Last night the Connecticut Press Club had its 9th annual awards banquet. The awards is my least favorite program because it involves the most work. More important to me, I've never won any awards for writing and I'm inwardly a bitter loser. Nevertheless, I was very excited about this one because for the first time we honored a playwright and we chose Donald Margulies, one of my favorites. We usually do not know in advance how much of a draw our speaker will be or if he or she will even be a good speaker. We chose well on both counts with Donald. For someone who has won so many prizes, including the Pulitzer for Dinner With Friends, he is so gracious, humble and accessible. If I'd won a quarter of the awards he won, my head would be four times wider than my caboose.
Since I've been President of the Connecticut Press Club, we changed the criteria for our Mark Twain Award winners. They had to be more than just distinctive traditional non-fiction print writers. Three years ago we chose Faith Middleton because she was at the forefront of change. She had been editor of Connecticut Magazine for 25 years and then became an author and radio hostess. Of course, she has a website now, as well. She is a much better interviewer than interviewee, but we were proud to have her. At that time, we did not announce the winners before the awards dinner, so we drew only 30 people. Last year, we honored Wally Lamb because his novels probe depths few writers are willing to go. I'd heard him speak at The Poynter Institute's National Writers Workshop several years ago and he was terrific. He did not disappoint us last year. He drew almost 60 people, including those who knew they had won prizes. And he's so nice. We expected almost 70 people to come to the dinner, including the winners and spouses and friends who were honoring them. We were pleasantly surprised that a lot more came to meet Donald. We had 95 people plus Donald, M.C. extraordinaire Randye Kaye, two actresses and the director and his wife who planned a scene from Collected Stories. The restaurant was understaffed and overwhelmed, but it was a nice problem to have. Donald is an excellent professor and he shared with us assignments and advice he gives his students which are applicable to most types of writing. I don't know what we're going to do to top this.
I have to give a lot of credit to Randye, who was the consummate professional. She kindly told us that every event is chaotic. She kept her composure and focus throughout the evening, even when one winner became nasty about everything from not being seated quickly to the food to the service, and another one's name was missed during the awards ceremony. She handled it well. I learned one important lesson for the future: always have an M.C. at such events.
Donald, Randye, Wally and Faith also proved something important: that you don't have to be a divo or diva just because you're successful. They are all class acts.
Posted by Sherry Shameer Cohen, www.metrojournalist.blogspot.com
