During these years, Kenneth Atchity also received many honors, including a Fulbright Professorship at University of Bologna (1974-75) and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972), American Council of Learned Societies (1973, 1979), and the Mellon Foundation (1978); for his poetry he received the Readers' Choice Award (1970), the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Lubbe Award (1971), and the Modern Award (1971). In 1976, Kenneth Atchity became founder and president of L/A House, Inc., a book, television, and film development and production company. L/A House began by doing manuscript consultation and soon moved on to publishing with the production of Follies, a creative writing magazine of which Atchity was the editor. In the 1980's the company moved into television production, with a syndicated television pilot of BreakThrough!, of which Atchity was executive producer and a co-author. As time went by, Atchity gave increasing attention to L/A House and phased out his teaching involvement at Occidental College, resigning from the faculty in 1987. In 1985 L/A House began development of a set of video romance novels entitled Shades of Love, and in 1986 Kenneth Atchity published A Writer's Time, a guide to creative writing. The 16 Shades of Love films, for which he was executive producer, were produced in 1986 and 1987 and distributed throughout the world by Lorimar, Astral-Bellevue-Pathe, and Warner Brothers. He sold L/A House in 1989 and founded AEI (Atchity Entertainment- Education-Editorial International). In 1989 he was associate producer of the NBC Movie-of-the-Week The Amityville Horror, and served as executive producer of Falling Over Backwards in 1990-91. Kenneth J. Atchity lives in Los Angeles, California and continues his work as a writer, producer, consultant and executive at AEI. Further biographical information on Kenneth Atchity can be found in Contemporary Authors (NR-16).
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The Kenneth Aguillard Atchity Collection is arranged in eight series: the Individuals Correspondence Series, the Scripts & Manuscripts Series, the Academic Series, the Business Files Series, the Printed Materials Series, the Video Series, the Scrapbook Series, and the Oversize Series. The Individuals Correspondence Series primarily consists of personal and professional correspondence between Kenneth Atchity and hundreds of individuals and organizations and comprises nearly half the material of the collection (12 boxes). Included is correspondence relating to Atchity's editorships of Moneysworth, California State Poetry Quarterly, Contemporary Quarterly, Follies and Dreamworks, with correspondence from individuals such as Maya Angelou, Robert Bly, Paul Bowles, Malcolm Boyd, Wanda Coleman, Norman Cousins, Umberto Eco, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Ralph Ginzburg, Robin Hardy, Ursula K. LeGuin, Howard Nemerov, Joyce Carol Oates, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, John Rechy and Art Seidenbaum. There are also a number of noteworthy correspondents from the academic world with whom Atchity discussed Comparative and Italian Literature, including Camille Paglia, Thomas Bergin, Lowry Nelson, John Gardner and Giose Rimanelli. The Series also contains much business correspondence relating to L/A House and Shades of Love, as well as personal correspondence between Atchity and his friends and family.
The Scripts & Manuscripts Series primarily consists of material collected by L/A House for the production of Shades of Love and other projects, many of which were written by Atchity himself. Other items include a group of manuscripts collected by Contemporary Quarterly, including poems by Wanda Coleman and Marcus Grapes. The Series also contains a brief carbon typescript ascribed to John Steinbeck, "The Common Man at War." The Academic Series primarily consists of lecture notes and subject files kept by Kenneth Atchity during his academic career. The Series contains Atchity's files on the Iliad, which include correspondence from Cedric Whitman, Robert Fitzgerald and other notable Classicists. The Business Files Series mainly consists of contracts, business correspondence and other materials relating to Kenneth Atchity's career with L/A House and Shades of Love. The correspondence of many individuals and organizations overlap between this Series and the Individuals Correspondence Series. The Printed Materials Series mainly consists of magazine issues and promotional materials for Shades of Love. Included are copies of Contemporary Quarterly, Moneysworth, Door to Door, and clippings by and about Kenneth Atchity. (Lauinger Library has a complete run of Dreamworks in the Serials Division.) The Video Series primarily consists of videos produced or authored by Kenneth Atchity, including clips and promos for Shades of Love and Homer, a three-part television program authored by Kenneth Atchity for KNXT-TV. The Scrapbook Series contains miscellaneous correspondence, notes and photos related to various L/A House projects and Dreamworks put together by Kenneth Atchity in scrapbooks. The Oversize Series contains three oversize items: one scrapbook relating to Breakthrough!, 1 soundtrack record album for Shades of Love, and the music and libretto from In Praise of Love. Note: Kenneth Atchity holds the right of first refusal to publish correspondence contained in the collection but which is not created by him.
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Extent: 42 linear feet Number of boxes: 29 boxes Bulk dates: 1970 - 1990 Span dates: 1962 - 1991 Provenance: Gift of Kenneth J. Atchity, 1991. Processed by: Michael J. North Date: 29 July, 1992
Abbreviations
ALS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Autograph Letter Signed
AMs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Autograph Manuscript
CQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Contemporary Quarterly
KJA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kenneth J. Atchity
TLS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Typed Letter Signed
TMs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Typed Manuscript
ACCESSION DATA: Gift of Kenneth J. Atchity, 1991.
BULK DATES: 1970 - 1990
SPAN DATES: 1965 - 1990
EXTENT: 29 boxes; 42 lf