2015-2016 READING SERIES

Creative Nonfiction Reading:

Angela Pelster

Tuesday, February 2, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room

Angela Pelster is the author of Limber (Sarabande), which won the GLCA New Writers Award for creative nonfiction. The Seattle Times describes Limber as “one of the quirkiest and most original books about the natural world… Filled with precise, poetical and sparse language, the essays reveal not just the life of trees but how they connect us to the greater world around us.” Pelster’s essays have appeared in Granta, The Gettysburg Review, Seneca Review, Fourth Genre, and others. Her children’s novel, The Curious Adventures of India Sophia (River Books), won the Golden Eagle Children’s Choice award in 2006. She earned an MFA from the University of Iowa. She currently lives with her family in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.

A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

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Poetry Reading:

Tarfia Faizullah

Wednesday, March 16, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (Southern Illinois University Press), which won the GLCA New Writers Award for poetry. Faizullah’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, Ploughshares, Jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. She has received various awards, including the 2015 VIDA Award in Poetry, a 2015 Pushcart Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, an Associated Writers Program Intro Journals Award, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A native of Midland, Texas, she earned an MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University. Currently, Faizullah lives in Detroit, and is an editor for the Asian American Literary Review and the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. Visit her online at:www.tfaizullah.com.

A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

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Fiction Reading:

David James Poissant

Thursday, April 7, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room

David James Poissant is the winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for fiction for his collection of short stories, The Heaven of Animals (Simon & Schuster), which was a finalist for the 2014 LA Times Book Prize and was nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, One Story, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review, and his stories have been anthologized in New Stories from the South and Best New American Voices. He has received various awards, including the Matt Clark Prize, the George Garrett Fiction Award, the RopeWalk Fiction Chapbook Prize, and the Alice White Reeves Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts & Letters. Currently at work on a novel, Poissant teaches at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando. Visit him online at:www.davidjamespoissant.com.

A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

 

 

 

Fiction Reading:
E.J. Levy

Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Wendell Will Room
5:30 pm

E.J. Levy’s writing has been featured in Best American Essays, Paris Review, and The New York Times, among other places, and received a Pushcart Prize. Her debut story collection, Love, In Theory, won the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Award, a 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Award, and a 2014 Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award; a French edition is forthcoming. Her anthology, Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction by New American Writers, won a Lambda Literary Award. She holds a degree in History from Yale and teaches in the MFA Program at Colorado State University; she lives with her partner and their baby in Loveland.

  A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

 This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the
English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.   For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

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Fiction Reading:
Monica McFawn

Thursday, February 5, 2015
Wendell Will Room
5:00 pm

Monica McFawn lives in Michigan and teaches writing at Grand Valley State University. Her fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Web Conjunctions, Missouri Review, and others.  Her collection of short stories, Bright Shards of Someplace Else, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is also the author of a hybrid chapbook, A Catalogue of Rare Movements, and her plays and screenplays have had readings in Chicago and New York.

 A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

 This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the
English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.   For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

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Creative Nonfiction Reading:
Joe Wilkins

Monday, October 20, 2014
Bobbitt Auditorium
5:00 pm

Joe Wilkins is the author of the memoir The Mountain and the Fathers (2012), a 2012 Montana Book Award Honor book and winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers award. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Killing the Murnion Dogs (2011) and Notes from the Journey Westward (2012), winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the High Plains Book Award. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and Slate, and has also been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing, Writing Today, New Poets of the American West, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Best New Poets 2006. The recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center and the winner of the Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency from PEN Northwest, Wilkins was born and raised in eastern Montana. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho, and he currently teaches at Linfield College.

 A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.

 This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the
English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.   For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION READING:
BENJAMIN BUSCH

Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Bobbitt Auditorium
5:00 PM

Writer, actor, photographer, and former United States Marine Corps infantry officer, Benjamin Busch is the author of the memoir Dust to Dust (Ecco/HarperCollins), which won the 2013 GLCA New Writers Award for creative nonfiction (2013), and was a finalist for both the Michigan Notable Book Award and the Society of Midland Authors Literary Award.  His poetry and essays have appeared in literary journals such as Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, North American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and his essay “Growth Rings” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a contributing writer to NPR’s All Things Considered.  His photographs have appeared in print journals such as Prairie Schooner, Five Points, The Connecticut River Review, Epiphany, and War, Literature, & the Arts.  As an actor, Benjamin Busch is best known for his role as Anthony Colicchio on HBO’s The Wire, as well as his appearances on The Beast and Generation Kill.  He is also the writer/director of the award-winning films BRIGHT and Sympathetic. Benjamin Busch lives on a farm in Michigan with his wife and two daughters.

