Next Up – Poet Sharon Mesmer

Poet Sharon Mesmer, author most recently of The Virgin Formica and Annoying Diabetic Bitch, makes her New Writing Series debut on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:30 in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited. Due to the graphic language in some of Mesmer’s work, the performance may not be suitable for all audience members.

Read an interview with Sharon Mesmer here. Check out her blog here. Read about Flarf, the poetry movement Mesmer is a part of, here; and hear three poets—including NWS alums Kenny Goldsmith and Nada Gordon—discuss one of her flarf poems on PoemTalk.

On Facebook? Join the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Next Up – Novelist Jessica Anthony

Novelist Jessica Anthony, author most recently of The Convalescent, makes her New Writing Series debut on Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 4:30 in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. Antony will be introducted by David Kress. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

Read an interview with Jessica Anthony here.

On Facebook? Join the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Photos from Recent NWS Events

The next New Writing Series event is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, October 28, when fiction writer Jessica Anthony will be on campus to read from and discuss her work.

In the meantime, have a look at the Flickr sets we’ve created for the first three events of the season: Rick Snyder & Joanna Fuhrman (here), the Millay Prize event featuring Ann Lauterbach and Rachel Perry (here and here), and Lance Olsen’s reading (here).

 

Next Up | Lance Olsen

The New Writing Series next hosts acclaimed innovative fiction writer Lance Olsen, who will read at 4:30pm on Thursday, October 7, in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. Olsen will be introducted by David Kress. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

Lance Olsen  was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors), his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop (1980), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia.

He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction.

His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading.

Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist  was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, and Finnish.

He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.

Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America’s best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities. He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.

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The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).