Cleveland connections

Jun 8, 2008

On The Splendid Table last week (May 31, 2008 show), Raleigh writer and friend Scott Huler reported from Cleveland about the story behind the feuding Stadium Mustard and Ballpark Mustard.

My good friend Richard Gildenmeister is to be honored June 26th by the Cleveland Arts Prize for his 55+ years of selling books and promoting writers in Northern Ohio. One of the writers he’s promoted is also being honored that night— Michael Ruhlman (who I brought to Durham last fall for the BlogTogether food blogging dinner) and chef Michael Symon will share an award.

I checked in with Dennis Dooley, my editor-mentor at Northern Ohio Live, about the Arts Prize (I’d nominated Richard six years ago, when Dennis was a member of the jury), and learned that he’s looking forward to retiring as a writer-for-hire so he can get to some of his own writing projects. Dennis co-edited a book about Superman, Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend. Dennis taught me a valuable lesson about writing and editing one afternoon at Live when we sat down to rewrite a feature article that just wasn’t ready for print.

Brian K. Vaughan, another Live connection (he was an intern with me one summer), is rocketing to well-deserved fame and glory — he’s writing the television show Lost these days, and just sold a screenplay that he’ll help produce into a film about a modern-day knights of the roundtable.

Anton Zuiker ☄