Thursday, February 24, 2011

MISSOURI HISTORY NIGHT with Jim Muench and Arthur Merhoff

Hearing Voices presents a Missouri history theme night at 7 p.m. March 1 at Orr Street Studios in Columbia, Mo. 

Jim Muench will read from his manuscript The Teutonic Cross, a historical novel set in a Missouri college town in 1913, and Arthur Mehrhoff will read from Coming Home Again: A Missouri Journal, a nonfiction book about the meaning of Missouri's special places.

JIM MUENCH


Jim Muench is an author, free-lance journalist, public relations consultant and college instructor who lives in Columbia. His history book, Five Stars:  Missouri’s Most Famous Generals, was published in 2006 by the University of Missouri Press. 

His career includes 25 years of professional experience writing in various genres, and his work has been published in newspapers, magazines and literary publications on local, regional and national levels in publications such as Missouri Life, Sports Illustrated for Kids and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His award-winning play, The Eye of the Sun, received staged readings at two Missouri colleges.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English/creative writing from Westminster College and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he served as science writer for the MU News Bureau and then as director of communications at Westminster College, the Missouri Division of Energy and the Missouri Department of Economic Development. He started a freelance writing and public relations consulting business in 2001 and has been teaching English at Columbia College and Westminster College since 2007.

ARTHUR MEHRHOFF
W. Arthur Mehrhoff is the academic coordinator for the Museum of Art & Archaeology at the University of Missouri. He holds a master’s degree in urban affairs from Washington University in St. Louis and a doctorate in American Studies, with an emphasis in material culture studies, from St. Louis University. For 15 years he served as community relations coordinator and chair of the award-winning Minnesota Design Team, and he received a Distinguished Service Award from the Minnesota chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
He was a keynote speaker for the June 2003 National Trust for Historic Preservation “Your Town” workshop in West Virginia, the 2007 Minnesota Rural Summit and the 2008 Canadian Institute of Planning conference.

Mehrhoff created the Heritage Preservation Program and taught community design and heritage preservation for 15 years at the Minnesota State University in Saint Cloud. He served as a guest lecturer in American culture studies at Washington University and teaches an online course on community design for University of Missouri Architectural Studies. His article on cultural tourism is featured in the Encyclopedia of Urban America: Cities and Suburbs (ABC-Clio, 1998), and in 2008 he received a certificate of merit for cultural writing from the International Regional Magazine Association.

1 comment:

  1. He is a very smart man for having created such a good novel. The good thing about novels from author of different nationalities or coming from different regions in the same country is that you get to know a new place. It happened to me with this Argentinean writer. I liked so much what I read that I rented one of those buenos aires apartments and flew straight over there. I had the most amazing time and discovered new authors. Apparently literature is popular in Argentina.
    Cheers,
    Julie

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