Paulette worked with students at the Center on the problems of memory, memoire, and photography.

Randall Bezanson
Friday, January 25, 2002
Randall Bezanson is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Iowa Law School. He has clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and served as Vice President of the University of Iowa and Dean of the Law School at Washington and Lee University. He currently teaches courses on constitutional law, mass communications law, and a First Ammendment seminar. His books include Libel Law and the Press: Myth and Reality, Speech Stories: How Free Can Speech Be? and Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company. Randy worked with the students at the Center to define the limits of the First Amendment.

W. D. Ehrhart
Sunday, January 13, 2002
and Monday, January 14, 2002W. D. Ehrhart holds a doctorate from the University of Wales and an honorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps. A veteran of both the Vietnam War and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Ehrhart has read and lectured at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, all three of America's service academies, Oxford University, the Dylan Thomas Centre, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, and the World Affairs Council. He has been Poet-in-Residence for the YMCA of the USA and Visiting Professor of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The Marine Corps Gazette describes him as “one of the most influential voices in his field and one of the shapers of modern memory” while Studs Terkel calls him“the poet perhaps to come out of the Vietnam War.” He recently finished his eighteenth book, The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature and American Life, to be published in 2002. Bill spoke at the Minnetrista Cultural Center regarding "Guns and Butter: The Politics of Poetry" at 7:30 Sunday evening, January 13. On Monday, January 14, Bill read a cross-section of war poems for students at the Virginia B. Ball Center.fall 2001 visitors

Dillon Bustin
August 29, 2001
Dillon Bustin is a composer, writer, and performer who is currently Director of the Emerson Umbrella, an arts cooperative in Concord, Massachusetts. Dillon is perhaps best know as the composer of Tidebook: An Island Rapsody, a three-part musical revue based on the history of the Vineyard from 1850s to 1940s. As visiting artist in the Vineyard schools, Dillon collaborated with students to create two community productions: Sailing Alone, a musical about Joshua Slocum’s solo voyage around the world in the 1890s. and Booming Ben, the Last of the Heath Hens, a musical concerned with the extinction of heath hens on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1930s. Dillon’s books include If You Don’t Outdie Me: The Legacy of Brown County (1983) and The Lotus Dickey Songbook (1996). Dillon worked with students at the Center on August 29. That evening at 7:30 PM, he also gave a performance, “Indiana Music: A Historical Sampler” at at the Minnetrista Cultural Center.

Susan Neville
August 28, 2001
Susan Neville writes short stories and creative nonfiction. The Invention of Flight (1984) won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and In the House of Blue Lights (1997) won the Sullivan Prize for Fiction. Her creative nonfiction, Indiana Winter (1994) and Twilight in Arcadia (2000), have received rave reviews. In her most recent book, Fabrications (2001), Susan travels around Indiana to discover how things are made. In the process she learns such things as how canning tomatoes is similar to making metal caskets. Susan, who teaches creative writing at Butler University, worked with the students at the Center on Tuesday, August 28, and then, later that evening, she joined Michael Martone for a reading, “New Work by Indiana Writers,” at 7:30 PM at the Minnetrista Cultural Center on Tuseday, August 28.

Michael Martone
August 27, 2001
Michael Martone, “the master of the nearly true,” is an author whose trademark is blurring the lines between fact and fiction. He is the author of six books including Alive and Dead in Indiana (1984), Penseés: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (1994), and Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler's List (1990). In his latest book, The Blue Guide to Indiana (2001), Martone creates an Indiana landscape that almost is, a Landscape marked by Lover's Lane franchises, the Trans-Indiana Mayonnaise Pipeline, and Our Lady of the Big Hair and Feet. Martone lives due south of his birthplace (Fort Wayne) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he edits Story County Books and teaches at the University of Alabama. Michael worked with the students at the Center on Monday, August 27 and then joined Susan Neville for a reading, “New Work by Indiana Writers,” at 7:30 PM at the Minnetrista Cultural Center on Tuesday, August 28.

James Still
April 12, 2001
James Still has been recognized as one of the nation's leading writers for family audiences. His plays include Amber Waves, The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name) and They Came For Me: Remembering Anne Frank. For three seasons, he wrote for the Emmy-nominated series Maurice Sendak's Little Bear (Nickelodeon) and has recently written for Bill Cosby's series, Little Bill, now airing on Nickelodeon. The recipient of a TCG/Pew Charitable Trust National Theater Artist Grant, James is now in his third season as Playwright-in-Residence at the Indiana Repertory Theater. This season James will direct Donald Margulies' Dinner with Friends. James worked with students at the Center on transforming oral history into drama.

Scott Russell Sanders
April 10, 2001
Scott Russell Sanders is Professor of English at Indiana University and one of America's most accomplished writers. He has published eighteen books, including novels, collections of short stories and essays, and personal narratives, as well as seven storybooks for children. His collection of essays, The Paradise of Bombs (1993) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction. His other works of nonfiction include Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (1996), Hunting for Hope (1998) and The Force of the Spirit [2000]. Scott talked with students at the Center about the experiences that have shaped his work as a writer.

