The Little Patuxent Review is honored to announce that last week our publisher emeritus, Mike Clark, received the Howie Award as an Outstanding Community Supporter of the Arts. Clark received this recognition at the Howard County Arts Council’s 21st annual Celebration of the Arts in Howard County. Mike’s speech is available in the video above, and a transcript is provided below the jump.
Much of Mike’s work life was spent reporting the news for the Baltimore Sun. His focus was on Howard and Anne Arundel counties.
After retiring, he helped start a phone referral service for our neighbors in need along with a series of outreach ministries for Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia known as Christ Church Link. He began a holiday gift project to provide presents to low income families and a program offering supportive services to Hispanic immigrants. In addition, he initiated a county-wide backpack and school supply program known as Prepare for Success.
He is a past recipient of the Audrey Robbins Humanitarian Volunteer of the Year award and the Casey and Pebble Willis Making a Difference award.
About ten years ago Mike joined with others to revive Little Patuxent Review, a journal that was founded in the 1970’s by Columbia, Maryland poets, Ralph and Margot Treitel. Mike served as publisher for its first ten years. The bi-annual launch of the notable journal draws up to a hundred or so literary enthusiasts to Oliver’s Carriage House for its public readings every January and June. The journal also has joined with the Columbia Art Center for the past ten years to hold monthly salon events drawing upon presentations by musicians, artists, poets, fiction writers and even a Nobel Prize astronomer talking about the Big Bang.
Mike accepts the Howie Supporter of Community Arts Award for all who appreciate the wonder of artistic creativity and the power of the written word in our daily lives.
Thank you for all your service, Mike!
Howie Speech- Michael J. Clark
I accept the Howie Award for all of us who have engaged in a labor of love to produce the Little Patuxent Review over the past decade.
What matters to us is having you as readers! We strive to engage you in the human drama we conjure up in words and art. We value the creative imagination. Is it any wonder why we do this work?
Little Patuxent Review’s editor, Steven Leyva, a professor at the University of Baltimore and published poet, touched on this point of view in a recent editor’s note.
He observed that “the editors, volunteers and board members approach the act of publishing creative work as an act of service…. We believe that the arts matter, and we are humbled and honored to do our part in making that message resound.”
Out of these relationships come partnerships and shared visions, such as one of founding members, Barbara Lawson, linking us to the Kittamaqundi Community for use of their magical space at Oliver’s Carriage House. There we hold our literary readings, when we launch our new issues twice a year.
And, our new publisher and writer of memoirs, Desiree Magney, hosts yearly public literary readings at the Writers Center in Bethesda.
Also, out of that same commitment to the arts came our partnership with the Columbia Art Center, where at a series of public salons we hear from artists, writers, musicians and even explorers of our universe.
The Little Patuxent Review dates back to the Seventies, owing its beginnings to Columbia residents—the late Ralph and Margot Treitel. After a lengthy lapse, the Little Patuxent Review honoring their memory took wing again under new leadership.
I express my gratitude to the Howard County Arts Council for its ongoing support of the journal and today’s Howie Award recognition. We are fortunate to produce our literary and art review in Howard County and Maryland, where support for the arts is celebrated.
I hope the receipt of the Howie Community Arts award will get more readers to see what we generate between the covers of the Little Patuxent Review. Our art, essays, memoirs, short story fiction, interviews with literary figures, nonfiction and poetry are worth discovering.
Little Patuxent Review 