CLA Reading Series

The Center for the Literary Arts sponsors an annual Distingushed Writers Reading Series, a program through which internationally known writers deliver readings and lectures that are generally followed by a book signing. Included in this series is the John William Proctor Distinguished Author Reading, an annual event made possible by the family of John William Proctor who established an endowment in his memory. All events are free and open to the public.

Past Visitors
John Updike, Wole Soyinka, Joan Didion, Peter Carey, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Oliver Sacks, Mark Strand, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Levine, Terry Tempest Williams, Charles Simic, Charles Wright, and Elaine Pagels.

September 18, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Union

Timothy Seibles

Timothy Seibles is the author of several books of poems including Hurdy-Gurdy; Hammerlock; and, most recently, Buffalo Head Solos. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he was also awarded the Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City.His work has been featured in anthologies such as Manthology; Rainbow Darkness; Evensong; The Autumn House Anthology, and Under the Rock Umbrella. He is a member of Old Dominion University’s English Department and MFA in writing faculty.

October 2, 2008| 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Union

Ibtisam Barakat
CLA Reading Series

Ibtisam Barakat is the author of Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), winner of the International Reading Association Best Non-Fiction Book for Young Adults, 2008, and the Middle East Outreach Council's Best Literature Award. It also has been named an International Reading Association Notable Book for a Global Society, an NCSS-CBC Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, an American Library Association Notable Book (2008), and was named one of Top 10 best non-fiction books by Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal and Booklist where it was also an Editor’s Choice book.

November 13, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. |Reynolds Alumni Center

Richard Rodriguez
John William Proctor Distinguished Author

One of America’s most important essayists and a master of the “personal essay,” Richard Rodriguez is the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father; and Brown: The Last Discovery of America. As a journalist, he worked for over two decades for the Pacific News Service in San Francisco and has also been a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and the Sunday “Opinion” section of the Los Angeles Times. He has for more than 10 years appeared as an essayist on “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.” The recipient of a George Peabody Award, he has also received the Frankel Medal (now renamed “The National Humanities Medal), the highest honor the federal government gives to recognize work done in the humanities. He is visiting MU as the John William Proctor Distinguished Author.

February 5, 2009 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center

Benjamin Michael Percy
CLA Reading Series

Benjamin Percy is the author of a novel, The Wilding (forthcoming from Graywolf in 2009), and two books of short stories, Refresh, Refresh, and The Language of Elk. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Glimmer Train, Paris Review, and many other publications. He teaches in the MFA program at Iowa State University.

February 19, 2009 | 7:30 p.m |

Seido Ray Ronci
CLA Reading Series

Seido Ray Ronci’s most recent collection of poetry is This Rented Body published in 2006. A new collection of poems is forthcoming from Ausable Press in the fall of 2008: "The Skeleton of The Crow -- New and Selected Poems: 1978—2008." He is an ordained Rinzai Zen monk, the director of Hokoku-An Zendo in Columbia, faculty advisor for the MU Buddhist Association, and an assistant teaching professor in the English Department at MU.