{"value"=>"<p>Childress's professional correspondence captures the essence of her life working to produce and publish throughout her career. The correspondence is predominately incoming, although there are a few files with copies of letters written by Childress. This subseries is further delineated into six sub-subseries: Publishers and Agents, Awards, Conferences, Speaking Engagements, General - Alphabetical, and General. Subjects include invitations for speaking engagements, letters of appreciation, requests from playhouses and colleges to perform her plays and requests for biographical information.</p> <p>The Publishers and Agents files are arranged chronologically. Letters from publishers in these files include <span class=\"title\">Afro-American</span> Newspapers, Avon Books, Coward, McCann Geoghegan, Inc., <span class=\"title\">Ebony, Freedom</span> newspaper, <span class=\"title\">Ms</span>, and Macmillan Company and Putnam. Found here also are letters from several of Childress's literary agents including Max Pfeffer, James Bohan, and Flora Roberts. Roberts was Childress's literary agent for several decades, and her letters make up the largest part of this sub-subseries. Some of the letters are annotated (e. g., \"answered\") and the subjects range from the publication of her works (e. g., <span class=\"title\">Like One of the Family</span>) to requests for biographical information from biographical dictionary publishers (e. g., Gale, Who's Who). The Rejection Letters is a small but interesting file that contains several rejection letters (mainly for short stories) Childress received early in her career, largely under the <em>nom de plume</em>, \"Alice Franklyn.\".</p> <p>This subseries also contains a small amount of letters from Childress, both copies and handwritten drafts. The file is particularly rich in content dating from the year she had her first play <span class=\"title\">Florence</span> produced, and gives an overall candid look at the author's concerns as they relate to her writings. The file contains letters to Carl Murphy, President of the <span class=\"title\">Afro-American</span> Newspapers, whose Baltimore paper published \"Here's Marge,\" scholar Trudier Harris, Flora Roberts, and Harold Courlander, among others. Many of the subjects Childress addresses are requests to option her plays, ideas for projects, Harlem, and the role of a writer. One letter addressed to a student named Donnie George, painstakingly details why she wrote <span class=\"title\">A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich</span>, and her use of profanity (what the student called \"bad language\") in the book.</p> <p>Most significant are the Awards, Conferences, and Speaking Engagement files. An overview of the files reveals that Childress traveled widely and was an in-demand speaker regardless of whether she had published a book or had recently mounted a play. While some files do relate to the publicity for her written works, the letters reveal that she was in demand for her skills as an orator. The Awards files contain mostly certificates, letters and programs that Childress's received over the course of her writing career beginning in the 1950's.</p> <p>The Conferences files are largely composed of agendas, brochures, flyers, letters of invitation and appreciation, programs, schedules and clippings. Childress participated in a number of literary conferences. Of note is the file on the First International Women Playwrights Conference, October 14-23, 1988, which contains letters, itineraries, drafts for the proceedings, and printed transcriptions of the two panels \"International Women Playwrights\" and \"Censorship and Self-Censorship\" on which Childress participated. Papers for both panels are filed here as well. Her keynote address for this conference can also be found in the file.</p> <p>The largest set of the three files, Speaking Engagements, is arranged by decade and contain letters of invitation and appreciation, contracts, itineraries, letters of commitment, programs and clippings. There are invitations to appear at conferences, radio and television programs, symposiums and festivals, and at various colleges and universities, schools, community organizations and libraries. Particularly interesting is a series of thank you letters sent to Childress after she appeared on the PBS variety show, <span class=\"title\">Soul</span> in 1972. There is also information about the \"Prophets for a New Day\" conference held at Hartford College in February 1990, which included distinguished writers such as Ann Petry, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sonia Sanchez. A draft of Childress's speech, along with letters, newsletters, programs, research information and clippings can be found here, some of which are heavily annotated by Childress. There is also a folder for the trip the author took as a part of the 1981 Delegation to the German Democratic Republic. This folder contains drafts of her impressions of the G. D. R., letters, a program, and <span class=\"title\">U. S. Committee for Friendship with the German Democratic Republic</span> newsletters. Childress also lectured at a number of colleges and universities including Spelman College, Howard University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Rollins College, and Hartford College for Women.</p> <p>In the General - Alphabetical sub-subseries contains letters from a number of prominent individuals, some of whom Childress counted among her friends including academicians, activists, filmmakers, playwrights, and writers such as John Henrik Clarke, Owen Dodson, W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Duberman, Hoyt Fuller, Trudier Harris, Hilda Haynes, Eva Jessye, John O. Killens, Susan Koppleman, Julian Mayfield, Loften Mitchell, Louise Thompson Patterson, Paul Robeson, and Jacqueline Shearer. The most substantive letters are from writers Kay Borne and Harold Courlander and Anne Snyder, all of whom discuss their works as well as provide Childress with insights into many areas of their lives, primarily as writers and teachers. The last sub-subseries, General, consist of letters of appreciation, requests from playhouses and colleges to perform her plays and for biographical information. The files are arranged chronologically. General fan mail can be found here. Note: fan mail associated with a particular book or play is filed with that book or play.</p>"}