2011-2012 Reading Series

Thursday, September 8
ALEX SHAKAR
7:00 pm BOOKPEOPLE, W. 6th & N. Lamar

An alum of UT and former Michener Fellow, Alex will read from his new novel, Luminarium, “a penetrating look at the uneasy intersection of technology and spirituality” (Publishers Weekly).  His earlier work includes the National Fiction Competition-winning stories City in Love and the New York Times notable book, Savage Girl.  He teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Thursday, October 13
JENNIFER EGAN
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Jennifer Egan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Her other works include The Invisible Circus, which was released as a feature film by Fine Line in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, Look at Me, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2001, and the bestselling The Keep.

Thursday, November 3
SAM TANENHAUS
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Journalist, biographer, and editor The New York Times Book Review Tanenhaus will give a lecture, “Does the Novel Still Matter?”
Tanenhaus is the author of The Death of Conservatism and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominated biography of Whittaker Chambers.

Wednesday, November 30
JOSEPH SKIBELL & NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Fall 2011 Visiting Professors of the MCW.  Nye’s over 30 books of poetry and prose include 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Words Under the Words, Never in a Hurry, Red Suitcase, Fuel, and You & Yours.  Skibell, a 1996 alum of the program, is the author of A Curable Romantic, winner of the 2011 Sami Rohr Choice Award, A Blessing on the Moon and The English Disease.

Thursday, January 26
MARK STRAND
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Mark Strand is the author of eleven books of poems, as well as a collection of short stories and several volumes of translations, anthologies, and monographs. He has received many honors and awards for his poems, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for Blizzard of One), and the Bollingen Prize. In 1990 he was chosen Poet Laureate of the United States.

Thursday, February 9
ALLAN GURGANUS
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Novelist and short story writer Gurganus is the Spring 2012 Michener Residency Author and will be here three weeks in late January and early February to conduct a seminar with fiction students.  His books include White People, The Practical Heart, Plays Well with Others, and The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.

Thursday, March 22
SHERRY KRAMER
7:30 pm Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

Kramer’s plays have been produced at theatres nationwide and abroad.  They include David’s RedHaired Death, The Mad Master, When Something Wonderful Ends, The Ruling Passion,  Things That Break, What A Man Weighs, The World at Absolute Zero, and The Wall of Water.  She was the first national member of New Dramatists and a core member of the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis and teaches on the permanent faculty at Bennington College.

Thursday, March 29
ANTHONY GIARDINA
7:00 pm BOOKPEOPLE, W. 6th & N. Lamar

Anthony Giardina, a frequent visiting professor of the MCW, will read from his new novel, Norumbega Park, coming out in March from Farrar, Straus, Giroux.  He is the author of four previous novels—Men With Debts, A Boy’s Pretensions, Recent History and White Guys—and a collection of short stories, The Country of Marriage, and is a regular contributor of essays and short fiction for GQ, Harper’s, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. His plays have also been widely produced at regional theatres around the U.S.

Thursday, April 12
BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY & GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI
7:30 pm Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Auditorium

Visiting poets for MCW and the Dept of English.  Kelly’s books are To the Place of Trumpets, 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets; Song, winner of the 1994 Lamont Poetry Prize; and The Orchard, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer.  Calvocoressi’s collections are The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and Apocalyptic Swing.  She has received a Stegner fellowship, a Jones Lectureship at Stanford and a Rona Jaffe Woman Writers’ Award, among other honors.

Friday, May 4
Spring 2012 Graduating MFA Class
7:00 pm (opening reception, with 7:30 reading), Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 on campus

The graduating MFA class of fiction writers, poets, playwrights and screenwriters will read from their work: Mimi Chubb, Gabriel Dean, Carolina Ebeid, Kate Finlinson, Shamala Gallagher, Diana Grisanti, Amanda Haag, Fiona McFarlane, Leanna Petronella, Kevin Powers, Virginia Reeves, Ben Roberts, and Brian Van Reet