Sam Stephenson

A New Appointment

samstephenson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:42:17 +0000

Today I signed papers to be the 2012-13 Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m grateful for the opportunity. It should be fun.

Bull City Summer

samstephenson — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:03:07 +0000

In January we decided to postpone Bull City Summer until 2013. But 2012 isn’t dead. Adam Sobsey and I covered the home stand that opened the Bulls season last week. My two pieces are here and here. Meanwhile, Adam wrote an intriguing piece for Baseball Prospectus comparing baseball pitching to literary writing.

Home dugout stairs, Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Photo by Frank Hunter.

Two Poets

samstephenson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:28:36 +0000

My latest piece for Paris Review Daily posted yesterday. It is about poets Betty Adcock and Claudia Emerson, with an introduction concerning Betty’s late husband, Don.

Spring Training

samstephenson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:01:54 +0000

My writing career began in junior high and high school with sportswriting for the school paper. For the first time since then I’m returning to sports with a piece about Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo. I hope this piece will help spring me back into that genre to some degree. I spent a couple of days this weekend in the spring training camp of the Tampa Bay Rays (the parent club of the AAA Bulls). Here are a couple of photos by Norm Teresi, husband of my first cousin Sandi.

Rays manager, Joe Maddon, and me.

Charlie Montoyo and me, the top of Evan Longoria's head in the foreground.

Japan, A Year Later

samstephenson — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:53:24 +0000

Red Beach, Saipan. March 10, 2011.

We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear tragedy in Japan. I spent a month in Japan and the Pacific islands tracing Gene Smith’s footsteps. I was in Saipan, swimming in the ocean off of Red Beach, an American invasion beach, when a bullhorn let us know there was a tsunami and we were evacuated to the upper floors of the hotel. I made the photograph above on the same beach the night before.

If anybody is interested in a recap, I wrote two pieces for Paris Review Daily about my experiences, “Letter from Japan,” and “Letter from Guam.” I also did an interviewwith my interpreter and research assistant, Momoko Gill (who also did the Japanese research and interpretations for my recent Sonny Clark piece in Tin House), and several other blog entries (here and here), including one about seeing the Chapel Hill band Superchunk in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

View from my hotel room. Minamata, Japan. First week in March, 2011.

Sonny Clark Piece in Tin House Now Online

samstephenson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:10:12 +0000

The kind editors of Tin House have given permission to post this PDF. My experiences working with Executive Editor (and novelist) Michelle Wildgen on this piece and with Lance Cleland on follow-up blog posts were exemplary. I hope to work with them again in the future.

Tin House Blog

samstephenson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:03:53 +0000

Sonny Clark, by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Images. Circa 1960.

Two entries were posted today related to my piece on Sonny Clark in the current issue of Tin House. One is a list of some of my favorite jazz writings and the other is a Clark playlist on Spotify.

Branford Marsalis in Durham

samstephenson — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:32:43 +0000

My latest piece in Paris Review Daily on saxophonist Branford Marsalis, with photographs by Frank Hunter.

A saxophonist's supplies. Photo by Frank Hunter.

Woodrow Street, Wichita: Late Fall 2011

samstephenson — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:48:59 +0000

A report on my recent visit to Gene Smith’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas, with photographs from his childhood home by Kate Joyce.

Little Arkansas River Homage to Jun Morinaga's River, Its Shadow of Shadows

Sonny Clark: A New Piece in Tin House #50

samstephenson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:39:21 +0000

The Cover, Tin House #50, the Beauty issue. Winter '11-'12.

I’ve got a new piece Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy* in the ‘11-’12 Winter issue of Tin House magazine, #50, the “Beauty,” issue. Earlier this year I wrote two pieces about Clark for Paris Review Daily (Pt. One and Two). This piece features new material about the black-owned hotel in Herminie #2, PA where Clark grew up outside Pittsburgh, an interview with a longtime bartender at the Five Spot in NYC, references to the work of August Wilson, A.B. Spellman, and Nat Hentoff, and comments from novelist Haruki Murakami about Clark’s popularity in Japan. I also included an analysis of the Japanese symbols often used to describe Clark’s music. A book on Clark could be down the road.

*My wife Laurie, who grew up just a few miles from Herminie #2, came up with the subtitle for this piece, which Tin House accepted.

Update: The New Yorker’s Richard Brody commented on this Tin House piece in his New Yorker blog today. 11/28/11.