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current Monday
Report below!
This week's report by Adam Hardin, ULA
Mail Fraud and Academic Awards
The University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series holds a contest each
year open to the public. The winner has their manuscript of poetry published
by the University. The entry fee is twenty dollars. First, the Poetry Series
Editor, Bin Ramke, narrows down the field to the finalists. Then, two judges
each select two winners from the finalists for a total of four winners a year.
In 2002, the two judges happened to be husband and wife, C.D. Wright and
Forrest Gander. Forrest Gander is the Director of the Graduate Program in
Literary Arts at Brown University. C.D. Wright is the Publisher of Lost Roads
Press which is one of three small presses supported by Brown University.
Judges typically serve for two years. Forrest Gander was a Judge for 2001 and
2002; his wife was a judge for 2002 and 2003. In 2003, C.D. Wright chose two
manuscripts. One was The Blaze of Poui by Mark McMorris who just happens
to have both an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Brown University. The second was a
manuscript entitled Vertical Elegies 5 by Sam Truitt, his second book to be
published. Sam has an M.F.A. from Brown University. Sam Truitt’s first book
was Anamorphosis Eisenhower which just happened to be published by Lost
Roads Press in 1998.
Bin Ramke has been the Editor of the University of Georgia Poetry Series from
1984 through the present. Finalists in the contests are chosen by Bin Ramke.
Bin Ramke in 1991 chose to publish C.D. Wright’s String Light through the
University of Georgia Press. In December 1998, Bin Ramke reviewed the
recently published Anamorphosis Eisenhower by Sam Truitt (published by C.
D. Wright) in the Boston Review. On April 15, 2003, the same year in which C.
D. Wright chose the two aforementioned finalists, Bin Ramke and C.D. Wright’s
husband, Forrest Gander gave a joint seminar and reading on Language
Erotics for the Lannan Poetry series sponsored by Georgetown University.
I have spoken with an assistant district attorney, and this constitutes mail
fraud. The winner, Sam Truitt, and the judge, C.D. Wright, had a prior and on-
going business relationship as author and publisher. The University of Georgia
Press under the leadership of Bin Ramke is liable because it solicited twenty
dollars from entrants on the basis that each entrant has a fair and equal
chance of winning. Furthermore, the connection of Mark McMorris to Brown
University and C.D. Wright makes the case particularly strong. But what makes
this a strikingly fraudulent contest is the connection of Bin Ramke to both
Forrest Gander and C.D. Wright as well as Sam Truitt. This would be a federal
case because it involves the U.S. Mail. The attorney also said that while it is
unlikely that the Feds would purse the case on the basis that the office is
backlogged with much larger fraud operations, a civil suit brought by the
entrants who paid twenty dollars against the University of Georgia Press is a
legitimate legal action.
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