Collecting area: Prose writing

The printed works are temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request printed materials from this collection.

A significant African American poet of the generation of the 1960s, Dudley Randall was an even more significant publisher of emerging African American poets and writers. Publishing works by important writers from Gwendolyn Brooks to Haki Madhubuti, Alice Walker, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, his Broadside Press in Detroit became an important contributor to the Black Arts Movement.
The Broadside Press Collection includes approximately 200 titles published by Randall’s press during its first decade of operation, the period of its most profound cultural influence. The printed works are divided into five series, Broadside poets (including chapbooks, books of poetry, and posters), anthologies, children’s books, the Broadside Critics Series (works of literary criticism by African American authors), and the Broadsides Series. . The collection also includes a selection of items used in promoting Broadside Press publications, including a broken run of the irregularly published Broadside News, press releases, catalogs, and fliers and advertising cards.

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Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Beloved for her essays on New England life and for a long-running column in Yankee Magazine, Edie Clark was born in northern New Jersey in 1948 and raised near Morristown. A graduate of Beaver College, Clark cut short a career as editor for the Chilton Company in 1973 when she and her husband, inspired by Scott Nearing, moved to Vermont to pursue a simpler, more self-sufficient life. Drawing on the skills honed at Chilton, Clark developed a successful editorial business, which led her to approach Yankee Magazine in 1978 with the idea of writing an article on Abby Rockefeller and composting toilets, beginning an association that would last nearly twenty years. In 1990, Clark began writing a regular column on country life for Yankee, and in the years since, she has written dozens of essays and seven books, including The place he made (2008), a memoir about her second husband’s struggle with cancer; States of grace (2010), containing essays on “real Yankees;” and What there was not to tell (2013), an account of Clark’s search to uncover her parents’ experiences during the Second World War. Following a lengthy period of ill health, Clark retired from writing in 2017.

The record of a popular writer known for her depictions of contemporary New England, the Edie Clark Papers contain drafts and printed copies of nearly all of Clark’s work. An assiduous researcher, she gathered background materials on topics ranging from Lyme disease to the New England-Canadian border region to psychics and Spiritualists, and she corresponded or conducted interviews with dozens of people who featured in her work, including the author Carolyn Chute (author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine) and her husband Michael, then leaders in the so-called Second Maine Militia. Even more voluminous are some remarkable Clark family materials, including dozens of essays and letters by Clark’s grandmother Eleanor Sterling Clark and over 2,000 letters from her parents. Luther and Dorothy Clark, written during the Second World War while they were serving in the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps, respectively. These letters formed the basis for Clark’s remarkable book, What there was not to tell.

In taut and haunting prose, Andrew Coburn left a memorable impression as both novelist and journalist. Born in Exeter, N.H., on May 1, 1932, Coburn became serious about writing while fulfilling his military duty in Germany and earning a degree in English at Suffolk University. After landing a position with the local newspaper, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, he put his talents to good use. Building his career as a journalist covering organized crime by day, he managed to spend nearly every night writing fiction until dawn. His successes on the beat earned him steady promotions all the way to city editor, and he eventually founded two newspapers of his own, though fiction would be his future. Winning a Eugene Saxton Fellowship in 1965, Coburn drew upon his experiences on the streets of Lawrence to publish his first novel, The Trespassers, in 1974, followed by The Babysitter in 1979, and eventually eleven other novels, a novella, and a host of short stories and essays. A master of language and dialogue grounded in a strong sense of place, Coburn won both wide readership and praise from other writers. His work has garnered nominations for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Pushcart Prize and has been translated into 14 languages. Three of his novels have been made into films in France. He was married to Bernadine Casey Coburn, a former journalist and public relations expert, with whom he had one son and four daughters.

The Coburn Papers contain working drafts and page proofs of Andrew Coburn’s novels and short stories, along with selected correspondence, and dozens of journals, scrapbooks, and notebooks used in his fiction. In many cases, the completeness of the collection makes it possible to follow a work from its earliest inception, often recorded as a sketch (literal or in prose), through to its final iteration.

In 1923, Katherine Frazier established the Playhouse-in-the-Hills as a venue for theatrical performances in the small Berkshire County town of Cummington, Mass. Frazier’s vision, however, soon led her to expand the project into the Cummington School of the Arts (later the Cummington Community of the Arts), which she envisioned as “an environment congenial to creative activity.” Over its seventy years of operation, the School emphasized creative collaboration across the fine arts, offering not only performances, but summer residencies and six-week courses where writers, artists, performers, and musicians could study and practice under the guidance of visiting artists. Among its noted alumni were luminaries such as Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Diane Arbus, Marianne Moore, and Archibald Macleish, and the school was a starting point for Harry Duncan’s renowned Cummington Press. The increasing financial challenges facing not-for-profit organizations led a cessation of operations in about 1993.

The records of the Cummington School of the Arts offer a cross-sectional view of the School across its years of operation. In addition to a very small selection of personal material from Katherine Frazier, the collection includes valuable correspondence and ephemera relating to the school’s philosophy and founding, and nearly a third of the collection consists of records of students, often including their applications, comments on the work accomplished in Cummington, and occasionally, copies of work produced. The balance of the collection consists of many of the school’s publications, administrative materials (including curricula and planning documents), and financial and fundraising materials.

Mary Curran Doyle and dog

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1917 and a graduate of Massachusetts State College, Mary Doyle Curran was an author, editor, and professor, who published her only novel, The Parish and the Hill, in 1948. Curran taught English and Irish Literature at Wellesley College, Queens College, and UMass Boston before retiring; she died in 1981.