Jacqueline Jones-Royster
March 26, 2001
Jacqueline Jones-Royster, Professor of English and Senior Associate Dean at The Ohio State University, has three areas of related research: the rhetorical history of women of African descent, the development of literacy, and contexts and processes related to the teaching of writing. The author of numerous professional articles, her books include Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett [1997] and Traces of a Stream: Literacy of Social Change Among African American Women [2000]. Together with Linda Peterson, Jackie talked with students at the Center about collecting and analyzing research on literacy and race. Also, together with Linda Peterson, Jackie presented “The Authority to Speak/Write: Women, Literacy and Social Change” at Ball State University's Women's Week, March 26.

Linda Peterson
March 26, 2001
Linda Peterson is Professor of English at Yale University. Her books include Tradition of Victorian Women's Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing [1999] and Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of Self-Interpretation [1986]. She is the author of numerous articles on autobiography—including slave narratives and colonial/post-colonial memoirs of British settlers and African writers. Linda is currently at work on a study of the concept of authorship as it was perceived and practiced among Victorian women. Together with Jacqueline Jones-Royster, Linda talked with students at the Center about collecting and analyzing research in literacy and gender. Also together with Jackie, Linda presented “The Authority to Speak/Write: Women, Literacy and Social Change” at Ball State University's Women's Week, March 26.

Peter Davis
March 16, 2001
Peter Davis is an award-winning author and film maker. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, Esquire, and The Nation, his books include If You Came This Way [1995], Where is Nicaragua? [1987] and Hometown [1982]. His films include such Emmy-winning documentaries as The Selling of the Pentagon [CBS—1971], Middletown [PBS—1982], JACK [CBS—1993] and an Academy Award-winning film on Vietnam, Hearts and Minds [1975]. During his return to “Middletown,” Peter talked with students at the Center about using a camera to research “dramas of discovery.” He also gave the keynote address, “Against the New: Continuity in America,” at the Great Lakes American Studies Association, which convened its annual meeting in Muncie, March 16-18.

Nancy Johnson
November 13 and 14, 2000
Nancy Johnson teaches children’s and adolescent literature, writing , and language arts at Western Washington University. Formerly a public school teacher, Nancy has conducted workshops on writing and the arts across the United States as well as in Canada, the Middle East and Hong Kong. Her books include Literature Circles Resource Guide (2000), Getting Started with Literature Circles (1999) and Literature Circles and Response (1995). She also writes a monthly Children’s Book Review column in The Reading Teacher. Nancy is currently researching a children’s book on growing up in Montana during the Depression. She talked with students at the Center about the difficulty of transforming historical research into creative literature—focusing on the spirit of a particular time and place. Nancy also conducted workshops for community teachers and teaching majors.

Cecelia Tichi
October 26, 2000
Cecelia Tichi teaches at Vanderbilt University where she has written and lectured on American life and literature. Her books focus on topics such as environmentalism, Stone Heads and Living Waters (forthcoming 2001); technology, Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987); television, Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture (1991); and popular music, High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music (1994). Cecelia (under the simplified spelling of her last name, Tishy) is also a mystery novelist. Drawing on Nashville’s identity as Music City or Twang Town, Cecelia’s Kate Banning paperback series includes Jealous Heart, Cryin’ Time and Fall to Pieces. Cecelia worked with the students at the Center on environmentalism and modernism before appearing as a featured writer at Magna Cum Murder—the Midwest Mystery Writers’ Conference sponsored each year by the E.B. Ball Center.

Bob Lucas
October 5 and 6, 2000
Bob Lucas is a composer, musical director and performer for the Mad River Theatre Works in West Liberty, Ohio. A rhythm guitarist, banjo player, and old-time fiddler whose rich tenor voice spans over three octaves, Bob also has an active career as a composer and lyricist. His words and tunes appear on albums by artists such as Alison Krause, as well as his own recent CD, Rushsylvania. He has created musical productions such as Freedom Bound, Black Hats, and Evelyn and the Polka King. He has acted in and directed the latter play at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and City Theatre in Pittsburgh. Bob is currently at work on a play about an African-American pilot who flew in the French Air Force in WWI. Together with Dillon Bustin, Bob worked with students at the Center on the process of transforming historical information into theatrical productions. He also appeared at the Muncie Center for the Arts.

Dillon Bustin
October 5 and 6, 2000
Dillon Bustin is a composer, writer, and performer who currently works as Executive Director of the South Shore Arts Center in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Dillon is perhaps best know as the composer of Tidebook: An Island Rapsody, a three-part musical revue based on the history of the Vineyard from 1850s to 1940s. As visiting artist in the Vineyard schools, Dillon collaborated with students to create two community productions: Sailing Alone, a musical about Joshua Slocum’s solo voyage around the world in the 1890s. and Booming Ben, the Last of the Heath Hens, a musical concerned with the extinction of heath hens on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1930s. Dillon’s books include If You Don’t Outdie Me: The Legacy of Brown County (1983) and The Lotus Dickey Songbook (1996). Dillon and Bob worked with students at the Center on transforming historical information into theatrical productions. He also appeared at the Muncie Center for the Arts.