 There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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FICTION READING:
ISMET PRCIC

Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Ismet Prcic is the author of Shards (Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic), a novel that won the GLCA New Writers Award for fiction (2013), and was shortlisted for the Center of Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan award (2011). He is a recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction and was a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow.  Born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Prcic immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.  Visit him online at: http://www.ismetprcic.com/index.html.

 There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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POETRY READING:
ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS

Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of The Ground (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), which won the 2013 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry (2013), the GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry (2013), and was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry (2012) and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.  Phillips is also the author of a collection of essays, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010), and a translation of Salvador Espriu’s short stories, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012).  His poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Callaloo, Granta, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Born and raised in New York City, he is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Brown University. He is currently an associate professor of English and the director of the Poetry Center at Stony Brook University.  He lives in New York City and Barcelona.

 There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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POETRY READING:
DAN ALBERGOTTI

Thursday, April 10, 2014
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA, 2008), which poet Edward Hirsch selected for the Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), which poet Rodney Jones selected for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition.  He is also the author of The Use of the World (Unicorn Press, 2013), a limited-edition chapbook, and Charon’s Manifest, which won the Randall Jarrell/Harperprints Chapbook Competition (2005).  His poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Blackbird, Five Points, Mid-American Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. A scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conference and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Pushcart Prize recipient, Dan Albergotti holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Currently, he edits the online journal Waccamaw and teaches creative writing and literature at Coastal Carolina University.

  There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and Sigma Tau Delta.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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POETRY READING:
TRACI BRIMHALL

Thursday, April 4, 2013
Wendell Will Room
5:30 PM

Traci Brimhall is the author of two poetry collections, Our Lady of the Ruins (Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award.  In March of 2013, Diode Editions will release her chapbook of collaborative poems, Bright Power, Dark Peace, written with the poet Brynn Saito.  Her poems have appeared in various literary journals such as New England Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, FIELD, and Southern Review; and her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, PBS Newshour, and Best American Poetry 2013.  Lastly, Brimhall’s poetry comic collaborations with Eryn Cruft can be found in Guernica, Ninth Letter, TheThe Poetry Comics, and Nashville Review.  Brimhall has received many awards and fellowships, including an NEA, the Summer Poet in Residence at the University of Mississippi, the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and fellowships at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center.  She earned a B.A. from Florida State University, an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and she is currently working toward her Ph.D. at Western Michigan University, where she serves as Editor in Chief for Third Coast.  Visit her online at www.tracibrimhall.com.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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POETRY AND FICTION READING:
THISBE NISSEN AND JAY BARON NICORVO

Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Wendell Will Room
5:30 PM

Thisbe Nissen is the author of two novels, The Good People of New York (Knopf) and Osprey Island (Knopf), and a story collection, Out of the Girls’ Room and into the Night (University of Iowa Press), which was the winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. She is also the co-author, with Erin Ergenbright, of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, a collection of stories, recipes and art collages. Her fiction has been published in various literary journals, such as The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, Story, Seventeen, The Virginia Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, Glimmer Train, and NANO Fiction, while her creative nonfiction has appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Glamour, and The Believer.  Nissen has received many awards, including fellowships for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. She earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1994 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She teaches at Western Michigan University.

Jay Baron Nicorvo is the author of Deadbeat (Four Way Books); he has also contributed poetry, fiction, nonfiction and criticism to The Literary Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review and The Believer.  He’s served on editorial staffs at Ploughshares and at PEN America, the literary magazine of the PEN American Center, and worked for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [clmp]. He teaches at Western Michigan University, where he’s faculty advisor to Third Coast, and he lives on an old farm outside Battle Creek with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, Sonne, and a dozen vulnerable chickens.  Visit him online at www.nicorvo.net.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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POETRY AND FICTION READING:
SHANE BOOK AND ALAN HEATHCOCK

Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Wendell Will Room
5:30 PM

Poet and filmmaker Shane Book is the author of Ceiling of Sticks (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), which won both the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.  His work has appeared in over fifteen anthologies and forty literary magazines in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.  He has studied at New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.  The recipient of various awards, including a New York Times Fellowship in Poetry, The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a National Magazine Award, Shane Book has also received various scholarships to residencies and conferences such as the MacDowell Colony, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and Cave Canem.

