Creative Writers Reading Series
Celebrated writers of poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction visit campus several times each year to give lectures, readings, discussions, and book signings. Presentations are held at 6:00 p.m. (preceded by receptions at 5:30 p.m.). All events are free and open to the public.
Thursday, March 22 - Kathy Fagan - Poetry
Reception and Reading in Burke 180
Kathy Fagan’s newest collection is Lip. She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft, the Vassar Miller Prize winner MOVING & ST RAGE, and The Charm. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, Field, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and The Missouri Review, among other literary magazines, and is anthologized in Under 35, Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, American Diaspora, The Breath of Parted Lips: Poems from the Robert Frost Place, and Poet’s Choice by Edward Hirsch. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohioana, and the Ohio Arts Council. Formerly the Director of Creative Writing and the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, she is currently Professor of English and Editor of The Journal.
Thursday, April 5 - Charles Baxter - Fiction
Reception and Reading in Burke 180
Charles Baxter is the author of five novels, including The Soul Thief and The Feast of Love, and five story collections, including Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, Harmony of the World, and his newest, released in 2011, Gryphon: New and Selected Stories. He is also the author of two important books on the art of fiction—Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot. He taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit. In 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and its MFA program. After many years there, he now teaches at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, April 19 - Sharman Apt Russell - Literary Nonfiction
Reception in Smith Chapel Living Room; Reading in Smith Chapel
Sharman Apt Russell’s collections of essays include Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest, which recounts her years as a back-to-the-lander in rural New Mexico, and which won the 1992 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and New Mexico Zia Award, An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect, Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers, which has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Portuguese and, like other of her books, Russian and Italian, and her most recent book, Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist, which was a New Mexico Book Award finalist and one of Booklists’ top ten religious books of 2008. She is a professor in the Humanities Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, and also serves as part-time faculty in creative nonfiction for the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.
