James Forman, Yale law professor, and Nancy MacLean, history professor at Duke University, are the 2018 recipients of the Lillian Smith Book Awards.

The Southern Regional Council established the Lillian Smith award after Smith's 1966 death. Internationally acclaimed as author of the controversial novel, Strange Fruit (1944), Lillian Smith was the most outspoken of white, mid-20th century Southern writers on issues of social and racial injustice. Today the University of Georgia, the Georgia Center for the Book and Piedmont College join the SRC in presenting the awards. http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/lilliansmith/index.html

“Poppies: Women, War, Peace” will open at the Hargrett Gallery of the University of Georgia Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries June 18.

Part of the observance to mark the centennial end of the First World War, the exhibit also pays homage to Moïna Belle Michael, originally from Monroe, who was instrumental in ensuring the red poppy flower became a symbol to remember the victims and veterans of war. Michael was inspired in her quest by the war poem ‘In Flanders Field’ written by Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae in 1915.

Wayne Flynt, professor emeritus in the department of history at Auburn University, is the author of eleven books, and one of the most recognized and honored scholars of Southern history, politics, and religion. His latest, published in 2017, is Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship with Harper Lee. He has also published his memoir Keeping the Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, in which he writes about his experiences in the Civil Rights movement.

Friday evening, Irish poet Paul Muldoon will give a free public reading and musical performance at the 40 Watt Club to close the year-long 30th anniversary celebration of the UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Earlier in the day, the Hargrett Library will host a display of books of poetry from its private press collection including Encheiresin Naturae, an edition of Paul Muldoon’s crown of sonnets written to accompany the wood engravings by Barry Moser.

Muldoon, who has been called “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War” by The Times Literary Supplement, will drop in to the event around 2 p.m. He has published more than 30 collections of poetry and has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004.

This one-day exhibit June 2 will highlight some of the more fragile and rare items held by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Some of the items include: Babylonian clay tablets, 17th-century Persian manuscript of the Mathnawi, Reed Creek collection of Dahlonega gold coins, original Constitution of the Confederate States of America, list of Georgia settlers recorded by the Trustees for Establishing the Colony, and a 1489 edition of St. Augustine's De civitate dei.

The materials will be in the Hargrett Galleries 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Also, enjoy a “sneak-peek” of the upcoming exhibitions War of Words a look at propaganda posters from the First World War.

Parking is available in the Hull Street Deck.

Is America better served by a free trade agenda or protectionist measures? Author C. Donald Johnson will examine the history of trade politics, the focus of his new book from Oxford University Press, in a lecture on Tuesday, April 17 at 4 p.m. in the large event space of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.

Can the American Congress be ethical in an age of intense partisan warfare? Princeton University professor and CNN political analyst Julian E. Zelizer will take up the topic of ethics in Congress on Thursday, April 5 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.

Rodney Mills and Michele Caplinger share observations of the changing face of the Georgia Music scene with the director of the UGA Music Business Program, David Barbe.

The April 12 program will begin at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of the Russell Special Collections Libraries, followed by a small reception with a display of artifacts from the Georgia Music Hall of Fame collection.

Mills served as chief engineer at Lefevre Sound Studios, engineered and produced at Atlanta’s Studio One before forming his own recording company. He has earned over 50 gold and platinum records for engineering, producing, and mastering and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

What do the U.S. Navy, the National School Lunch Program, and the former Soviet Union have in common? Why, peanuts of course!

Local chefs will once again take on the School Lunch Challenge March 24, creating tasty dishes that meet USDA requirements for the National School Lunch Program. Attendees will have a chance to sample the creations at the cooking competition from 12-1:30 p.m. in the cafeteria of Whitehead Road Elementary School.