With the November opening of the new exhibition “The Civil War in America” only a month away, media outlets picked up on the announcement of a new blog featuring historical voices from the war.
The Associated Press wrote an announcement that many outlets ran with, including The Washington Post, WTOP, military.com and various broadcast affiliates of CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox. Also spotlighting the blog with individual coverage was the Daily Kos blog and the Washington Times, which took an in-depth look at one of the voices, Elizabeth Keckley.
“She is finally being remembered at the Library of Congress Civil War exposition next month and restored to her historical place in the Lincoln saga,” wrote Martha M. Boltz.
Continuing to make the headlines in October was news about Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and the 12th annual National Book Festival.
Trethewey gave her inaugural reading to kick off the Library’s literary season on Sept. 13 and was featured speaker at the National Book Festival, who actually spoke for the first time at the festival in 2004.
Rosalind Bentley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with Trethewey, detailing her personal journey as a poet.
“[James] Billington believes the time for this kind of poet is right now,” she wrote of Trethewey’s laureateship. “She is only 46 and in the prime of her artistic life. This will signal that the Library is looking forward.”
In an interview with Roll Call, Trethewey told reporter Rebecca Baird-Remba, “I’m always interested in investigating my relationship with the past. I write to make sense of this history we’ve been given, and I write so that we can be a nation that is reckoning with the past, instead of one that has amnesia about it.”
Among countless articles far and wide on the book festival — from The Clarion Ledger to Asian Fortune News — was this gem from philly.com by author Lisa Scottoline, who writes a regular column for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “Chick Wit.”
“There can be no greater pleasure, as a parent, than watching your child come fully into her own, taking all of her God-given talents and putting them to their most perfect use,” she said of watching her daughter, author Francesca Serritella, giving her presentation. “That feeling? It’s Mom Heaven.”