The Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences has announced the Spring 2016 Raymond Carver Reading Series.
The series, which brings 12-14 prominent writers to campus each year, is presented by the M.F.A. program in creative writing, in conjunction with the “Living Writers” undergraduate course (ETS 107). The series takes place on Wednesdays in Gifford Auditorium, starting with a Q&A at 3:45 p.m., followed by an author reading at 5:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Sarah Harwell G’05, associate director of the M.F.A. program, at scharwel@syr.edu.
The spring lineup is as follows: poet Roger Reeves, Feb. 17; novelist and short story writer Joy Williams, the Richard Elman Visiting Author, March 2; poet and memoirist Brian Turner, March 9; poet JoEllen Kwiatek, March 23; novelist and short story writer Colum McCann, The Jane and Daniel Present Lecturer, April 13; and novelist Dana Spiotta, April 27.
The Carver Series is named for the legendary poet and short-story writer who taught in the M.F.A. program, prior to his death in 1988.
Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves
Wednesday, Feb. 17
Reeves’s first book, “King Me,” was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013. He has been named a Cave Canem and NEA fellow and is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and Whiting Award. He is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Joy Williams
Joy Williams: Richard Elman Visiting Author
March 2
Williams is the author of “The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories” (Knopf 2015). She also has written four novels—the most recent, “The Quick and the Dead,” was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001—and three other collections of stories, as well as “Ill Nature,” a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected to the Academy in 2008. She lives in Tucson, Ariz., and Laramie, Wyo.
Brian Turner
March 9
Brian Turner
Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army. He is the author of two poetry collections, “Phantom Noise” and “Here, Bullet,” which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection, the 2006 PEN Center USA “Best in the West” award, the 2007 Poets Prize and others. Turner’s work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, Poetry Daily, Harper’s Magazine and other journals. Turner has been awarded a United States Artists Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship and others. His recent memoir, “My Life as a Foreign Country,” has been called, “achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful.”
JoEllen Kwiatek
JoEllen Kwiatek ’80
March 23
Kwiatek received the 2014 Iowa Poetry Prize for “Study for Necessity.” Former associate professor in the Department of English and Writing Arts at SUNY Oswego, she received a B.A. from Syracuse University and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, “Eleven Days Before Spring: Poems,” was published by HarperCollins in 1994.
Colum McCann
Colum McCann: The Jane and Daniel Present Lecturer
April 13
McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. Born and raised in Dublin, he has been the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China and an Oscar nomination. His work has been published in over 35 languages. He is the co-founder of the nonprofit global story exchange organization Narrative 4, and he teaches in the M.F.A. program at Hunter College.
Dana Spiotta
Dana Spiotta
April 27
Spiotta is the author of four novels: “Innocents and Others,” which will be published by Scribner in 2016; “Stone Arabia” (2011), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in fiction; “Eat the Document” (2006), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and “Lightning Field” (2001). Spiotta was a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, and won the 2008-09 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. She teaches in the Syracuse University M.F.A. program.
