January, 2002

Dear Editor/Producer:

A nationally televised conversation is due to begin on March 31st at 3 PM ET on C-SPAN. Viewers, historians, curators, and novelists will be part of a three month dialogue on the history of our country seen through the works and times of writers as diverse as the Harlem Renaissance Writers to H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, Russell Kirk and more. American Writers II: The 20th Century will start in Harlem and move across the country to St. Paul, MN, Key West, FL, Salinas, CA, Oxford, MS and Dana, IN. Over the course of 15 weeks with more than 30 hours of live programming, C-SPAN's series will explore the events, policies, and the issues of citizenry and character framing the narrative of our nation's history. This series, the fourth of the network's major historical projects, will air live on Sunday afternoons from 3 - 5 pm ET and be reaired on Friday nights starting at 8 PM ET.

Two facts about American Writers II: The 20th Century make it stand apart from anything else done on television. The first is the sheer physical reality of the show: It is live: a weekly, on-location two-hour national discussion about critical works in the American canon and their relationship to the history of their times—as well as our own. Every week C-SPAN staff will, in effect, be building a studio in a new town at one of America's historic sites. Contemporary writers (non-fiction and fiction), biographers, historians and archivists will be brought in as guests; C-SPAN hosts will moderate the conversations between these guests and viewers. The second extraordinary aspect of the series is how it uses the written word in its broadest sense as a way to examine how a country was formed. Critical documents, non-fiction analyses, and literary fiction become the lens through which we see a rich and complex story unfold of how we came to be and who we are now.

In each of the 15 communities where the programs are based, C-SPAN will also work with schools, governments, local cable companies, and historic sites to help recognize the native sons and daughters whose vision of America still resonates today. A website will help viewers to find more information about the writers or the historical sites the series visits, copy the reading list, read the first chapters of the selected works, or in the case of teachers, download curriculum ideas and other material to use in the classroom as the series progresses. In a tie-in to the series, Merriam Webster will be publishing their American Writers Dictionary which highlights C-SPAN's selected authors among its 1600 entries.

Please consider a behind-the-scenes story on the making of this ambitious series and the exploration of our nation's twentieth century writers. We can also arrange interviews with some of our future guests or with executive producer Mark Farkas or C-SPAN Executive VP Susan Swain (whose biographies are included), both of whom have been involved with the series from the start. C-SPAN has conceived of a way to bring viewers inside history, combining the enduring power of the written word with the visual immediacy of television. One of us will call you soon to discuss American Writers II: The 20th Century further.

 Sincerely,

Robin Scullin C-SPAN 202-626-8797

Sally McCartin 860-435-6464

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