Michael Blumenthal
• 2 p.m.
Chandler Recital Hall

MONDAY OCTOBER 1

2PM -- MICHAEL BLUMENTHAL

Formerly director of creative writing at Harvard University, award-winning author of numerous poetry collections and prose works, Michael Blumenthal holds the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. An essayist and commentator for National Public Radio, Blumenthal has lived and taught in Hungary, Israel, Germany, and France. His most recent book is the memoir, All My Mothers and Fathers, and his seventh poetry collection, And, is forthcoming in 2009. Blumenthal’s work appears in the New Yorker, and well as in numerous literary journals.

4PM -- M.S.G. The Acoustic Blues Trio

M.S.G. - The Acoustic Blues Trio performs traditional Piedmont blues in a style influenced by artists such as Archie Edwards, Etta Baker, and Cephas & Wiggins. The group has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Memphis International Blues Challenge, and other festivals. A trio with a rich performance and recording background, the artists include Jackie Merritt, harmonica; Miles Spicer, guitar; and Resa Gibbs, vocals.

8PM -- RICK BASS

Rick Bass is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including the forthcoming memoir, Why I Came West, to be published by Houghton Mifflin in spring 2008. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Houston, and went to school at Utah State University. After working as a biologist in Arkansas and a geologist in Mississippi and Alabama, Bass moved to Montana’s Yaak Valley, where he has been active for 20 years in the efforts to help designate as wilderness the last roadless lands in the Yaak Valley.

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TUESDAY OCTOBER 2

1PM -- JANINE LATUS

Janine Latus is an acclaimed journalist and essayist whose recently released book, If I Am Missing or Dead, weaves stories of women who stay in abusive relationships with those who escape. Her work has appeared in More, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Parents, All You, American Baby, and other national publications. She has written for WomensWallStreet.com and MSN Money, and her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio. Latus is a frequent speaker at conferences, workshops, and press events.

4PM -- SABINA MURRAY

Sabina Murray is the award-winning author of the novels Slow Burn, and A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and the story collection The Caprices. A former Michener Fellow at the University of Texas and Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University, she received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2003. Murray’s stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ontario Review, the New England Review, and other literary journals. Currently, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

8PM -- WILLIAM HENRY LEWIS

William Henry Lewis is the prizewinning author of two story collections, I Got Somebody in Staunton, and In the Arms of Our Elders. His fiction has appeared in America's top literary journals and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories. Lewis is the recipient of the short fiction prize from the Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Foundation, the 2006 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Fiction Honor Award, and he was a finalist for the 2005 PEN Faulkner Prize for Fiction.

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WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 3

2PM -- ALAN SHAPIRO

Alan Shapiro’s poetry collections and memoirs have received many awards including the William Carlos Williams Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Other honors include a Guggenheim fellowship and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the W. R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shapiro’s new collection, Old War, will be published in 2008.

4PM -- SHERWIN BITSUI

Sherwin Bitsui, Diné (Navajo) poet, is the author of Shapeshift, his first poetry collection, and a recipient of the 2006 Whiting Writers’ Award. Other honors include an Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, a Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, and a University of Arizona Academy of American Poets Award. His work has appeared in several literary journals including American Poets, The Iowa Review, Frank, Red Ink, and others.

8PM -- JILL MCCORKLE

Jill McCorkle is the author of five novels and three story collections including Creatures of Habit, The Cheerleader, and Ferris Beach. Her work has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories, The Southern Review, and New Stories from the South, among other publications. She has received the New England Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Currently, McCorkle is on the faculty at North Carolina State University as the Lee Smith Writer in Residence.

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THURSDAY OCTOBER 4

2PM -- DAVID WOJAHN

Poet and essayist David Wojahn was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his most recent collection, Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004, published in 2006, and the recipient of the O. B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for his first collection, Icehouse Lights, as well as numerous other literary awards. Wojahn’s other titles include Mystery Train, Late Empire, The Falling Hour, and Spirit Cabinet. A Guggenheim fellow and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Wojahn is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. He also teaches in he MFA Program at Vermont College.

12:30 & 4PM -- HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of three books of poetry and the recipient of many literary honors, including an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Alan Collins Poetry Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her first book, The Gospel of Barbecue, won the 1999 Wick Prize for Poetry. Her most recent collection, Red Clay Suite, received second prize in the 2006 Crab Orchard Open Competition. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Story Quarterly, among other journals. Jeffers is an Assistant Professor of English at The University of Oklahoma.

8PM -- ETHAN CANIN

Ethan Canin is the author of six books of fiction, including the story collections Emperor of the Air, and The Palace Thief, and the novel Carry Me Across the Water. He has been called by the New Yorker one of “twenty writers for the new millennium.” Canin’s widely anthologized short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Paris Review, and many other magazines, and have also been the basis for several Hollywood movies. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and a licensed physician, Canin gave up medicine a decade ago to become a professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, in Iowa City, Iowa.

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Books Available at the ODU Library
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