Next Up | Jennifer Scappettone

The New Writing Series presents a reading by poet, translator, and scholar Jennifer Scappettone on Thursday, April 17, 2014. The event will be held at 4:30pm in the Allen and Sally Fernald APPE space in 104 Stewart Commons and is free and open to the public. Carla Billitteri of the UMaine English Department’s faculty in poetry & poetics will introduce and host the Q&A to follow.

Jennifer Scappettone is associate professor of English and creative writing and associated faculty of Romance languages and literatures at the University of Chicago, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Modern Italian Studies for 2010-11. Her poetry collections include From Dame Quickly and the bilingual Thing Ode/Ode oggettuale.

Scappettone edited and translated Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli (University of Chicago Press), copies of which will be available at the event.

Her study Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice is forthcoming in August from Columbia University Press.

Her response to the question “What Is American about American Poetry?” is archived at the Poetry Society of America’s website.

Her essay “Garbage Arcadia: Digging for Choruses in Fresh Kills” is included in Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale (Routledge).

Scappettone’s contribution to the “Our Occupations (after the Occupations)” series curated by Thom Donovan for the Poetry Foundation is archived on Harriet.

A number of talks and readings are archived on Scappettone’s PennSound author page.

Scappettone comes to Maine right after presenting “Strategic Passeism: The Invention of a Modernist in the City of Aldus” as a keynote lecture at the Pound, ID: A Convergence conference in Boise, Idaho.

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On Facebook? Consider joining the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series was founded in 1999 and 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, the University of Maine Humanities Initiative, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the IMRC, and to donors Allen and Sally Fernald, for use of the AP/PE Black Box space. For more information contact NWS Coordinator Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that requires 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).

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding nondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 207-581-1226.

Next Up | Ray Halliday

The New Writing Series presents a reading by fiction writer Ray Halliday on Thursday, April 10, 2014. The event will be held at 4:30pm in the Allen and Sally Fernald APPE space in 104 Stewart Commons and is free and open to the public. Dave Kress of the UMaine Creative Writing faculty in fiction will introduce and host.

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Ray Halliday works as an English professor and editor in San Francisco. He’s also worked for a brokerage house, and for six years, as a night cabbie. A songwriter and musician, he leads The Verms.  He wrote, produced and acted in four very short films called The Existentialists. He has published stories in The Quarterly, Story Quarterly, Quarterly West, Crescent Review, and Stolen Island among others. In 1991 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His stories have been characterized as minimalist. The Kid That Even the Dogs Didn’t Like (MAMMOTH books, 2013) is his first collection of stories.

“Quirky and canny, familiar and queer, accessible and resistant, Ray Halliday’s short stories evoke a nostalgia bereft of sentimentality, a loneliness without despair, and a good humor that always leaves us more than a little uneasy. Intensely interested in literary minimalism, Halliday calls up shades of Richard Brautigan and Russell Edson, but nevertheless scouts new paths for that venerable tradition.” — Dave Kress

# # #

On Facebook? Consider joining the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series was founded in 1999 and 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, the University of Maine Humanities Initiative, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the IMRC, and to donors Allen and Sally Fernald, for use of the AP/PE Black Box space. For more information contact NWS Coordinator Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that requires 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).

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding nondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 207-581-1226.