Literary star Bill Harris named 2011 Kresge Eminent Artist

By Megan O'Neil on Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 1:15 pm

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The Kresge Foundation crowned renowned local author and educator Bill Harris this year's Kresge Eminent Artist, a distinction that recognizes both an artist’s professional achievement and his contribution to metro Detroit's cultural community. The award and accompanying $50,000 prize honor Harris' output as an author, playwright and poet, and his work encouraging up-and-coming writers as an English professor at Wayne State University and at writing workshops throughout the city.

Harris' numerous plays have had more than 70 productions nationwide, including Stories About the Old Days, starring late jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, and Every Goodbye Ain't Gone, starring Denzel Washington and S. Epatha Merkerson. He’s penned two books of poetry, including Yardbird Suite, Side One: 1920-1940, a "biopoem" about jazz musician Charles "Yardbird" Parker which won the 1997 Naomi Long Magdett Poetry Award.

Harris has often taken a cross-genre approach to the arts, using his literary talents to explore his love of jazz and blues. In his latest book, Birth of a Notion; Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told: A Narrative Account with Entertaining Passages of the State of Minstrelsy & of America & the True Relation Therof, Harris offers a mash-up of prose, poetry, script and screenwriting to explore the cultural roots of contemporary African-American stereotypes.

The 70-year-old artist is currently working on three novels; his latest play, Cool Blues, premieres at New York’s New Federal Theatre in March.

A sampling of Bill Harris from Metro Times:

Arts and culture editor Travis R. Wright’s review of Harris’ Birth of a Notion, or The Half Ain't Never Been Told and interview with the author.

http://www2.metrotimes.com/arts/story.asp?id=15159

An excerpt from Harris’ novel Ashes on the Water:

http://www2.metrotimes.com/arts/story.asp?id=11289

Harris on photographers Lester Sloan,

http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=4949

Roy DeCarava

http://www2.metrotimes.com/arts/review.asp?rid=15855

and Gordon Parks.

http://www2.metrotimes.com/arts/story.asp?id=2278