Art Matters was announced in April 2013.

In October, Macon Arts Alliance (a Knight Arts grantee) announced the Art Matters Symposium Series, a series of six symposia focused on different artistic fields and criticism of those fields. The second symposium, titled “Writing about Writing” and  announced yesterday, will focus on literary arts and literary criticism. The series is part of Art Matters: Engaging the Community through Embedded Arts Journalists, a partnership with Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism. “Writing about Writing” will be held on November 18 at 5:30 p.m. at the Sidney Lanier Cottage in Macon, Georgia. The event will feature a panel discussion about the role of literature and literary criticism in society, current trends in the field of literary criticism, and how the changing media landscape is affecting critics and writers. The Historic Macon Foundation and Crossroads Writers Conference are co-sponsors of the event.

According to a release, the panelists are:

• Valerie Boyd is the author of the award-winning biography, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She is currently curating and editing the journals of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker. To be published by 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker will be released in 2017. Formerly the arts editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boyd has written about the intersection of race, arts and culture for several national and regional publications. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Paste, Ms., Essence and Atlanta magazine. She is an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she serves as the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence and teaches arts journalism and narrative nonfiction.
• Charles McNair, a native of the Yellowhammer State of Alabama, released his first novel, Land O’ Goshen, to critical acclaim. Land O’ Goshen was a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1994. His long-awaited second novel, Pickett’s Charge, was published in September 2013 from the University of West Alabama’s Livingston Press. McNair currently lives in Atlanta where he writes full-time, combining freelance literary duties with assignments for corporations and businesses, including “Power of Storytelling” workshops. Since 2005, he has served as books editor for Paste magazine and has shared his reviews on Atlanta radio station WMLB 1690 AM. Charles is currently at work on his third novel, The Epicureans.
• Teresa K. Weaver writes a monthly book column for Atlanta magazine and serves as editorial director at Habitat for Humanity International. Formerly the book editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1998-2007), Weaver was elected to the board of the National Book Critics Circle for six years and was a longtime member of the Southern Book Critics Circle. She now serves as a member of the advisory council for the Georgia Center for the Book.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Steve Murray, critic-in-residence with the Art Matters project. “Writing about Writing” is free and open to the public.

Art Matters: Engaging the Community through Embedded Arts Journalists is a one-year initiative designed to engage the community through high-quality arts journalism. A $40,000 National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant and a matching $40,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation support the $80,000 project. The project received one of only four national arts journalism grants funded by the NEA in 2013 and is the first time in seven years that Macon Arts Alliance has been awarded an NEA grant.

To learn more about Art Matters, visit www.maconartsalliance.org/art-matters. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works. Matching funding provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.