Art talk on video

... from the Maryland State Arts Council.

'Show' places in six-way tie behind Louise Erdrich

The Greatest Show was recently named one of six finalists for the Paterson Prize for Fiction, an award won this year by Louise Erdrich and her novel, The Round House. The Round House also won the National Book Award, proving once again that Erdrich is, well, phenomenal. For years I've been teaching her first book, Love Medicine, to students at Towson University, and every time the book astonishes me in fresh ways. I'll be glad to open The Round House, too.

The other finalists for the Paterson Prize include
• All That I Am (HarperCollins) by Anna Funder
• Girlchild (FSG) by Tupelo Hassman
• The Collective (W.W. Norton) by Don Lee
• The Lower River (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Paul Theroux
• Fat Girl, Terrestrial (University of Alabama Press) by Kellie Wells.

The Paterson Prize is awarded by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey.

Thank God we are always surprised

The Maryland State Arts Council asked me to give a keynote talk for its reception honoring artists who'd received grants from the agency this year. They didn't tell me I'd have to follow Blessed Sheriff, a 15-year-old poetry-reciting phenom.


But follow Blessed I did, and true to my name, (which, you'll recall is Downs as in downer), I chose to meditate on what it means to celebrate art and artists in a time of Boston Marathon bombings and Sandy Hook shootings. Baltimore Fishbowl, an energetic news site that I love to read, published my remarks.

If you have only time for one, choose Blessed. She's something.

Words and Music!

The Greatest Show's next appearance is on Thursday, May 2, at VisArts in Rockville, MD. HearArts is a series that puts writers and musicians in the same room for an evening's entertainment. Here's the link for more information.

A review from Hartford by way of Colorado

The Colorado Review's fall issue includes a three-page review of The Greatest Show. The writer,  Jennifer Wisner Kelly, has family history in Hartford, and she begins by telling about her grandmother's decision that July 6, 1944 was too hot a day to take her son--Jennifer's father--to the circus. This moment has become family lore, Kelly writes, known as The Near Miss. "How might everyone's lives have shifted," she writes, "if Grandma had gone to the circus?"

I'm grateful that someone with Hartford roots reviewed the book. I think it's the first time that's happened. And I'm glad that Jennifer Wisner Kelly enjoyed the read. She ends...

Downs's stories are invariably rich and mature. There is nothing rushed here. He savors his characters, descriptions, and details. He effortlessly inhabits the lives, over six decades, of Hartford's citizens--it's immigrants; its wealthy; its men, women, and children--and drills deep inside his character's thought processes, self-analyses, and epiphanies. Downs resists easy answers to complex human questions, but gives enough resolution in each story to satisfy. The Greatest Show gorgeously captures the sweep of ordinary lives made remarkable by a tragic twist of fate.