Book Editor Karen Long has left The PD to manage the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
This is her last column that appeared on the book page Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Karen started as a young reporter covering police, features, the usual. She is married to Chief Editorial Writer Joe Frolic.
In the fall of 1956, a baby was born in Seattle. Things did not look good.
The parents were young, inexperienced and poor. The infant was sickly. The father was not finished with school; the mother was unhappy to lose her job to tend to an ill child. They had fervently wanted a son.
Still, the trio pulled through. The little girl grew stronger. The father became the first in his family to graduate from college. He read "The Catcher in the Rye" and decided to become a teacher, inspired by Holden Caulfield's notion of standing near a cliff, keeping all the rushing children from falling off.
His wife, meanwhile, fought down her fear and isolation by reading, first a novel then a nonfiction title, one after the other, keeping her interior life nourished. Not surprisingly, the girl grew into a literary bigamist, loving both fiction and factual books.
Eight years ago, I told this story to introduce myself as that girl -- grown and newly named The Plain Dealer's book editor. Today, I retell it to say goodbye, and to put my good fortune into perspective.
When I would complain about, ahem, a messy house after a long newsroom shift, my children were mostly unmoved. My oldest once put his fists on his cheeks, rotated them and said, "Oh boo-hoo, boo-hoo. Your life is so hard. You
read for a living."
Hard not to take his point: writing about books and engaging the marketplace of ideas are bliss. It is now my great happiness to tell you that Joanna Connors, the gifted and droll arts reporter, will take over the books beat. She'll do a splendid job. She and the senior editors will let me pop up occasionally as a freelancer: Later this month, I'll review Lawrence Wright's hotly anticipated book on Scientology, "Going Clear."
My new calling is to manage the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, a venerable Cleveland institution that I am thrilled to serve. Each year, it honors the best books that address racism and diversity -- its past winners amount to a 77-year roll call of giants. Among them are Gwendolyn Brooks, Nadine Gordimer, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all recognized years before the world came to know of them.
I hope to coax more readers to discover these prizes, read the recipients and join the conversations they engender. Please consider this your invitation to the next awards ceremony September 12: updates at anisfield-wolf.org.
In these last sentences of my tenure, allow me to thank those who have made the work possible: Sandi Boyd, who tracks the thousands of volumes we receive; Arts Editor John Kappes, who creates a rich, books-friendly environment; and our unsung copy editors, such as Wendy McManamon, who caught my pre-publication errors and wrote headlines that show she understands some books better than I do.
I should also thank Joe Frolik, who endured many thousands of hours of books propped between him and his wife. He responded by fixing our family's Sunday night dinners while I worked.
Mostly, let me salute all of the readers who formed the Plain Dealer salon -- the local critics who led our discussions, the partakers who wrote emails and comments and left voice messages -- sometimes stinging -- on my phone. I will miss everyone, including the cranks.
Because if someone gave us the gift of literacy, it doesn't matter if our parents were poor or frightened or inexperienced. The written word doesn't care. Thank you for meeting me there.
