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NEW WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR SANDRA SEATON

Sandra Cecelia Seaton is an American playwright and librettist. She received the Mark Twain Award from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature in 2012.

Biography
Seaton was born in Columbia, Tennessee to Albert Browne, Jr. and Hattye Evans. Her parents were divorced two years later; her mother remarried and moved to Chicago’s West Side shortly after World War II, where Seaton’s sisters community activist Brenda Harris and fiction writer Pamela Harris still live. Her sister Paula Harris Wenner and her family live in California. A relative, Flournoy Miller, starred in and wrote the book for Shuffle Along, the all-Black musical that according to Langston Hughes “gave a scintillating send-off to that Negro vogue in Manhattan” known as the Harlem Renaissance. Flournoy Miller’s daughter, the late Olivette Miller, wife of tap dancer Bunny Briggs, was a jazz harpist whose credits include appearances on the Ed Sullivan television show and the film The Joint is Jumpin’. Seaton’s cousin Jacqueline Hawes was the wife of the late jazz pianist Hampton Hawes. Sandra Seaton graduated from Farragut High School in Chicago and received her B. A. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in Arts and Letters (Creative Writing). At Illinois, she studied with John Frederick Nims, George Scouffas, and Webster Smalley. Returning to school after marriage and four children, she earned an M. A. in creative writing from Michigan State University. Seaton is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Seaton is married to James Seaton, a professor of English at Michigan State University, with whom she has had four children, Ann, James Jr, Amanda and Jeremy.

Career
Seaton taught creative writing and African American literature at Central Michigan University for fifteen years, retiring in 2004 as a full professor. She is the author of ten plays, the libretto for a solo opera, a spoken word piece, and short fiction. Ruby Dee, Adilah Barnes, Kim Staunton, Michele Shay and Linda Gravatt appeared in a 1998 production of her first play, The Bridge Party, at the University of Michigan. The play is anthologized in Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women (1998).

Seaton wrote the libretto for the solo opera From the Diary of Sally Hemings (2001) with music composed by Pulitzer Prize winner William Bolcom. The work was commissioned by mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar, who sang the piece at venues such as the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium, the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Soprano Alyson Cambridge performed From the Diary of Sally Hemings at Carnegie Hall in 2010. From the Diary of Sally Hemings, sung by soprano Alyson Cambridge accompanied by pianist Lydia Brown, is available as a cd from White Pine Music and as a score from Hal Leonard.

Seaton has continued to explore the relationship between Sally Hemings and the third president in two plays, Sally, a solo play, and A Bed Made in Heaven, a multi-character play. Sally premiered in 2003 at the New York State Writers Institute featuring Zabryna Guevara. Seaton’s play The Will, the story of an African American family in Tennessee during Reconstruction, was performed in Idlewild, Michigan, the historic black resort, in 2008 as part of an event that focused on the connections between African American culture and classical music. (The character of Patti was inspired by the life of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, the African American opera singer of the Civil War era.)

A Chance Meeting, based on a short story by Cyrus Colter, premiered in 2009 at the Arthur Miller Theatre, University of Michigan, and followed by a Detroit performance with famed Metropolitan Opera tenor George Shirley and Detroit actor Anthony Lucas in the two-person cast. Seaton’s comedy Martha Stewart Slept Here, set in an Indiana trailer park, premiered in 2008 and Estate Sale, a comedy set in a Cleveland suburb, in 2011. Music History, a play about African American college students at the University of Illinois, SNCC, and the struggle for civil rights, was the focus of a 2010 symposium at Michigan State University on the ability of drama to illuminate issues of racial and social justice.

Design Writer Seaton is the author of “Betty Price and George Nelson, Spreading the News about Modern Design,” which appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of Modernism magazine. Her interview with Betty Price is available as an electronic resource at the Michigan State University Library.

