Spring 2008 Reading Series

Cornell's creative writing program is pleased to announce its Spring 2008 Reading Series. All events are free and open to the public.

Go to the new Writers at Cornell blog to listen to J.Robert Lennon’s interviews with our visiting writers: http://writersatcornell.blogspot.com/

February 15, Friday: Denis Johnson, Fiction Writer

Mark Doty, Poet and Nonfiction Writer

Paul Lisicky, Fiction Writer

7:30 pm, Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall

Denis Johnson is the author of several novels, plays, and volumes of verse. His latest novel, Tree of Smoke, won the 2007 National Book Award for fiction.

Mark Doty's new book, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming by HarperCollins this spring, and includes work from his seven previous collections. He is also the author of three memoirs, most recently Dog Years, a New York Times bestseller, and a book-length essay, Still Life with Oyster and Lemon.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Short Takes, Open House, Boulevard, Flash Fiction, and many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he's the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. He lives in New York City, and has taught at Cornell University, NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, Antioch University-Los Angeles, The University of Houston, and The Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A new novel, Lumina Harbor, is forthcoming.

This event is made possible by the generosity of two anonymous donors who are alumni of Cornell University.

February 28, Thursday: Sarah Mkhonza, Fiction Writer

4:30 pm, Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith

Sarah Mkhonza is a writer activist and professor of English from the University of Swaziland. She has published, two novels, short stories and poetry. Her first novel, Pains of a Maid won the Boleswa award for Southern Africa. She has taught at Saint Mary’s College and Michigan State. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University. She believes that textual intervention is a good method for writers to use in getting involved in creating understanding of issues. She believes that texts that express issues of women and children are necessary for society to understand itself.

This event is made possible by the generosity of two anonymous donors who are alumni of Cornell University.

March 27, Thursday: The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading

Ernesto Quiñonez, Fiction Writer

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Poet

J. Robert Lennon, Fiction Writer

4:30 pm, Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith

Ernesto Quiñonez is the author of the novels Bodega Dreams (Vintage) and Chango's Fire (Harpercollins). His work has been published in various magazines and periodicals. Quiñonez teaches at Cornell University.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Black Swan (University of Pittsburgh Press), winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in journals such as African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, and Shenandoah, as well as the anthologies Bum Rush the Page, Role Call, Common Wealth, Gathering Ground, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. She teaches at Cornell University and is currently at work on a second collection, Open Interval.

John Robert Lennon is the author of five novels, including Mailman and Happyland, and a collection of short stories. Lennon teaches at Cornell University. He is also a musician and composer.

April 10, Thursday: Alison Bechdel, Graphic Novelist

7:30 pm, Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith

Since its inception in 1983, Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For has become a countercultural institution. The strip is syndicated in dozens of newspapers, translated into several languages and collected in a series of award-winning books. Utne magazine has listed DTWOF as “one of the greatest hits of the twentieth century.” And Comics Journal says, “Bechdel’s art distills the pleasures of Friends and The Nation; we recognize our world in it, with its sorrows and ironies.”

In addition to her comic strip, Bechdel has also done exclusive work for a slew of publications, including Ms., Slate, the Advocate, and many other newspapers, websites, comic books, and ‘zines.

In 2006, Houghton Mifflin published her graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. The bestselling coming-of-age tale has been called a “mesmerizing feat of familial resurrection” and a “rare, prime example of why graphic novels have taken over the conversation about American literature.”

Bechdel lives near Burlington, Vermont.

This event is made possible by the generosity of two anonymous donors who are alumni of Cornell University.

Co-sponsored by Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program and Africana Studies & Research Center.

April 24, Thursday: The Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading

Eavan Boland, Poet

7:30 pm, Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1944, and educated in London, New York, and Dublin. She has taught at Trinity College, University College, and Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her books of poetry include Against Love Poems, The Lost Land, An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987, In a Time of Violence, Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990, The Journey and Other Poems, Night Feed, and In Her Own Image. In addition to her books of poetry, Boland is also the author of Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time, a volume of prose, and co-editor of The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. A regular reviewer for the Irish Times, she is a professor of English at Stanford University.

For more information about the Spring 2008 Reading Series or about on-campus parking, contact Laurel Guy at lrg29@cornell.edu or call 607.255.6800.