AMHERST — Observing that someone once declared that local recognition is the best kind of recognition, writer Madeleine Blais says that the spotlight for her being honored with a Samuel Minot Jones Award should be placed on those bestowing the prize.
“I know how hard the Sammys committee works to identify their awards winners and I know that they have a large list to choose from,” said Blais, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, who on Thursday will receive the honor for local literary achievement from the Jones Library.
At the same event, which begins at 6 p.m. at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Amherst Regional High School Theater Program, led by John Bechtold, will get a Sammy for significant contribution to Amherst’s literary culture.
Bechtold said this recognition validates his belief that it’s possible to make meaningful work that resonates beyond the high school, observing that each year the program stages about six full productions, including an annual winter musical featuring 150 students.
“To get an award for contributing to the literary culture of Amherst was especially sweet,” Bechtold said.
Blais, who is also a member of the University of Massachusetts journalism department, may be best known for her book about Amherst Regional High School’s 1995 state champion girls’ basketball team, “In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle,” which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and named one of the top 100 sports books of the 20th Century by ESPN.
Blais said she likes to write about women and children, as both are easily ignored segments of society.
“It should then be no big surprise to see why I was so attracted to writing about the Amherst Regional High School’s girls basketball teams,” Blais said.
It also helped, she said, that head coach Ron Moyer was colorful and quotable.
“In a way that book was the one I wished I could have read as a teen, the story of a group of young women determined to control their destiny as it played out in the dingy basketball courts at high schools throughout western Massachusetts in the dead of winter,” Blais said.
Other books by Blais include “The Heart Is an Instrument: Portraits in Journalism;” “Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family;” and “To the New Owners.”
Blais said the Pioneer Valley has appropriately been described as a place united by words.
“Respect for language and its power runs deep here, as evidenced by all the great poets who have mined this part of the world,” Blais said.
Bechtold said he was on sabbatical in London when news arrived of the Sammy’s Award and, despite his absence, student tech leaders and seniors Zack Ellis and Aviva Weinbaum helped produce 10-minute plays, all student-directed, and a full-scale production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part I, involving more than 70 students.
“For me, that captures the theater company spirit well, making work in a large community of people all in it to be part of something bigger than themselves,” Bechtold said.
Even during the recent school vacation week, students came in every day to prepare for their student-directed production of Sarah Ruhl’s “Melancholy Play,” as well to participate in a staging of Lauren Gunderson’s “Natural Shocks” to protest current gun laws and gun-related violence.
Theater program students have the opportunity to take coursework in academic and practical applications of theater, participate in acting classes, write new works, direct plays and work on the design of lighting, sound, and set plans for productions.
Among graduates of the theater program are Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Baker and Pulitzer runner-up Madeleine George.
“We feel really lucky to be in a school that values the arts,” Bechtold said. “Without that, an award like this wouldn’t be imaginable.”
Library Director Sharon Sharry said she appreciates the hundreds of people who have attended Sammy’s events and remains humbled by the support received for the Jones and its branches, bringing in over $100,000 in its first four years.
“The literary talent the Sammy’s has highlighted over the past five years has been astounding, from authors and book stores to performers and artists,” Sharry said.
Local illustrator Micha Archer, whose most recent book is “Daniel Finds a Poem,” has created this year’s print, which attendees purchasing tickets at $100 or more will receive.
Previous winners of the award have included Cammie McGovern, Arthur Kinney, Polly Longsworth, Aaron Lansky, Julius Lester, Pat and Peter Schneider, Norton Juster and Amherst Books in 2014.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
