Authors! Profiling Flint ANd Genesee County's Rich Literary Tradition
Our Second Author in This Series of Articles
Flint and Genesee County is famous for a variety of things: cars, coneys, athletes, and music. In fact, the arts also loom large in the area’s legend. But among the arts, writing and writers are often left out of the conversation. That's an almost unforgivable omission, because the art of writing is among the Flint area’s greatest gifts to the humanities.
Indeed, books by Flint authors have covered the broad spectrum of American history and interaction for well over 100 years. But this literary gift isn’t just relegated to Flint-based or birthed authors. Rather, books about Flint and Flint people also factor in to the equation to craft a rich mosaic of expression exemplified by written words. This experience includes a vast palette of genres including the obvious one - books, but also poetry, screenwriting, and music. Some of this has found its audience locally, others have had national appeal, and in other cases international attention. As a result, the work has gained notice for its skill, and diversity of topic and author. by Gary L. Fisher, Vice President, Genesee County Historical Society |
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David Blight: Flint's Pulitzer Prize-winning Son
When you are talking about writing there are a host of measures that you can use to assess quality. Certainly the big three would be book sales, reviews, and awards. When it comes to that third measure, the Pulitzer Prize has to rank at the top of the list, and that is exactly what David Blight achieved with his monumental biography of Frederick Douglass and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for history.
Blight’s book, Prophet of Freedom is perhaps the definitive story of one of America’s most important historical figures. A former slave, activist, writer, speaker, political influencer, he loomed larger in the nation’s conscience before, during, and after the Civil War. He held a unique and influential relationship with President Abraham Lincoln, and his efforts effected great change. Blight has been telling Douglass’s story for years; he’s uniquely qualified to do so. He is currently the Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. In 2013-2014 he was the Professor of American History at Cambridge University in England |