Alan Heathcock is the author of VOLT (Graywolf), a collection of short stories. VOLT was recognized as a Best Book 2011 by numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer;  in addition, Volt was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, and won the GLCA New Writers Award.  Heathcock’s fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Kenyon Review, VQR, and The Harvard Review. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Heathcock is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A Chicago native, he teaches at Boise State University.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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DANIELLE CADENA DEULEN
CREATIVE NONFICTION READING

Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Wendell Will Room
5:30 PM

Danielle Cadena Deulen is the author of The Riots (University of Georgia Press), a memoir that  won the 2010 AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2011 Grub Street National Book Prize in Nonfiction, and won the 2012 GLCA New Writers Award.  She also published a collection of poems, Lovely Asunder (University of Arkansas Press), which won the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize.  Her poetry and essays have appeared in journals such as The Utne Reader, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, and The Indiana Review.  A 2007-2008 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Deulen received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from George Mason University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah.  She currently lives in Ohio where she is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the Graduate Creative Writing program at the University of Cincinnati.  Visit her online at:  www.danielledeulen.com.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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GOLDIE GOLDBLOOM
FICTION READING

Monday, March 26, 2012
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Goldie Goldbloom is the author of Toads’ Museum of Freaks and Wonders (New Issues Press) and You Lose These and other stories (Fremantle Press). Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, StoryQuarterly, and Prairie Schooner, and was anthologized in The Kid on the Karaoke Stage and Windy City Queer; her non-fiction was anthologized in the Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires. She earned an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.  Born in Western Australia, Goldbloom currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her eight children and her cat. Visit her online at http://www.goldiegoldbloom.com/.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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RANDI DAVENPORT
CREATIVE NONFICTION READING

Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Randi Davenport is the author of The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes.  Her short fiction and essays have appeared in publications like The Washington Post, The Ontario Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Literature/Film Quarterly, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Women’s History Review.   Davenport studied history and creative writing at William Smith College;  she later earned both an MA in Creative Writing/Fiction and a PhD in literature at Syracuse University.  She has been a Summer Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Public Fellow at the Institute for Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has taught literature and writing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. She is currently the Executive Director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Visit her online at http://www.randidavenport.com/.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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NICK LANTZ
POETRY READING

Thursday, November 3, 2011
Wendell Will Room
5:00 PM

Nick Lantz is the author of We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, selected by Linda Gregerson for the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize, and The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House, selected by Robert Pinksy for the Felix Pollak Prize.  His work has also appeared in journals such as Mid-American Review, Southern Review, Gulf Coast, FIELD, Indiana Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He received a BA in Religious Studies from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Nick Lantz was the 2010-2011 Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College.  He has also taught at the University of Wisconsin, Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop, and Queens University’s Low-Residency MFA Program.  Born in Berkley, California, Lantz currently teaches at Franklin & Marshall College.  Visit him online at http://www.nick-lantz.com/Nick_Lantz/Welcome.html.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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DIANA JOSEPH
CREATIVE NONFICTION READING

Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wendell Will Room, 5:30 p.m.

Diana Joseph is the author of the short story collection Happy or Otherwise (Carnegie Mellon UP  2003) and the memoir I’m Sorry You Feel That Way:  the Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog (Putnam 2009.)  Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, River Teeth, Willow Springs, Best Sex Writing 2010, Country Living, Marie Claire, and elsewhere, and has been noted for distinction in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize. She teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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JOSH WEIL
FICTION READING

Monday, November 8, 2010
Wendell Will Room, 5:30 p.m.

A New York Times Editors Choice selection, Josh Weil’s first book, The New Valley, has received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the New Writers Award from the GLCA; and a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation. Weil’s short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous journals including Granta and The New York Times, and since earning his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Tickner Fellowship from Gilman School, a Writer’s Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences.  Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Virginia to which he returned to write the novellas in The New Valley, Josh Weil is currently the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at The James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut, where he is at work on a novel.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

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KEVIN MCFADDEN
POETRY READING

Thursday, October 21, 2010
Bobbitt Auditorium, 5:30 p.m.

Kevin McFadden is the author of Hardscrabble, an inaugural selection of the VQR Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Winner of the Fellowship of Southern Writers George Garrett Award and the Erskine J. Poetry Prize, he has had poems appear in Poetry, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fence and The Antioch Review. McFadden is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.

MARGO RABB
FICTION READING

Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wendell Will Room, 5:30 p.m.

Margo Rabb is the author of the novel Cures for Heartbreak, which was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus and Booklist. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, One Story, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Best New American Voices, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She received the grand prize in the Zoetrope fiction contest, first prize in The Atlantic Monthly fiction contest, first prize in the American Fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award.  Her new novel, Mad, Mad Love, will be published in Spring 2012. A New York City native, she now lives in Austin, Texas. Visit her online at http://www.margorabb.com/.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.

This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.  For more information, please contact the English Department at (517) 629-0232.