What’s New

Ghost Tours, Winter Chills Edition!

FEB. 24 & 25: Our Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours return, Winter Chills Edition. Reserve early to get a spot on these limited and popular tours -- they're routinely sold out in advance.

Reports of ghostly apparitions, mysterious bangs, cigar smoke and other unexplained phenomena, featured on Syfy's Ghost Hunters, have led us to reprise these popular tours. Hear these creepy tales -- and learn about Mark Twain's own interest in the supernatural. Spiritualism and ghostly tales were a big part of the Gilded Age, an age of uncertainty, rampant materialism and credulity much like ours. Tour times are 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m.; and 9:00 p.m. Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours are by reservation only, and sell out quickly. Call early: 860-280-3130. Tickets are $20 for adults 17 and up; $16 for members of The Mark Twain House & Museum; and $13 for children 16 and under. Tours are not recommended for children under 10.

Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours will also be held March 30 and April 27 and 28.

The tours are tsponsored by Tsunami Tsolutions.

A Spring for Writers

A Class in Memoir. A Writers' Weekend. Our programs are blossoming this spring with a new events added to the ever-popular March-April memoir class.

The Writers' Weekend runs April 20-21 and will be keynoted by the legendary editor of Harper's magazine, Lewis Lapham, an essayist whose work has been compared to Twain's -- he has provided incisive commentary on the passing scene for many decades and fostered the work of many of America's best-read writers.

Leading up to the weekend will be three important literary events: an appearance by longtime columnist and author Denis Horgan, celebrating the stories that are in us all, innovative ways of publishing, and his own new short story collection (Wednesday, February 8, 5:00 p.m.); an afternoon writing workshop with novelist Susan Schoenberger on "Getting Started" and "The Big Idea" (Saturday, March 3, at 1:00 p.m.); and of course, the acclaimed memoir class taught by longtime editors, authors and teachers Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine (starts March 7, registration deadline February 15).

Watch this space for updates and details, or call Steve Courtney at 860-247-0998, Ext, 243, for details.

Closed Tuesdays through March

We're on our winter schedule -- open Wednesday-Monday, the Murasaki Cafe open Thursday-Saturday! Come and enjoy the warmth of Mark Twain's home in winter.

Mark Twain & Race Exhibit Opens

FEB. 25: Our new exhibit on Twain's racial attitudes, 'A Sound Heart & a Deformed Conscience: The Evolution of Mark Twain's Attitudes Toward African Amercians,' opens to the public.

Mark Twain's attitudes toward African Americans went through a 180-degree turn during his lifetime -- from a childhood in Missouri, where slavery was accepted as God's law, to a celebrity old age during which he railed against lynching and racial bias.

His masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, combines an adventure tale with a searing look at the racial elements of American society.

The exhibit's title comes from Twain's own description of Huck's attributes in a notebook entry he wrote while working on the book: Huck had a sound heart, but it was only his conscience that was deformed -- the "conscience" imposed by a corrupt, slaveholding society.

Curated by Mark Twain House & Museum Chief Curator Patti Philippon, it includes original documents and books, along with artifacts reflecting the evolving phases of Twain's attitudes.

Among items on display will be an original letter from Frederick Douglass to Twain's abolitionist mother-in-law (Olivia Clemens' parents' attitudes deeply influenced Twain in his change of heart); text relating to Twain's brief service in a state militia regiment at the start of the Civil War; a painting by Charles Ethan Porter, an African American artist Twain helped to study in Paris; and an exploration of the work of Twain illustrator E.W. Kemble who, while he did the first-edition illustrations for Huckleberry Finn, also partook of the conventional racism of his time in a series of "coon" illustrations.

This exhibit is a companion to the 'Hateful Things' exhibit opening March 29 under the heading 'Race, Rage and Redemption.'

Produced in cooperation with the Greater New England Alliance of Black School Educators.

"Race, Rage and Redemption" is supported by Aetna, Inc.; the City of Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program, Pedro Segarra, Mayor; The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation; the George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., and Alan S. Parker, Co-Trustees; Francisco L. Borges; and Reid & Riege, P.C.

Admission to the exhibit, along with others in the Museum Center and our Ken Burns film, is free along with a Mark Twain House tour, or $5 for a museum-only ticket.

UPDATED: Wedding Event Moved to March 4th

Due to possible weather concerns, we've rescheduled the Mark Twain Wedding event to Sunday, March 4th-- that way you can stay warm and snuggly all weekend long! For more information please visit www.ctbridalevent.com.

