Visiting Writer series continues at Prout Chapel tonight

Two visiting writers will read from their recent work tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Prout Chapel as part of the Creative Writing program’s Fall reading series. Neela Banerjee and Kazim Ali are both contributors to the recently anthology Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry.

Kazim Ali is author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books), winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award, and The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions). He is also the author of the novel Quinn’s Passage (blazeVox books), named one of the Best Books of 2005 by Chronogram magazine, The Disappearance of Seth (Etruscan Press), and Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press). He is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.

Neela Banerjee‘s work has appeared in The Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Nimrod, and the anthology, Desilicious. She teaches creative writing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and with WritersCorps. For over five years, she helped young people tell their own stories at YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia. She is an editor and blogger with the Asian American magazine Hyphen, where she now oversees the semi-annual Short Story contest.

Creative Writing alumni reading at Prout Chapel

Four alumni of the Creative Writing program will gather to read from their recent work tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Prout Chapel. All four are contributors to the recently released anthology The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice.

John Bradley is the author of Love-In-Idleness: The Poetry of Roberto Zingarello (Word Works), Terrestrial Music (Curbstone), and War on Words (BlazeVOX). He edited Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (Coffee House), Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader (University of Arizona Press), and Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (Backwaters Press). He teaches at Northern Illinois University and lives in DeKalb, Illinois, with his wife, Jana, and their cats, Kiki and Zuzu.

Born in Belencito, Colombia in 1961, Maurice Kilwein Guevara grew up in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has published four collections of poetry, two of which, Postmortem (1994) and Autobiography of So-and-S Poems in Prose (2001), trace his early experiences en route from Colombia to Pennsylvania. Guevara is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he teaches graduate-level courses in creative writing and Latino studies. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines.

Gary L. McDowell is author of the forthcoming poetry collection, American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Orphic Prize, and two chapbooks, They Speak of Fruit (Copper Dillon Books, 2009) and The Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005). He is a doctoral candidate at Western Michigan University.

F. Daniel Rzicznek’s poetry collections include Divination Machine (Parlor Press, forthcoming in late 2009), Neck of the World (Utah State University Press, 2007) and Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press, 2006). Rzicznek teaches at Bowling Green State University.

Welcome to Distinguished Visiting Writer Josh Weil!

We are very pleased to announce that Josh Weil is the Spring 2011 Creative Writing Distinguished Visiting Writer in fiction.

Josh has an M.F.A. from Columbia University and is the author of the critically acclaimed book The New Valley, a collection of three novellas, published by the highly regarded Grove Press. The New York Times selected the book for a featured review and named it an Editor’s Choice. The National Book Foundation, sponsors of the National Book Award, selected Josh’s novel for its “5 Under 35” Award, an award given for the five best books of fiction by authors under 35. The book also received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and received the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award.

In addition to teaching graduate and undergraduate workshops, Josh will be reading his work and giving a public lecture at Prout. Josh has expressed further interests in participating in theater, film, and visual arts at BGSU as well as assisting in editing the Mid-American Review.

Culture Club Presents “Serial Mom” (1994)

“Tuesdays at the Gish,” a film series sponsored by The Culture Club, in association with the University Film Organization, kicks off tonight (Tuesday September 14) with a screening of John Water’s 1994 film Serial Mom.

The screening begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Gish Film Theater in Hanna Hall.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson reads at Prout Chapel

Poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson will read tonight (Thursday, 7:30p.m.) at Prout Chapel as part of the Creative Writing program’s continuing Fall reading series.

Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of five books, most recently Selenography. He has also edited two anthologies for University of Iowa Press, including Poets on Teaching, due out fall 2010. A tour documentary about the band Califone, entitled Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape, is also forthcoming. He lives in Andersonville and teaches at Loyola University Chicago.

Institute for the Study of Culture and Society presents first talk in the Artists and Scholars in Residence Lecture Series for 2010-2011