Next Up - Julia Elliott

Fiction writer Julia Elliott makes her first appearance in the UMaine New Writing Series on 10 April 2008 at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium (Jenness Hall). Like all NWS events, this one is free & open to the public (though seating is limited).

JULIA ELLIOTT’s fictions have appeared in Conjunctions, Tin House, The Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, The Mississippi Review, 3rd Bed, Fence, Black Warrior Review, and other print and online publications.

An instructor in English and Women’s Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Elliott holds a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and an MFA in English from Penn State University.

Besides appearing as one of the dramatis personae in Paul West’s teaching memoir Master Class: Scenes from a Fiction Workshop (Harcourt, 2001), Elliott’s honors and awards include being published in Best American Fantasy 2007 (Plume Books); listed in “The Hugo Awards that Weren’t”; included in StorySouth’s Million Writer’s Award, Notable Stories of 2004 (“the top online short stories of 2004”); listed as “Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2002” in Dave Eggers’ series The Best American Nonrequired Reading; and receiving the Great American Novel Award in the Virginia Festival of the Book (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities & Tupelo Press, March 2003).

The event will be introduced by Assistant Professor of Creative Writing David Kress.

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Listen to tracks from previous NWS events on UMaine’s iTunes U.
On Facebook? You’re invited to join the NWS group.
Keep track of NWS events via LibraryThing Local.
To learn more about the National Poetry Foundation, visit the new website.
For more about the English Department, which offers Master’s Degrees in Creative Writing and Poetry & Poetics, click here.

Next Up - Rodney Koeneke & Benjamin Friedlander

The UMaine New Writing Series continues this Thursday, 3 April, with a poetry reading by Rodney Koeneke and Benjamin Friedlander at 4:30pm in the Soderberg “cube” (Jenness Hall).

BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER is the author of The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes, Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism, and Time Rations, among many other volumes. He recently edited the Selected Poems of Robert Creeley for the University of California Press. Friedlander is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maine and a member of the National Poetry Foundation editorial collective. Read more about him here.

RODNEY KOENEKE is the author of Rouge State and Musée Mechanique. His new manuscript is called “Etruria.” He lives in Portland with his wife, Lesley Poirier, and their curly-headed son, and tends a blog called Modern Americans. This will be Koeneke’s first appearance in the New Writing Series.

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Listen to tracks from previous NWS events on UMaine’s iTunes U.
On Facebook? You’re invited to join the NWS group.
Keep track of NWS events via LibraryThing Local.
To learn more about the National Poetry Foundation, visit the new website.
For more about the English Department, which offers Master’s Degrees in Creative Writing and Poetry & Poetics, click here.

Up next - Thomas Sayers Ellis

The New Writing Series, in proud partnership with the UMaine Honors College, is pleased to welcome poet Thomas Sayers Ellis to campus for a reading this Wednesday, 26 March, at 4:30pm in the Arthur Hill Auditorium (Barrows Hall). This event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS was born and raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. He co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988 and earned a M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. He has received fellowships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. Mr. Ellis is a contributing editor to Callaloo and Poets and Writers and a frequent contributor to WaxPoetics. In 2005 he was awarded a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’ Award. His first, full collection, The Maverick Room, was published by Graywolf Press in 2005 and awarded The 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award. He is also the author of The Good Junk (Take Three #1, Graywolf 1996); a chapbook The Genuine Negro Hero (Kent State University Press, 2001) and the chaplet Song On (WinteRed Press 2005). Ellis is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A program (Cambridge, Massachusetts). His Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series. For more about Ellis, visit his homepage.

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In addition to bookmarking our blog, we hope you’ll check out the NWS on LibraryThing local here. You can join our Facebook groups here (global) and here (local).

Next Up - Eléna Rivera & Jennifer Moxley

Poets Eléna Rivera and Jennifer Moxley will read on Thursday, 20 March, at 4:30pm in the Cube.

NWS Coverage in the Maine Campus

Benjamin Costanzi offers his take on the first NWS event of the season, a Valentine’s day reading by Mel Nichols and Rod Smith, in his article “D.C. Poets Deliver ‘Pope My Ride.’”

And Kyle Kernan gives an account of last Thursday’s Grady Awards reading here.

