Spring 2012 Events
The Spring 2012 Poetry Reading Series
&
Nonfiction Program Events
Sponsored by the Department of English
in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
*
All events are free and open to the public
THE SPRING 2012 Poetry Reading SERIES:
Court Green
9 Release
and Reading
Thursday, March 1,
5:30p.m.
Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan
Ave., 101
In conjunction with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, a release and reading for the ninth issue of COURT GREEN, the Department of English’s faculty-edited poetry journal, which features a dossier on the short poem.
Bernadette
MayerWednesday,
March 14,
5:30p.m.
Sherwood Conservatory Recital
Hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave.
BERNADETTE MAYER’s poetry has been praised by John Ashbery as “magnificent.” Brenda Coultas calls her a master of “devastating wit.” Mayer is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry, including Midwinter Day, Sonnets, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, and Poetry State Forest. Recently published are her works Studying Hunger Journals and Ethics of Sleep. A former director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery and co-editor of the conceptual magazine 0 to 9 with Vito Acconci, Mayer has been a key figure on the New York poetry scene for decades.
13th
Annual Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival
Thursday, April 5, 5:30
p.m.
Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan,
101
The Columbia College Chicago Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival brings together 12 poets from Chicago-area colleges and universities to read their work. Schools include Columbia College Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, DePaul University, Loyola University, National-Louis University, North Central College, Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, University of Illinois-Chicago, and University of Chicago.
Aaron
Kunin & Rusty Morrison
Wednesday, April 18,
5:30p.m.
Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash, Room
109
AARON KUNIN is the author of The Sore Throat & Other Poems. He lives in Los Angeles.
RUSTY MORRISON’s After Urgency won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize and is forthcoming in 2012, Book of the Given is available from Noemi Press, the true keeps calm biding its story won Academy of American Poet’s James Laughlin Award and was published by Ahsahta as a Sawtooth Prize winner. Whethering won the Colorado Prize for Poetry from the Center for Literary Publishing. She’s Omnidawn’s co-publisher, and she lives in Richmond, CA.
no. 25 Release
Reading
Featuring Stacey
Waite
Thursday, April 26, 5:30
p.m.
Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan,
101
Contributors to the 25th issue of COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW the Department of English’s student-edited, nationally distributed poetry magazine, read their work. The reading will be headlined by STACEY WAITE. Waite is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. Waite’s poems have been published most recently in Bloom, Black Warrior Review, Pinch, and The Rattling Wall. Waite’s most recent collections of poetry include: the lake has no saint (Tupelo Press, 2010) and a forthcoming collection Butch Geography (Tupelo Press, 2013).
SPRING 2012 NONFICTION PROGRAM EVENTS:
Joshua Casteel and Jenny
Boully
Monday, February 6,
5:30p.m.
Stage Two, 618 S. Michigan, Second
Floor
JOSHUA CASTEEL served as a US Army interrogator
and Arabic linguist at Abu Ghraib Prison from June 2004 to January 2005.
Shortly thereafter he was honorably discharged as a Conscientious Objector. He
was formerly on the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, holds
Master of Fine Arts degrees in Playwriting and Nonfiction Writing from the
University of Iowa, and has spoken on ethics and US defense policy at
universities and centers throughout the US, UK, Ireland, Sweden and Italy. He
is the author of Letters From Abu Ghraib (Essay Press), The City of
God (Pax Christi Publishing), and his play Returns (Alaska Quarterly
Review) has been performed widely in the US and abroad. Joshua teaches
nonfiction writing at Columbia College Chicago and is pursuing further graduate
studies in literature, religion, and philosophy at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.
JENNY BOULLY is the author of not merely because of the unknown that was stalking towards them (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011), The Book of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande, 2007), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2006), The Body: An Essay (Essay Press, 2007 and Slope Editions, 2002), and the chapbook Moveable Types (Noemi Press, 2007). Born in Thailand and reared in Texas, she joined the faculty at Columbia College Chicago in Fall 2008 where she is Director of the MFA Program in Nonfiction.
John D’Agata with Jim
Fingal
Thursday, February 23,
5:30p.m.
Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash, Room
109
JOHN D’AGATA is the author of About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, and the editor of the anthologies The Lost Origins of the Essay and The Next American Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.
JIM FINGAL worked for several years at
McSweeney's where he fact-checked the books What Is the What,
Voices from the Storm, and The Believer Book of Writers Talking to
Writers. He designs software in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he
lives.
Sharifa
Rhodes-Pitts
Wednesday, March 21,
6:30p.m.Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan,
101
SHARIFA RHODES-PITTS is a writer whose work has appeared in
Transition, The New York Times, Harper’s, Vogue, and
Essence, among others. She has received awards from the Rona Jaffe
Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Originally from Houston, Texas, she graduated in 2000 from Harvard University
and was a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. Sharifa is writing a trilogy
on African-Americans and utopia; her first book, Harlem is Nowhere, was
published in January 2011 by Little, Brown & Company and in August 2011 by
Granta Books (UK). It was named to The New York Times list of 100 Notable
Books for 2011.
Lia
Purpura
Thursday, April 5,
6:00p.m.
Alexandroff Center Lecture Hall,
600 South Michigan Ave., Room 921
LIA PURPURA is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays, Sarabande Books, January 2012). Her awards include Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for the essay collection On Looking), NEA and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, work in Best American Essays, 2011, the AWP Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley award in Poetry. Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is Writer in Residence at Loyola University, Baltimore, MD and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.
Robin
Hemley
Tuesday, April 17,
5:30p.m.
Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash, Room
109
ROBIN HEMLEY is the author of eight books of nonfiction and fiction and the winner of many awards including a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from the Chicago Tribune, The Story Magazine Humor Prize, an Independent Press Book Award, two Pushcart Prizes and many others. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction has sold over 60,000 copies in its lifetime. His third collection of short stories, Reply All, is forthcoming in 2012 from Indiana University Press (Break Away Books) and The University of Georgia Press will publish his book A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel, also in 2012. He is a Senior Editor of The Iowa Review as well as the editor of a popular online journal, Defunct (Defunctmag.com). He currently directs the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa and is the founder and organizer of NonfictioNow a biennial conference that will convene in November 2012 in Melbourne, Australia.
