Laitman and Prize Winner Mason Poised to Collaborate on Second Opera

Poet David Mason has been named the recipient of the 2009 Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize. The $40,000 prize, awarded by the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences, will allow Mason to embark on his second collaboration with American composer Lori Laitman, as he prepares an opera libretto of his acclaimed verse novel, Ludlow. David Mason, a successful published poet and professor of English at Colorado College, has written and edited nine books to date. Ludlow is the epic and searing story of a handful of immigrants caught up in a labour struggle in Southern Colorado which culminated in the infamous Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Published in 2007, the verse novel was voted the best poetry book by the Contemporary Poetry Review. Mason was inspired to adapt the story to opera after his initial experience in collaborating with Laitman on their first opera, and his conviction that opera may be the perfect medium to express this tragic, larger-than-life historic event in a manner which transcends the poetic text.