FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 20, 2008
From Butler University
2008-2009 Visiting Writers Series Lineup Announced
INDIANAPOLIS – Novelists T.C. Boyle and David Foster Wallace and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic are among 13 authors who will speak at Butler University as part of the 2008-2009 Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series.
The series begins Sept. 16 with poet Frank Bidart, followed by Sherman Alexie (Sept. 29), Thomas Lux (Oct. 8), Lan Samantha Chang (Oct. 30), Honor Moore (Nov. 10), Chris Forhan (Dec. 3), April Bernard (Feb. 3), David Foster Wallace (Feb. 16), Elizabeth Alexander (Feb. 26), Mark Kurlansky (March 2), Charles Simic (March 19), Jane Hamilton (March 23) and T.C. Boyle (April 1).
All events are free and open to the public; no tickets are required. For more information, call (317) 940-9861 or check this link:
Butler University's Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series for 2008-09More information about each author follows.
Frank Bidart, poet
7:30 p.m. Sept. 16
Robertson Hall Johnson Room
Frank Bidart serves as this year’s first writer-in-residence at Butler, staying for several days to read and meet with students. Bidart, born in Bakersfield, California, is one of our most acclaimed poets, whose honors include the Wallace Stevens Award and the 2007 Bollingen Prize for Poetry.
His books include In the
Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90,
Desire, Music Like Dirt,
Star Dust and the recent
Watching the Spring Festival. He is also the co-editor of the Collected Poems of Robert Lowell, a poet who, along with Elizabeth Bishop, was an early teacher and important influence. Bidart lives in Cambridge, Mass., and has taught at Wellesley College since 1972.
Dave Isay, novelist
7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 22
Clowes Hall
Sponsored by Pearson Eduction
Sherman Alexie
7:30 p.m. Sept. 29
Reilly Room
Sherman Alexie is the author of 17 books of fiction, poetry and screenplays, including
The Business of Fancydancing. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Wash., where his decision to attend a high school off the reservation has informed much of his work, particularly his young-adult novel,
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award in 2007.
Alexie's work and life provide a bridge between Native American culture and the larger American culture that contains it. And yet cultural labels don't even begin to express the scope of his delightful talent.
Thomas Lux , poet
7:30 p.m. Oct. 8
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Thomas Lux has been publishing books of his poetry since
The Land Sighted in 1970. His most recent volume,
God Particles: Poems, is his eleventh.
Lux has taught at Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College and the universities of Iowa, Michigan and California at Irvine. He has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and has received three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He currently holds the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech.
Lan Samantha Chang ,novelist
7:30 p.m. Oct. 30
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of two works of fiction,
Hunger (1998) and
Inheritance (2004). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work and is currently the director of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, a job that she is qualified for not only because of her standing in the literary community but also because of her master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.
Honor Moore, poet
7:30 p.m. Nov. 10
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall or Atherton Union Reilly Room (check this)
Honor Moore is the author of five books of poetry and nonfiction that have earned her a Guggenheim award and an NEA grant. Her most recent memoir,
The Bishop's Daughter, chronicles her relationship with her father, who was for two decades the Episcopal Bishop of New York. Moore is also – welcome home! – a graduate of Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.
Her collections of poems include
Red Shoes (2005),
Darling (2001) and
Memoir (1988), and she is the author of a biography,
The White Blackbird, A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter (1996), which was a New York Times Notable Book.
Chris Forhan, poet
7:30 p.m. Dec. 3
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
The only writer among this year’s Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers who is not truly visiting, Chris Forhan is in his second year as an assistant professor of English at Butler University. Born and raised in Seattle, Forhan is the author of the poetry collections
The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars, which won the Morse Poetry Prize and a Washington State Book Award, and
Forgive Us Our Happiness, which won the Bakeless Prize.
He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and his poems appear in this year’s editions of the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.
April Bernard, poet
Feb. 3, 2009
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
April Bernard, visiting Butler in February as a writer-in-residence, is the author of four collections of poetry:
Blackbird Bye Bye, which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets;
Psalms;
Swan Electric; and, due out this spring,
In a Stolen Boat.
