The Centenary Muses Fall 2025 Study Series
Led by Dr. Jefferson Hendricks
“Jack London and Crystal Wilkinson”
This October, Fall 2025, to celebrate Centenary’s Bicentennial, the Muses Study Series will read and discuss two different writers connected to Centenary College. The first is Jack London (1876-1916), one of America’s most popular writers; the second is Crystal Wilkinson, the poet Laureate of Kentucky and the 2025 winner of the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence.
In spending three weeks on Jack London, we are not only reading one of America’s great authors, we are also celebrating the life-long work of beloved Centenary professor Earle Labor (1928-2022). Labor taught at Centenary for over 40 years and, while at the College, became the world’s leading authority on Jack London. His biography of London – Jack London: An American Life is crucial for anyone studying London. We will reading from Earle Labor’s last book, Jack London’s Stories for All Seasons, published here by Centenary’s Storyport Press in 2019. In this book, Labor selected what he thought were Jack London’s most important and powerful stories. We will read “The Law of Life,” “To Build a Fire,” and “The Call of the Wild,” three stories from London’s adventures during the Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890s; we will also read “War” and “Koolau, the Leper,” two stories of men under pressure in situations of war and violence. The last story we’ll read is “The Red One,” one of London’s stories that helped initiate the genre of science fiction in American literature, as a scientist becomes obsessed with a mystical auditory object from beyond the Earth. All these stories show London as a master of philosophical fiction which probes such questions as: “What IS the law of life? What does it mean to be human, and in what ways are we connected to/different from the natural world? And in nature, which often seems ruled by “the survival of the fittest,” where does the human need for ethics and morality, let alone empathy, kindness, and compassion fit into our daily lives? Earle Labor has picked stories by London that are riveting, provocative, and soulful.
We will also spend our last session reading from Crystal Wilkinson’s 2024 book, Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks., which weaves Wilkinson’s family stories about growing up Black in White Appalachia with over forty family recipes that honor her five-generations of women relatives and their culinary ingenuity and resilience. Wilkinson will speak at the Corrington Award Ceremony Monday, October 27 at 6:30pm in the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, but the Muses will be hosting her at a food-based “Happy Hour” that day from 4:00 to 5:30pm. [Further details to be announced soon!]
Book Information
For this series, we will be using Centenary’s Storyport Press edition of Jack London’s Stories For All Seasons. The book will be available at the Centenary Book House, in Centenary Square, 108 East Kings Highway, across from the Gold Dome (318.219.3409 or 318.869.5710), or from Julianna Woodruff, Senior Development Officer at Centenary, Hamilton Hall, 124 (869-5151). The cost is $15 and you may with cash or check, made out to “The Centenary College of Louisiana Press.”
We will be using handouts from Wilkinson to be distributed in the first class on Oct. 7, but for those who would like to buy Crystal Wilkinson’s Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts it is available online in hardcover or ebook:
- Barnes and Noble:
- Amazon:
- Note: The Amazon hardback price is now lowered to $17.99; Barnes & Noble is still selling it at $30.00.
Study Series Dates
Our study series will take place on the following days:
- Tuesday, Oct. 7 “The Law of Life”; “To Build a Fire”; “War”
- Tuesday, Oct. 14 “Koolau the Leper” and “The Red One”
- Tuesday, Oct. 21 “Call of the Wild”
- Tuesday, Oct. 28 excerpts to be handed out from Wilkinson’s Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts (details to be announced soon!)
The sessions will be held in Jackson Hall 304 on Centenary’s campus. There will be two sessions: 11:00am to 12:00pm and 6:00pm to 7:00pm. You may attend either session.
For further information, or any questions, feel free to email Jeff Hendricks at jhendric@centenary.edu or text him at 318-820-1414.
About Jefferson Hendricks
Jeff Hendricks is Chair of the English Department at Centenary, where he has taught since 1983. A native of North Louisiana, he received his A.B. from Centenary (‘75) and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (‘83). A former Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, he is the editor of four books on the 20th century American poet Edwin Rolfe and the Editor-in-Chief of Storyport Press, Centenary's English language press. He also leads yearly trips to France for Centenary’s Office of Alumni and Family Relations.