All readings are in Memorial Hall at 8 p.m. and are free, wheelchair accessible, and open to the public.
Sponsored by the MFA Program for Poets and Writers and Juniper Initiative. Made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, University of Massachusetts Arts Council, UMass Amherst Alumni Associaion, Vice Provost of Research & Engagement, College of Humanities & Fine Arts, and English Department.
 Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, which was published in spring 2009 by The Penguin Press in the United States and by William Heinemann in the UK. Translations of the book have appeared or are forthcoming in Italy, Spain, France, and Russia. Jedediah's short stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Chicago Review, Best American Fantasy, and Best New American Voices. He works as an editor for Small Beer Press in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and is a regular book reviewer for The Los Angeles Times. Jedediah earned his MFA from the University of Massachusetts and his BA from Bard College.
 Lily Hoang's short novel Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press) received a 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Her first book Parabola won the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel in 2006. She is also the author of the forthcoming novels The Evolutionary Revolution (Les Figues Press, Apr. 2010) and Invisible Women (StepSister Press, late 2010) and the collaborative collection Unfinished (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011). With Blake Butler, she co-edited the anthology Thirty Under Thirty, due out from Starcherone Books in 2011-12. She is an Associate Editor at Starcherone Books and Editor at Tarpaulin Sky. She can be found virtually at htmlgiant.com and bigother.com.
 Donald Antrim has contributed fiction and essays to The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of three novels, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist , as well as The Afterlife, a memoir about his mother, parts of which first appeared in the magazine. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the American Academy in Berlin. He teaches at Columbia University.
 Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing in the literature department at the University of California at San Diego. She has also taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Bard College, Naropa University, San Diego State University, and San Francisco State University. Armantrout is the author of ten books of poetry, including Versed (Wesleyan 2009), Next Life (Wesleyan 2007), which was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2007, Up to Speed (Wesleyan 2003), also selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of the year. in 2003, and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001), which was a finalist in the Poetry category for the 2002 PEN Center USA Literary Awards. She has been published in many anthologies, including The Oxford Book of American Poetry and Scribner's Best American Poetry (1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2008), in such magazines as Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She has also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation (2008), the Fund for Poetry (1999 and 1994) and the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1989). Her collected prose was published in 2007. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, and earned her A.B. at University of California at Berkeley (1970), and her M.A. at San Francisco State University (1975). She lives in San Diego, California.
 A half-breed Indian, Adrian C. Louis was born and raised in northern Nevada and is an enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe. From 1984-97, Louis taught at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. Earlier, he edited four Native newspapers including The Lakota Times and later Indian Country Today. Currently, Louis is Professor of English at Minnesota State University in Marshall. He has written ten books of poems and two works of fiction: Wild Indians & Other Creatures, short stories, and Skins, a novel. Skins was produced as a feature film with a theatrical release in 2002. Louis has won various writing awards including Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. His 2006 collection of poems, Logorrhea (Northwestern University Press), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Visiting Writing Lecture Series: Fall 2009
|