Creative Works
Plays
 * The Bridge Party (1989)
 * The Will (1994)
 * Do You Like Philip Roth? (2001)
 * Room and Board (2002)
 * Sally (2003)
 * A Bed Made In Heaven (2005)
 * Martha Stewart Slept Here (2008)
 * A Chance Meeting (2009)
 * Music History (2010)
 * Estate Sale (2011)

Libretto From The Diary of Sally Hemings (2000) CD :White Pine Music. (2010) Score: Hal Leonard. (2011)

Other genres

 * King: A Reflection on the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (2005) Spoken word with choral accompaniment.
 * "Nightsong." [short story] Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review (Winter, 1989)

Honors and Awards

 * Annual Emma Lou Thornbrough Lecture, IUPUI and Butler University, November 2008
 * Inaugural writer-in-residence, Michigan State University College of Law 2010-11
 * Mark Twain Award from The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. 2012.
 * Residencies: Yaddo and Ragdale artist colonies.

Media Links

 * Sandra Seaton: Dramatizing the African American Experience. http://app.thearit.com/civil-rights/sandraseaton.html.
 * “The Bridge Party inspired by local woman's family's stories.” http://news.msu.edu, January 25, 2000. http://news.msu.edu/story/1981/
 * “Playwright and author Sandra Seaton at Kerrytown BookFest: Why I Write.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J1gKVL43L4
 * “Playwright Sandra Seaton with Composer/Pianist William Bolcom April 19, 2002.” Michigan Writers Series, Michigan State University Libraries. http://www.lib.msu.edu/branches/vvl/writers/spring02/041902.jsp
 * MSU Libraries, November, 2010, Dramatization and Context (2010 : Michigan State University. Museum) Title [Ann Folino White and Renee Newman Knake speak at a symposium moderated by Kirk Domer] [electronic resource]. Publisher [20 [Ronald Primeau, Jeffrey C. Wray and Matthew L.M. Fletcher speak at a roundtable discussion moderated by Gariel Dotto] [electro [Aaron Todd Douglas and John Woodford speak at a symposium moderated by Pero Dagbovie] [electronic resource]. Publisher [2010] electronic resource]. Publisher [2010]10] [John Woodford, Sandra Seaton, Rob Roznowski, John Lepard, Rita Kiki Edozie, and Aaron Todd speak at a roundtable discussion moderated by Gabriel Dotto] [electronic resource]. Publisher [2010] http://magic.lib.msu.edu/search~/X?search=dramatization+and+context&dropdown=Keyword
 * MSU Libraries, Recorded at Schuler Books in Okemos, MI, by the Vincent Voice Library, Oct. 25, 2011 Retailing legend Betty Price talks about her Liebermann's gift store in downtown Lansing, MI, customer services, and collaboration with designer George Nelson] [electronic resource]. http://magic.lib.msu.edu/search~S39?/aPrice%2C+Betty./aprice+betty/-3,-1,0,B/browse
 * Schwartz, Berl. Interview with Sandra Seaton. .”City Pulse Live.” Podcast May 9, 2012. http://www.impact89fm.org/2012/05/10/city-pulse-live-5912/

Publications by Sandra Seaton (creative works)

 * The Bridge Party. Bloomfield, New Jersey: Puck Press, 2004.
 * The Bridge Party. Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. Ed. Judy Stephens and Kathy Perkins. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998. 320-65.
 * Do You Like Philip Roth? Eleven Eleven: Journal of Literature and Art. Issue 7: 21-6. http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/1548243079/eleven-eleven-vol-7-2009.aspx
 * “From the Diary of Sally Hemings.” Michigan Quarterly Review. XL.4: 613-22. [Includes material not in libretto]

Publications by Sandra Seaton (articles and essays)

 * “Betty Price and George Nelson: Spreading the News about Modern Design.” Modernism. 14.3. (Fall 2011): 38-45.
 * “’The Great Big Pahty': My Grandmother and Paul Lawrence Dunbar." Midwestern Miscellany 34 (2006): 85-92.
 * “A Raisin in the Sun: A Study in Afro-American Culture.” Midwestern Miscellany XX (1992): 40-9. http://www.ssml.org/publications/midwest/mm_1992.pdf