Spring 2013 Living Writers Series

March 03, 2013

April 4 Tupelo Hassman

Tupelo Hassman is the author of the novel Girlchild (FSG 2012). "It takes real talent to make something beautiful out of a trailer park. Girlchild, Tupelo Hassman’s lacerating debut novel, is the story of Rory Dawn Hendrix, a young girl growing up in the Calle, a cluster of mobile homes on a plot of dust outside Reno, Nevada. Ms. Hassman is such a poised storyteller that her prose practically struts. Her words are as elegant as they are fierce." --The New York Times 

April 11 Justin Torres

Justin Torres, author of We The Animals, was a finalist for the 2012 Indies Choice Book Awards, winner of a National Book Award for 5 under 35, and named one of Salon's "Sexiest Men of 2011." His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is a recipient of the Rolón United States Artist Fellowship in Literature, and is now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Vanity Fair writes that We The Animals is "A gorgeous, howling coming-of-age novel that will devour your heart."

April 18 Patrick DeWitt

Patrick DeWitt is the author of The Sisters Brothers, finalist for the Man Booker Prize. "If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick DeWitt's bloody, darkly funny western." --The Los Angeles Times.

April 25 Brenda Shaughnessy, co-sponsored with CRES

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of the poetry collections, Our Andromeda (2012),  Human Dark with Sugar (2008), which was a finalist for the 2008 NBCC Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (1999).  Her poems have appeared in Harpers, McSweeney’s, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review,Slate.com and elsewhere.  She is Poetry Editor-At-Large at Tin House Magazine, and is Assistant Professor of English and in the M.F.A. Program at Rutgers-Newark.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and daughter.

May 2 Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler, author of six novels and three short story collections. The Jane Austen Book Club spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was  a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, was a New York Times Notable Book, as was her second novel, The Sweetheart Season. In addition, Sarah Canary won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, and was short-listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize. Fowler’s short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn't See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. 

May 9 Elizabeth Graver

Elizabeth Graver’s new novel, The End of the Point, set in a summer community on Buzzard’s Bay from 1942 to 1999, is forthcoming from Harper Collins in Spring, 2013. She is the author of three other novels: AwakeThe Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in BestAmerican Short Stories (1991, 2001); Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards (1994, 1996, 2001),The Pushcart Prize Anthology (2001), and Best American Essays(1998). 

May 23  Lauren Shufran, Tsering Wangmo, and Juliana Leslie

Lauren Shufran is the winner of The Motherwell Prize.  Her poetry collection Inter Arma will be published be Fence Books in Spring, 2013.

Tsering Wangmo's first book of poems, Rules of the House, was published by Apogee Press in 2002 was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards in 2003. Other publications include My Rice Tastes Like the Lake (Apogee Press 2011) and In the Absent Everyday (also from Apogee Press). A book of creative non-fiction will soon be published in India from Penguin.

Juliana Leslie's first book, More Radiant Signal, came out in 2010 from Letter Machine Editions. Her second book of poetry, Green Is For World, winner of the National Poetry Series, will be published this year by Coffee House Press.

May 30 George Estreich

George Estreich is a poet and the author of the memoir, The Shape of The Eye, winner of the Oregon Book Award.“The Shape of the Eye is a memoir of a father’s love for his daughter, his struggle to understand her disability, and his journey toward embracing her power and depth.  Estreich is raw and honest and draws us each into a new view of what it means to be 'human’ and what it means to be ‘different’.  This book is beautifully written, poetically insightful, and personally transformative. To read it is to rethink everything and to be happy because of the journey.” --Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Special Olympics

June 6 Student Reading