2012 Writers Series
The University of Richmond’s Department of English has announced that it will bring five writers to campus during the 2012 fall seemster for its annual Writers Series. The series is designed to expose Richmond students and the greater university community to living writers. The readings and talks are always free and open to the general public. Most writers make themselves available, following their appearance, to answer questions from the audience and sign copies of their books.
Lydia Millet
Wednesday, September 26, 7 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Lydia Millet is the author of seven novels as well as a story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys, which was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Her novels include Ghost Lights; Oh Pure and Radiant Heart; Everyone’s Pretty; George Bush, Dark Prince of Love; Omnivores; and My Happy Life, which won the 2003 PEN-USA Award. Known for offbeat and sometimes dark satire, her fiction ranges across a variety of locales and subjects: nuclear proliferation, coming-of-age in Los Angeles, the mental health industry, and trailer-park residents infatuated with Republican presidents. Her latest novel, Magnificence, will be published in fall 2012. She presently works as an editor and writer at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group devoted to endangered-species protection.
Mike Czyzniejewski
Wednesday, October 3, 7 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Mike Czyzniejewski is the author of two short-story collections, Elephants in Our Bedroom and Chicago Stories, 40 brief narratives told from the perspective of people that made the city famous. An NEA-grant recipient, he has received various awards for his fiction, including a Pushcart Prize. For 12 years, he was editor-in-chief of the literary quarterly, Mid-American Review, a tenure during which the magazine was repeatedly recognized by top annual-prize anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and others. He is presently a professor of creative writing at Missouri State University.
Richard McCann
October 10, 7 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Richard McCann is the author of Mother of Sorrows, a work of fiction, and Ghost Letters, a collection of poems which won the 1994 Beatrice Hawley Award. He also is the editor, with Michael Klein, of Things Shaped in Passing: More 'Poets for Life' Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in such magazines as The Atlantic, Ms., Esquire, Ploughshares, Tin House, and the Washington Post Magazine, and in numerous anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 and Best American Essays 2000. A grant recipient from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, he teaches in the MFA Program at American University and is presently working on a memoir, The Resurrectionist, a narrative consideration of his experience as a liver transplant recipient.
John D’Agata
Wednesday, October 17, 7 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
John D'Agata’s works include Halls of Fame and About a Mountain, a book-length lyric essay about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository near Las Vegas. His most recent book, The Lifespan of a Fact (co-authored with Jim Fingal), uses a conversation between essayist and fact-checker to explore the sometimes ambiguous relationship between artistic truth and worldly reality. Also an editor, he has produced anthologies, The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay, that have quickly become staples in the field of creative writing. He presently teaches in the nonfiction MFA program at the University of Iowa.
Ben Marcus
October 24, 7 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Ben Marcus is the author of four books of fiction, most recently The Flame Alphabet, a novel in which the sound of children’s speech has become lethal to their parents. Widely regarded as one of the most-gifted, formally innovative writers in America, his stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in such publications as Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, McSweeney's, and Time. A recipient of awards from the NEA, the Whiting Institute, and the Creative Capital Foundation, he has received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and been thrice-anthologized in the Pushcart Prizes. He is presently an Associate Professor at Columbia University.