The fall lineup for the Raymond Carver Reading Series begins Sept. 15 with short story writer Gary Lutz, and continues with poet Shane Seely G’02 (Sept. 29), novelist and short story writer Julie Orringer (Oct. 20), poet Philip Memmer (Nov. 3), novelist and short story writer Maile Chapman G’01 (Nov. 17) and poet Jennifer Grotz (Dec. 8).
Named for the great short story writer and poet who taught at SU in the 1980s, the Raymond Carver Reading Series is a vital part of Syracuse’s literary life. Presented by the M.F.A. program in creative writing in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, the series each year brings six fiction writers and six poets to campus to read their works and to interact with students. Each event begins with a Q&A session at 3:45 p.m. and is followed by an author reading and book signing at 5:30 p.m. All activities take place in Gifford Auditorium in H.B. Crouse Hall and are free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU pay lots. For more information, call (315) 443-2174.
Lutz is the author of three short-story collections: “Stories in the Worst Way” (Calamari Press, 2009), “I Looked Alive” (Thunders Mountain Press, 2004) and “Partial List of People to Bleach” (Future Tense Books, 2007). He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Seely’s first book of poems, “The Snowbound House,” won the 2008 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press in 2009. He graduated from SU’s M.F.A. program and is currently a senior lecturer in the English department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches composition and creative writing and acts as assistant director of the university’s expository writing program.
Orringer is author of the novel “The Invisible Bridge” (Knopf, 2010), and the award-winning short story collection “How to Breathe Underwater” (Knopf, 2003). Her stories have been published by The Yale Review, where they have been twice awarded the Editors’ Prize; the Paris Review, which awarded her the Discovery Prize; Ploughshares, which selected her work for the Cohen Award for Best Fiction; Zoetrope All-Story, which nominated her for a National Magazine Award; and Washington Post Magazine. Orringer is the recipient of two Pushcart prizes, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including “The Granta Book of the American Short Story” and “The Scribner Anthology of American Short Fiction.” She is the Helen Herzog Zell Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.
Memmer is the author of three books of poems, including “Lucifer: A Hagiography” (Lost Horse Press 2009), winner of the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry; “Threat of Pleasure” (Word Press 2008), winner of the 2008 Adirondack Literary Award in Poetry; and “Sweetheart, Baby, Darling” (Word Press 2004). His work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Epoch and Mid-American Review, and in several anthologies, including “180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day,” “Don’t Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review,” and “I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights.” He is founder and director of the YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, and associate editor for Tiger Bark Press.
Chapman is the author of “Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto,” published by Graywolf Press in 2010. Her stories have appeared in A Public Space, Literary Review, the Mississippi Review, and Post Road. She earned her M.F.A. from SU and is currently a Schaeffer Fellow in Fiction at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Grotz is the author of “Cusp” (Mariner Books, 2003), which won the Katharine Nason Bakeless Prize and the Natalie Ornish Best First Book of Poetry Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her second book, “The Needle,” is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review; Boston Review, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, New England Review and The Best American Poetry. A recipient of awards from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Camargo Foundation, she teaches at the University of Rochester and serves as the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