Our thanks to the Maine Campus for keeping the NWS on its style beat!

Up Next - Stephen Cope & Catherine Taylor

The spring NWS continues this Thursday with an afternoon reading and evening conversation featuring Catherine Taylor and Stephen Cope. The reading will be at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium. The conversation, which will address questions of genre and editing as well as documentary poetics, with special reference to Cope’s new edition of George Oppen’s prose writing, will begin at 8pm in the Wicks Room, Neville 304. Both are free and open to the public.

Stephen Cope’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Mirage#4:Period(ical), Denver Quarterly, Shark, Sagetrieb, The Germ, Jacket, and elsewhere. In Spring 2001, he served as guest editor of The Review of Contemporary Fiction’s special issue on the work of David Antin. Cope received his PhD in 2005 from the University of California, San Diego, where he was a research fellow at the Archive for New Poetry. He has taught at universities in California, Iowa, and Ohio, and is currently a lecturer in the English Department at Ohio University in Athens as well as a faculty member in Bard College’s Language and Thinking program. His edition of George Oppen’s Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers has just appeared from the University of California Press.

Catherine Taylor is the author of Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives (Penguin Putnam, 2002). She is the editor of /nor: New Ohio Review and publisher of Essay Press, an imprint dedicated to publishing innovative, explorative, and culturally relevant essays in book form. Taylor took her doctorate at Duke University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio University, where her research and teaching interests include documentary poetics, creative nonfiction, experimental writing, and American literary and cultural studies. She is currently at work on “Apart,” a book manuscript that combines documentary materials with the lyric essay in an exploration of family and nation in apartheid-era and contemporary South Africa, the research for which was undertaken while Visiting Professor at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town in 2004 and 2006. Her essays, poetry, and reviews have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Typo, Xantippe, The Colorado Review, The Laurel Review, Jacket, and ActionYes!

Next Up - Grady Awards 2008

Please join us this Thursday, 21 February, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium, as the NWS helps celebrate the achievement of this year’s winners of the Steve Grady Awards in poetry and fiction. The readers (in alphabetical order) will be:

REBECCA GRIFFIN (Graduate, Poetry)
Rebecca Griffin comes to Orono from Somerville, Massachusetts where she worked as an editor for several years. She loves living near her extended family in Orono, and is thrilled to be a frequent attendee of local bean suppers and church fairs. In addition to writing poetry, she enjoys cooking, walking around town, and chasing her cat around her house.

EMILY KOHLER (Graduate, Fiction)
Emily Kohler graduated from Ohio University with a degree in English and a minor in Classical Civilizations. Her interests include kayaks; road trips; Kevin Spacey; Pilot black ink, retractable, fine point pens; and all things Italian. She is a second year teaching assistant in the English department.

KATIE LATTARI (Undergraduate, Fiction)
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, then when I was 8 years old, my family and I moved to Maine and have lived here ever since. I’m a third year English major (creative writing concentration), and I hope to pursue writing in an MFA program after undergrad. I love baseball, guitars, and shoes, and currently live in Winterport, Maine.

STACIA MATTHEWS (Undergraduate, Poetry)
I am a fourth year English major with a concentration in creative writing poetry. I am graduating in May, and plan to take a year off before attending Grad school in 2009 to earn an MFA in creative writing. I enjoy reading and writing when I can find the time, and I love all Boston sports teams, especially the Patriots and the Bruins. Someday I would love to travel to and maybe live in Tuscany, Italy.

NICHOLAS MOHLMANN (Graduate, Poetry)
Nicholas Mohlmann was born and raised in Virginia. He earned a BA in English from George Mason University in 2005. He is currently finishing his second year as a grad student in the English department and will complete his MA in May.

ZACHARY RICHARDS (Graduate, Poetry)
Zachary Richards was born in Ellsworth, Maine on October 3, 1984, and grew up in the small coastal town of Roque Bluffs, Maine. He began attending the University of Maine in September of 2002 and graduated with his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in May of 2006. While an undergraduate he also completed minors in Mathematics and English. He returned to the University of Maine in September of 2006 to pursue a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering.

