Calendar of Events

The Center for the Literary Arts and the Program in Creative Writing
2007-2008 Calendar of Events

All events are free and open to the public
calendar (pdf)

September 24, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Hall Auditorium

Wole Soyinka
John William Proctor Distinguished Author

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, many critics consider Wole Soyinka to be Africa’s finest writer. As a playwright, poet, and novelist his vision comes to us through a stunning corpus that chronicles Africa’s political turmoil and its struggle to reconcile tradition with modernization. The author of more than seventeen plays, Soyinka has also published several collections of poems, three novels, two memoirs, and several works of literary criticism. He has held positions at Yale, Cornell, Cambridge, Harvard and Emory University, among others. He is visiting MU as the John William Proctor Distinguished Author.

September 26, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | A.P. Green Chapel, Memorial Union

Joshua Kryah
CLA Reading Series

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Joshya Kryah received a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, and Verse, among others. He is the poetry editor for Witness. His first book is Glean.
 

October 17 - 21, 2007 | Bret Lott Fiction Residency

Reading: October 18, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center
Lecture:  October 19, 2007 | 4:00 p.m. | location to be determined

Bret Lott
Fiction Residency

Bret Lott is the author of the novels Jewel (an Oprah’s Books Club selection), Reed's Beach, A Stranger's House, and The Man Who Owned Vermont; the story collections How to Get Home and A Dream of Old Leaves; and the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, among them, The Yale Review, The Iowa Review, the Chicago Tribune, and Story, and have been widely anthologized. Editor of The Southern Review, he teaches at the College of Charleston.

November 8, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Union

Phillip Lopate
CLA Reading Series

Phillip Lopate is the author of three essay collections: Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body; two novels, Confessions of Summer and The Rug Merchant; two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round; as well as a memoir of his experiences working with the creative arts with children, Being With Children. He currently holds the Adams Chair at Hofstra University, where he is Professor of English.

November 29, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | A.P. Green Chapel, Memorial Union

Raza Ali Hasan
CLA Reading Series

Raza Ali Hasan was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and grew up in Indonesia and Islamabad, Pakistan. His poems have appeared in Agni, Tampa Review, Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol and Poetry International. He has a B.A. in Computer Science and an M.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University. He is the author of one collection of poetry, Grieving Shias.
Photo Credit: Laura Winkiel

February 20, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center

Terrance Hayes
CLA Reading Series

Terrance Hayes is the author of Wind in a Box, Hip Logic, and Muscular Music. He has been the recipient of a number of honors, including a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, a National Poetry Series Award, and an NEA Fellowship. Currently he teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.
 

March 12-16, 2008 | HeatherMcHugh Poetry Residency

Reading: March 13, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center
Lecture:  March 14, 2007 | 4:00 p.m. | location to be determined

Heather McHugh
Poetry Residency

Heather McHugh is the author of several books of poetry and literary essays, including The Father of the Predicaments; Shades, To the Quick, A World of Difference, and Dangers. In 1993, she published Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993, which was a National Book Award finalist, winner of the Pollock/Harvard Book Review prize in 1994. She is the Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington, Seattle.

March 20, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center

Major Jackson
CLA Reading Series

Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry Hoops (W.W.Norton: 2006) and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia: 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Callaloo, Post Road, Triquarterly, The New Yorker, among other literary journals and anthologies. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Vermont and a faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Image Credit: Marion Ettlinger