Visiting Writers Reading Schedule

This just in from the Department:


Visiting Writers Reading Schedule

Fall 2007



Fiction


James Houston

Reading: Thursday, Sept. 27, 7:30pm, Grand Tier III, Concert Hall

Reception: 6:30-7:30pm*

James D. Houston is the author of eight novels, including his newest work, Bird of Another Heaven, published by Alfred Knopf in March 2007. His recent Snow Mountain Passage, described in The Washington Post as "a dignified, powerful narrative of our shared American destiny," was cited by The Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Times as one of the Year's Best Books. His often anthologized stories and essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, Ploughshares, The Utne Reader, The Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Honolulu, Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, and Zyzzyva (The Last Word: west coast writers and artists).



Peter Ho Davies

Reading: Monday, Nov. 12, JC Cinema

Reception: 6:30-7:30pm

6:30-7:00pm, Q&A with Peter Ho Davies for ENGL 699 students only

Peter Ho Davies’ work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers, and his short fiction is widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 and Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996 and 2001. His own first published collection of short stories was The Ugliest House in the World (1998), which contains tales set in Malaysia, South Africa and Patagonia. This collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second collection, Equal Love, was published in 2000. In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, set in a Welsh village during the second world war, was published earlier this year.







Nonfiction



Bich Nguyen

Reading: Thursday, Sept. 27, 7:30pm, JC Gold Room

Reception: 6:30-7:30pm*

Bich Nguyen’s first book was Stealing Buddha's Dinner (Viking Penguin, February 2007). It received the PEN/Jerard Award from the PEN American Center. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Gourmet magazine; Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America; and Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose. She has also coedited three anthologies: 30/30: Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years (Penguin Academic); Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye (Longman); and The Contemporary American Short Story (Longman). She is currently working on a novel, Short Girls.





Michael Martone

Reading: Thursday, Nov. 14, 7:30pm, JC Gold Room

Reception: 6:30-7:30pm

Michael Martone is a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. Martone is the author of five books of short fiction including Seeing Eye published in September of 1995 by Zoland Books as well as Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), and Alive and Dead in Indiana (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press, 1988 and 1992). He edits Story County Books, and his newest book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998. His next book, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, is forthcoming.



Poetry



Claudia Rankine

Reading: Wednesday, Sept. 26, 6:00pm, Harris Theater

Reception: 7:00-7:30pm

Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), PLOT (2001); The End of the Alphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. She is co-editor of American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century (Wesleyan University Press). Her work has been published in numerous journals including Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. Her poetry is also included in several anthologies, including Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, Best American Poetry 2001, Giant Step: African American Writing at the Crossroads of the Century, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry.





James Longenbach

Reading: Wednesday, Nov. 7, 7:30pm, JC Gold Room

Reception: 6:30-7:30pm

James Longenbach published his first book—Modernist Poetics of History—at the age of 27, and to date he has written five influential works of scholarship and persuasion. Longenbach's three collections of poetry Threshold (University of Chicago Press, 1998), Fleet River (University of Chicago Press, 2003), and Draft of a Letter (University of Chicago Press, 2007) reveal his unerring command of sound and line. He is a Professor of English at the University of Rochester.