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The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone Michael Martone

The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone By Michael Martone

The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone by Michael Martone


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Summary

Fictitious biographical snippets that celebrate the sky-written words of early aviation and the life of the man behind them.

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The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone Summary

The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone by Michael Martone

Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize
Finalist for the the Big Other Award for Fiction

The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone is a Midwestern mythology that celebrates facts, fiction, and the impermanence of art. Inspired by the real-life pioneer of early aviation who invented the art of skywriting, the brief stories in this collection by editor Michael Martone follow the adventures of Art Smith and his authorship in the sky. In the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut and Hayao Miyazaki, The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone recreates the wonder of the early flying machines as it reimagines the unwritten stories we tell about the daredevils who flew them.

About Michael Martone

Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he learned at a very early age, about flight. His mother, a high school English teacher, read to him of the adventures of Daedalus and Icarus from the book Mythology written by Edith Hamilton, who was born in Dresden, Germany, but who also grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Martone remembers being taken by his father to Baer Field, the commercial airport and Air National Guard base, to watch the air traffic there. He was blown backward on the observation deck by the prop-wash of the four-engine, aluminum-skinned Lockheed Constellation with its elegant three-tailed rudder turning away from the gates. At the same time, the jungle-camouflaged Phantom F-4s did touch-and-goes on the long runway, the ignition of their after-burners sounding as if the sky was being torn like blue silk. As a child growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Martone heard many stories about Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, and the adventures of this early aviation pioneer. In the air above the city, Martone, as a boy, imagined, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne accomplishing, for the first time, the nearly impossible outside loop and then a barrel-roll back into a loop-to-loop in his fragile cotton canvas and baling wire flying machine he built in his own backyard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, whose sky above was the first sky, anywhere, to be written on, written on by Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, the letters hanging there long enough to be read but then smeared, erased by the high altitude wind, turning into a dissipating front of fogged memories, cloudy recollection.

Michael Martone's recent books are The Moon Over Wapakoneta; Brooding; Winesburg, Indiana; Four for a Quarter; Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fiction from the Flyover; Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, a collection of essays; and Double-wide, his collected early stories. Michael Martone, is a memoir in contributor's notes. Unconventions: Writing on Writing and Rules of Thumb, edited with Susan Neville, are craft books. He is also the author of The Blue Guide to Indiana, published by FC2. The University of Georgia Press published his book of essays, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, winner of the AWP Award for Nonfiction, in 2000. With Robin Hemley, he edited Extreme Fiction. With Lex Williford, he edited The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction and The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Martone is the author of five other books of short fiction including Seeing Eye; Pensees: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle; Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List; Safety Patrol; and Alive and Dead in Indiana. He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Story, Antaeus, North American Review, Benzene, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Third Coast, Shenandoah, Bomb, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction and other magazines.

Martone was born and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He attended Butler University and graduated from Indiana University. He holds an MA from The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University.

Martone has won two Fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His stories have won awards in the Italian Americana fiction contest, the Florida Review Short Story Contest, the Story magazine Short, Short Story Contest, the Margaret Jones Fiction Prize of Black Ice Magazine, and the first World's Best Short, Short Story Contest. His stories and essays have appeared and been cited in the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Stories and The Best American Essays anthologies. In 2013 he received the national Indiana Authors Award, and in 2016, the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to Midwestern Literature.

Michael Martone is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. He has been a faculty member of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 1988. He has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

List of Skywriting

Some Early Ephemera
Panama
Hell
The Ampersand
Benday
A Father's Vision
A Field Guide to the Birds of Indiana
Mom
Further Writing
When
The Tragic Elopement
If
The Unknown
String
WOWO
Scale
Word Cross
Instructions in War Time
Iced Air
Influenza
Still
Mayday, Mayday, Mayday
O
Thin
Birth
Nothing
Roses
The Moon
Lucky
The Falling Leaf
Gas City
Rest
The Border
A B C
Metro Day
Terra Haute
Ohio
French Lick
Good Night

Additional information

CIN195077421XG
9781950774210
195077421X
The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone by Michael Martone
Used - Good
Paperback
BOA Editions, Limited
20201029
224
Winner of Indiana Author's Award 2013 (United States) Winner of Mark Twain Award 2016 (United States) Runner-up for BOA Short Fiction Prize 2019 (United States) Short-listed for Big Other Award for Fiction 2020 (United States)
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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