James Baldwin,
St. Paul-de-Vence, France, 1986
photo: Nancy Crampton
The present exhibition, WRITERS, is perhaps the finest manifestation to date of the spiritual democracy that MARBL has created for students and citizens of literature in the state, nation, and world. Its selectors include high school Advanced Placement literature students; Emory undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and administrators; library staff; and the organizer of the Decatur Book Festival. They have pulled works by American, African American, English, Irish, Caribbean, and Indian authors; they have drawn upon the Edelstein collection of American poetry, the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch archives, the Michel Fabre archives of African American arts and letters, and the single-author collections of Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Salman Rushdie, and Robert Penn Warren, among others; they have chosen a fascinating cross-section of archival items that have struck their individual imaginations, including manuscripts, typescripts, children’s books, inscribed books and pamphlets, broadsides, posters, fliers, letters, lectures and addresses, photographs, and audio recordings—all part of the primary and secondary matter, the ephemera and the detritus, of distinguished creative lives, preserved in the MARBL domain for communal delight, awe, and use. Welcome to a unique exhibition chosen by all-age lovers of writers and their writings.