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Thomas Austenfeld, newly appointed Chair, Department of Language and Literature at North Georgia College and State University, organized the Katherine Anne Porter Society's session held in Long Beach, California, on Saturday, May 27, 2000. The session began with "Women on the Verge: Writing About the Mexican Revolution" read by Andrea Tinnemeyer of Rice University. Karen Weathermon of Washington State University presented "At Home in Books: Utopias and Heterotopias in Katherine Anne Porter's Domestic Space." Katherine Anne Porter, Seymour Lawrence and that whole extraordinary episode of Ship of Fools was the subject of the paper of Alexandra Subramanian of the College of William and Mary. Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, summarized and responded to the three papers.

The society's business meeting took place after the paper session. President Beth Alvarez reported that the balance in the Society's account in the UNLV Foundation in May 2000 was $1,096. The society has been fortunate in thus far having "angels" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where the society was officially founded and through whose Foundation it holds tax-exempt status (the reason why all checks received by the society are made out to KAP Society/UNLV Foundation). The English Department at UNLV has underwritten all mailing costs and a former president of the university and a succession of deans of the College of Liberal Arts have underwritten most of (in recent years all of) the costs of printing the newsletter. The University of Maryland Libraries provides institutional support for the president/newsletter editor as well as hosting the society's Web site.

In May 2000, there were thirty-nine regular members of the Society and thirteen honorary members. Alvarez reported that the society's revised by-laws were passed by a vote of twenty members in favor, none opposed. The by-laws call for the election of president this year; the executive committee will conduct nominations. The active members of the executive committee are Darlene Unrue, Janis Stout, Thomas Austenfeld, Christine Hait, and Beth Alvarez. Other duties of the executive committee include chairing sessions at scholarly conferences and handling the society's routine business. Members were urged to submit articles, news items, and announcements for the newsletter. Future meetings of the Society will be held at forthcoming American Literature Association conferences. Christine Hait will serve as chair at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, session in 2001; Beth Alvarez will chair the session to be held in Long Beach, California, in 2002.

Thomas Austenfeld shared with fellow society members the good news that his book,American Women Writers and the Nazis: Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman, will be published by the University Press of Virginia in 2001. After the session, society members adjourned to a restaurant on the nearby Long Beach waterfront for lunch, where session participants were joined by Lisa Roney of Penn State University and Jan Bloemendaal of Leiden University in the Netherlands.