The collection includes unpublished drafts of novels and short stories; photographs; correspondence from family and friends; publishers and literary associates such as Saul Bellow and Josephine Herbst. The Parish and the Hill, Curran’s only published novel, is today considered a classic among Irish American literature.

Famous Long Ago launched the literary career of Raymond Mungo with a splash, but even before the book had reached the shelves, he turned to his next project. In October 1969, Mungo began planning for a memoir of his life at the Packer Corners commune. Soon entitled Total Loss Farm, the book would become a classic in the literature of the 1960s counterculture. Signing a contract in November with E.P. Dutton, he worked with a young and sympathetic editor, Susan Stern (later Susan Dalsimer).

This small, but rich collection consists of a series of letters between Raymond Mungo and his editor at E.P. Dutton, Susan Stern, regarding his ideas on writing and life. Beginning in October 1969 with editorial commentary on Famous Long Ago and Mungo’s additions, the Dalsimer Papers offer insight into the development of Total Loss Farm from concept to printed page.

Acclaimed writer, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and educator, Zelma (Zee) Inez Edgell was born in Belize City, Belize in 1940. Zee Edgell holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) and a Master’s in Liberal Studies from Kent State University. Edgell has published four novels and several short stories throughout her illustrious career. Her breakout novel, Beka Lamb, published in 1982, was the first book to be released in a newly independent Belize (formerly British Honduras) and would gain international notoriety going on to win the Fawcett Society Book Prize. Before becoming a celebrated novelist Edgell spent her early years working as a journalist, first for Jamaica’s The Daily Gleaner and then as founding editor of the Belize-based newspaper The Reporter. Edgell also served as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau, a position she held under two different administrations. As an educator, Edgell taught for many years at Belizes’ St. Catherine Academy, an all-girls catholic school she attended as a youth. She lectured at the University College of Belize as well. Edgell would spend the remainder of her teaching career as a tenured professor in the English department at Ohio’s Kent State University beginning in 1992. While at Kent State, Edgell taught courses in creative writing, fiction writing, and post-colonial literature. In 2009, Edgell received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of West Indies. That same year she retired from teaching and moved with her husband to St. Louis to be closer to her children and grandchildren until she died in 2020.

The Zee Edgell Papers features not only a deeper look into the author’s professional life but her personal life as well. The collection includes personal letters, postcards, and notes between Edgell and her loved ones; professional correspondence between and her publisher; drafts of her short stories and book chapters; newspaper articles; letters from her global travels with husband Alvin Edgell during his tenure with CARE; documents related to her time serving as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau; and literature on Belizean history. There are also materials related to her time as a faculty member in Kent State’s English Department.

A voice of the radical working class during the Great Depression, Jack Conroy was the son of a union organizer, born and raised in the mining camps near Moberly, Mo. His novels The Disinherited (1933) and A World to Win (1935) were among the best known works of “proletarian” American fiction to appear in the 1930s.

The Conroy Collection includes a series of 24 letters from Jack Conroy to Lewis Fried, a professor of English at Kent State University and UMass PhD, along with a small number of letters by associates of Conroy, and a selection of publications associated with or including work by him. Of particular interest are Fried’s oral history interviews with Conroy (1971) and Sally Goodman (1978).

The sociologist and writer Allan Johnson dedicated his career to exploring the impact of power and privilege in the U.S. and the overarching system of patriarchy. A serious poet and writer by the time he entered Dartmouth College, Johnson pursued studies in sociology, completing his dissertation on women’s roles in Mexico City at the University of Michigan in 1972. He joined the sociology faculty at Wesleyan University, but left academia to write. He later taught at Hartford College for Women, where he wrote a series of important works, including Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (2005), The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise (1997), and Human arrangements (1986), all of which earned several new editions. His first novel, The First Thing and the Last appeared in 2010, followed by Nothing Left to Lose (2011), and a memoir, Not From Here (2011). Johnson also developed a practice as a corporate trainer and public speaker around issues of race, diversity, and women’s studies. He died at home in Canton, Conn., on December 24, 2017, of metastatic lymphoma. He was 71.

A writer from an early age, Allan Johnson left a collection reflecting his notable range and depth. The collection includes significant contributions to sociology and the study of race, class, and gender, as well published and unpublished creative work, ranging from poetry from his college years to his memoirs and novels.

An artist, writer, and activist for the disabled, Paul S. Kahn was born on Nov. 6, 1945, into a second-generation family of Jewish immigrants in Auburndale, Mass. Early in life, Kahn rebelled against the perceived “powerlessness” of the neuromuscular disorder with which he was born, pursuing an artistic, academic, and activist life. While studying drawing, painting, and sculpture at Boston University and earning a MA in counseling at Northeastern (1982), Kahn became an activist in the independent living movement and a pioneer in advocating for personal care assistance. Living independently from 1979, he worked as staff therapist at the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, as leader of a support group for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and as a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Advisory Commission on Disability Policy. In 1980, Kahn met Ruth Stern, who would become his frequent collaborator and wife of 21 years. As Kahn’s physical condition weakened after 1987 and he became dependent upon a ventilator, his creative focus shifted increasingly from art to writing and editing. The last two decades of his life were remarkably productive, resulting in over twenty plays and dozens of published essays and poems, and he was the long-time editor of the newsletter Disability Issues. Kahn died on Jan. 1, 2010.

Paul Kahn’s papers are a reflection of the intensely creative life of a committed activist. The collection centers on Kahn’s literary work, including manuscripts of his plays, essays, and poetry, but it includes numerous examples of his artwork and a number of home movies and tape recordings from his childhood.