For Ohio University visiting instructor Kevin Haworth, it's the little things that make a difference.
Haworth's first book, The Discontinuity of Small Things, is a historical novel that takes place in Nazi-occupied Denmark. It was selected this week as the runner-up for the first Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an award that honors writers whose work focuses on peace and has an enduring literary value. He also won the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by an Emerging Writer in May.
Haworth was inspired to write the novel during graduate school at Arizona State University when he saw photographs of Denmark in the student union. He spent eight years working on the book and traveled to Denmark before publishing the novel in May of 2005.
A lot of books about the (WWII) period focus on big events
big battles or that sort of thing Haworth said. My book really focuses on small things ' the small changes that make life during wartime really difficult.
Haworth will be reading an excerpt from his novel tonight at Writers Harvest, an annual benefit reading sponsored by OU's creative writing program. Haworth is the main organizer of the event, with proceeds going directly to the Second Harvest Foodbank of Southeastern Ohio, he said.
Writers Harvest will include readings from three literary genres. Along with Haworth's reading, Gwen Hart, a graduate student in the English department, will read some of her poems, and Carla Harryman, a visiting writer this quarter from Wayne State University in Detroit, will read a nonfiction piece.
Excerpts from The New Ohio Review, OU's new flagship literary journal, will also be read at the benefit, Haworth said.
For Hart, Writers Harvest is a way to expose students and Athens residents to literature outside of an academic setting.
It's a way to make a bridge between the writing community and the local community she said.
Writers Harvest has donated to Second Harvest Foodbank for 10 years, said Marilyn Sloan, the Foodbank's manager. The Foodbank distributes food to 10 counties in southeast Ohio and serves 1,109 families in Athens County alone.
Writers Harvest usually raises about $650 for the Foodbank, said Sloan. This seemingly small amount of money can bring in a tractor trailer load of food.
Six-hundred fifty dollars may not be very much money
but the huge amount of food makes a huge difference in the lives of ordinary people
she said.
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