She is also an accomplished writer of prose, having published a novel, Pirate Jenny, and essays and reviews in numerous magazines, including The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Nation and Vanity Fair. She teaches at Bennington College and in the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars.
CANCELED: David Foster Wallace, novelist
7:30 p.m. Feb. 16, 2009
Clowes Hall Krannert RoomDavid Foster Wallace is the author of 11 books of fiction and non-fiction. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award, and he is currently the Roy E. Disney Endowed Professor of Creative Writing at Pomona College.
Perhaps best known for his American-culture-devouring novel
Infinite Jest, Wallace is also beloved for his quirky and always-surprising nonfiction on topics as diverse as lobsters (
Consider the Lobster, 2005), cruise ships (A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, 1997), and even John McCain (
McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express With John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope, 2008).
To quote from the biography on his Web site: “Topics covered in Wallace's work are wide ranging, but he seems to have a special interest in American culture, addictions and excess. Ironically, because of his edgy body of work and his public persona, DFW has gained a cult following and become somewhat of a celebrity himself.”
Elizabeth Alexander, poet
7:30 p.m. Feb. 26, 2009
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Elizabeth Alexander is the author of four collections of poetry:
The Venus Hottentot;
Body of Life;
Antebellum Dream Book; and
American Sublime, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has also published a collection of critical essays, The Black Interior, and has won numerous prizes, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Born in New York City and raised in Washington, D.C., Alexander is currently professor of African-American studies at Yale University.
Mark Kurlansky, novelist
7:30 p.m. March 2, 2009
TBD
The author of 14 books of nonfiction and fiction, Mark Kurlansky is not only world-renowned for his expert investigations of seemingly odd topics – like cod or salt or the year 1968 – but is also a 1970 graduate of Butler University.
His 1997 book
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, an international bestseller that was translated into more than 15 languages, helped define (and perhaps even invent) a journalistic form by investigating a small piece of culture to reveal a new understanding of the entire culture. Cod received the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing and the Glenfiddich 1999 Food and Drink Award for Best Book, and it was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the Best Books of 1997.
Kurlansky worked as a professional chef and pastry maker in New York and New England and currently writes a regular column about food history for Food & Wine magazine. He recently transformed 25 years’ experience reporting on international affairs and covering the Caribbean into a collection of short stories and a novella titled
The White Man in the Tree.
Charles Simic, poet
7:30 p.m. March 19, 2009
TBD
Charles Simic, who served last year as the United States’ 15th poet laureate, is one of the nation’s most honored and distinguished poets. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1938, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1954. Over the last few decades, he has published dozens of books of poetry and prose, including
Selected Poems: 1963-1983;
The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems;
The World Doesn’t End, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and, in the past year, his most recent volume of poetry,
That Little Something, and a collection of notebook entries,
The Monster Loves His Labyrinth.
Simic has been prolific not just as a poet but as an editor, translator, and reviewer, and he has received numerous awards, including Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts and MacArthur fellowships, and, in 2007, the Wallace Stevens Award. He lives in Strafford, N.H., and is emeritus professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.
Jane Hamilton
7:30 p.m. March 23, 2009
TBD
The novelist Jane Hamilton has been honored by institutions as diverse as the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Wisconsin Library Association and Oprah's Book Club. This cornucopia of accolades speaks for the power of her five best-selling books:
The Book of Ruth (1988);
A Map of the World (1994);
The Short History of a Prince (1998); D
isobedience (2000); and
When Madeline Was Young (2006).
All of her books are set, at least in part, in Wisconsin, where she lives and writes in an orchard farmhouse.
T.C. Boyle, novelist
7:30 p.m. April 1, 2009
Krannert Room
T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of 19 books of fiction, including, most recently,
The Inner Circle (2004),
Tooth and Claw (2005) and
Talk Talk (2006). A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Boyle has also earned a Ph.D. in 19th century British literature. Among the many awards he has received for his work are the Guggenheim, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Prose Excellence.
Boyle has been a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California since 1978.
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