A Class in Memoir

Our memoir class with Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine, designed for novices and veterans alike, is going into its third year.

Bloom and Levine will offer A Class in Memoir starting Wednesday, March 7, through Wednesday, April 25. There is a fee of $600 for the eight-week course. The registration deadline is Wednesday, February 15.

The class runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Mark Twain Museum Center, 351 Farmington Avenue, Hartford. One session will be held in Mark Twain's library in the historic house.

To participate, a serious interest in the memoir form is the only requirement; beginners are welcome. To register, please send a brief letter or email of interest to Steve Courtney at steve.courtney@marktwainhouse.org or call 860-247-0998, Ext. 243.

A Class in Memoir offers writing instruction and workshops at the home of one of the American masters of the craft. The class will include intensive, hands-on work on the craft, with the goal of producing a short work by the end of the session to be published on the Writing at the Mark Twain House Blog. It will explore such aspects of the memoir craft as scene-setting, dialogue, character development and narrative.

It's a particularly appropriate genre for the home of Mark Twain, whose Autobiography, released recently after a century under wraps, became a surprise bestseller.

Twain's ideas about memoir reflect Bloom's and Levine's: "An autobiography that leaves out the little things and enumerates only the big ones is no proper picture of the man's life at all," Twain wrote; "his life consists of his feelings and his interests, with here and there an incident apparently big or little to hang the feelings on."

Compare reviewer Carolyn Alvfin's comments on Bloom's style: "Seasoned editor Lary Bloom knows what any good screenwriter knows -- people love stories. Stories that include honest detail, true emotion, conflict, a point of view, and that show ordinary people's struggles and journeys. ...He encourages journalists and non-fiction writers to take the time to explore the human drama behind the obvious bullet points of their works-in-progress."

Lary Bloom is a legendary figure in the Connecticut literary world, known nationally as a pioneer of the New Journalism.

For 20 years, he edited Northeast magazine at The Hartford Courant, fostering a new kind of work that used the tools of fiction to tell the stories of ordinary people -- while maintaining strict truthtelling. He nurtured writers from Wally Lamb to Cindy Brown Austin (both of whom first pubished in Northeast), and turned the magazine into a Connecticut literary incubator for nurturing creativity of all types. His much-read weekly column -- unusual and unpredictable takes on unsung Connecticut characters and their achievements -- today find a home in the pages of Connecticut magazine.

During his two decades at Northeast he wrote essay collections and The Writer Within, which provides lessons in nonfiction writing learned from his years as a Sunday magazine editor. He produced the Twain's World series, essays on Hartford's cultural heritage that were collected in a book of that name. But many achievements took the magazine outside its traditional boundaries of its cover.

He was a founder of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which featured many of America's greatest poets, including Stanley Kunitz, Sharon Olds, James Merrill and Lucille Clifton; Art For All, a public art project featuring work by Katharine Hepburn, Dave Brubeck, and many visual artists; and Mark Twain Days, a citywide celebration that featured the music of Ray Charles and the Kingston Trio, and the comedy of the Smothers Brothers, as well as activities such as jousts and Gilded Age baseball games. Another major public project was Connecticut Voices, during which 50 distinguished state authors (including Arthur Miller, William Styron, and Annie Dillard) were profiled, and then read from their books on public radio.

Since leaving Northeast, he has collaborated with former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge on his controversial memoir, The Test of Our Times, and wrote, with Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Letters from Nuremberg. The teaching he did as an editor has continued in tandem with Levine: classes at The Mark Twain House & Museum, at the Florence Griswold Museum, and the renowned literary bookstore R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut. He is on the faculty of Fairfield University's MFA writing program.

Suzanne Levine, a noted poet, may seem an odd choice for a teacher of memoir, but a closer look -- particularly at her acclaimed Haberdasher's Daughter, a work of "razor-sharp observations, crystal-clear imagery and quietly startling observations," in the words of Wally Lamb. The book makes clear the connections between the worlds of poetry and memoir, There is the matter of defining one's life through memory, which the reminiscent style of poetry she excels in provides generously. And there is the ability to make music with words, which can be applied to any kind of prose, when in the hands of a master. Haberdasher's Daughter was published by Antrim House Books in 2010 and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, Passages North, Interpoesia, Permafrost Quiddity International Literary Journal, Southern California Review, The Chaffin Journal, Stand Magazine UK and Whiskey Island Magazine among others. A Pushcart nominee, she was a finalist in the 2009 Midnight Sun Chapbook Competition and a contributor to the anthology Forty Fathers (2009). She holds an MFA from Vermont College.