Creative Writing Events 2021-2022
Thursday, October 21st at 7pm:
Closs Writer-in-Residence Reading and Q&A: MAAZA MENGISTE
Maaza Mengiste is the author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and a recipient of the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Literature, as well as a LA Times Books Prize finalist. It was named a Best Book of 2019 by New York Times, NPR, Time, Elle, and other publications. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, her debut, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books.
This event will be held on Zoom. Please register in advance here:
https://lafayette.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtc-2vqzMpHdxZTyXzgu8RwipRm… After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Wednesday, February 9th at 4:10pm:
Flash Fiction Reading: Cara Blue Adams and Student Winners
Cara Blue Adams is the author of You Never Get It Back, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize in the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series. She has published over twenty stories in leading magazines, including Granta, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, The Sun, The Missouri Review, The Mississippi Review, Story, and Narrative, which named her one of their “15 Below 30.” Stories in You Never Get It Back have been awarded the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, judged by Alice Hoffman, the Missouri Review Peden Prize, judged by Jessica Francis Kane, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, awarded by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.
A 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, Cara has been awarded support by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation on the Arts.
Sponsored by: Department of English
Wednesday, March 9th at 4:10pm:
Jean Corrie Poetry Reading: Paul Tran and Student Winners
Paul Tran is a Visiting Faculty in Poetry at Pacific University MFA in Writing and a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. A recipient of the Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, their work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere.
Paul earned their B.A. in history from Brown University and M.F.A. in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, where they won the Howard Nemerov Prize, Dorothy Negri Prize, and Norma Lowry Memorial Award. As the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow (2017-19) and Senior Poetry Fellow (2019-20) in the Writing Program, and as Faculty in Poetry (2020-Present) in the Summer Writers Institute, Paul has taught the introductory, intermediate, and advanced poetry workshops at WashU.
From 2013-18, Paul coached the poetry slam teams at Brown University, Barnard College & Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Paul was the first Asian American since 1993—and first transgender poet ever—to win the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam, placing top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam. A two-time winner of the Rustbelt Poetry Slam, Paul has served as Poet-in-Residence at Urban Word NYC and head poetry slam coach at Urban Arts Alliance in St. Louis, which won the Brave New Voices Grand Slam Championship in 2019.
For their writing and teaching, Paul has received support from Kundiman, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Poets House, Lambda Literary Foundation, Napa Valley Writers Conference, the Home School, Vermont Studio Center, the Conversation Literary Festival, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Miami Writers Institute, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Eliza So Fellowship (from Submittable, Plympton, and the Writer’s Block), Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network & Djerrasi Artist Residency, the Soze Foundation, the Luminary & Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sponsored by: Department of English, Africana Studies Program, and the Office of Intercultural Development
Tuesday, April 19th at 7pm:
H. MacKnight Black Poetry Reading: Donika Kelly and Student Winners
Donika Kelly is the author of THE RENUNCIATIONS (Graywolf 2021) and BESTIARY (Graywolf). BESTIARY is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The collection was also long listed for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, Donika has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic online, The Paris Review, and Foglifter. She currently lives in Iowa City and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.
Sponsored by: Department of English, Africana Studies Program, and the Office of Intercultural Development