JENNY SMICK (Undergraduate, Fiction)
I am a senior-year English major (concentration in creative writing). I am passionate about reading, writing and theatre, and sometimes try my hand at playwriting for fun. One of my favorite things to do in my free time is have a good conversation.

MEGAN SODERBERG (Undergraduate, Poetry)
A native of Northern Michigan Megan first came to UMaine as a Marine Biology major, and then sort of took a left turn. She is now a fourth year English Creative Writing major, minoring in Women’s Studies and Film and Video. After graduating she hopes to attend film school (or at least that’s the plan for now), as well as continue writing and studying literature

CLINTON SPAULDING (Graduate, Fiction)
Clinton Spaulding was born in Hartford, Connecticut and moved to Maine as a child where he learned to hunt, fish, and enjoy the wilderness. Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the U.S. living in Arkansas, Massachusetts, and was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas while in the Navy. He is now back in Maine writing poetry and raising two kids free from the clutches of censorship.

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Special thanks to guest judges Edward Desautels (fiction, NWS F’07) & Daniel Bouchard (poetry, NWS S’01 & S’05).

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Next Up - Mel Nichols & Rod Smith

Poets Rod Smith and Mel Nichols kick off this spring’s New Writing Series on Valentine’s Day at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium.

Nichols is the author of Day Poems and The Beginning of Beauty (Part 1: hottest new ringtones mnichol6). You can read more about her here. And see a YouTube clip here.

Rod Smith first read in the NWS in the fall of 2000. You can read about him here. His most recent book, Deed, was reviewed in The Nation in December. He’s on YouTube, too.

Photograph by Benjamin Friedlander

UMaine NWS Spring Season 2008

The UMaine New Writing Series returns for its eighteenth consecutive semester this spring with an exciting line-up featuring poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetics. Please mark your calendar with the following dates:

14 Feb - Mel Nichols & Rod Smith

21 Feb - Grady Award Winners

28 Feb - Stephen Cope & Catherine Taylor

20 Mar - Eléna Rivera & Jennifer Moxley

26 Mar - Thomas Sayers Ellis (Hill Auditorium)

03 Apr - Rodney Koeneke & Benjamin Friedlander

10 Apr - Julia Elliott

29 Apr - Patricia Sithole & Otrude Moyo (Hill Auditorium)

All events are scheduled for 4:30pm at the Soderberg Center Auditorium in Jenness Hall on the University of Maine campus in Orono, Maine (except where otherwise noted). For more information about individual events, keep an eye on this blog.

The New Writing Series began in 1999 and has since hosted more than 120 events featuring more than 155 individual writers. The Series is sponsored by the UMaine English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund and grants from the UMaine Cultural Affairs Committee.

This season’s programming is dedicated to the memory of Sylvester Pollet and Burton Hatlen, two poets and friends of poetry whose incomparable company will be sorely missed.

Next Up - Poet and Scholar Michael Davidson

The New Writing Series welcomes poet and scholar Michael Davidson to the UMaine campus for two major events this week. Davidson, who in addition to his many volumes of poetry has also written extensively on gender and disability issues, will give a poetry reading on November 15, 2007, at 4:30 in the Arthur Hill Auditorium in Barrows Hall. A lecture based on his forthcoming book, Concerto for Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body, will take place in the Hill auditorium at 11am on Friday, November 16.

Davidson, Vice Chair of the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of eight volumes of poetry and the editor of a highly praised collection of the poems of George Oppen. His recent scholarly book, Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics, “focuses on the production of masculine identity within particular texts, literary and otherwise. What is at stake for Davidson is the fracturing of what he calls the ‘enabling myth of domestic, heterosexual normalcy’ during the 1950s, and what made such fracturing both necessary and possible.” (Review.)

Davidson’s other scholarly works include The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century, and Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material World. His latest book of poetry, published in 1998, is The Arcades, which follows his other acclaimed work in Post Hoc, The Landing of Rochambeau, and The Prose of Fact.

You can read an interview with Michael Davidson here.

Davidson’s visit to the UMaine campus is cosponsored by the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies. The American sign language (ASL) interpretation of Davidson’s lecture will be provided by Bangor Interpreting.

Thanks to Hansie Grignon for her work on this announcement.