ENGLISH DEPARTMENT VISITING WRITERS
Spring 2009

Origin of the Kelly Writers Series:
Marilou Kelly '55 owned a marvelous bookstore in St. Charles, Illinois, for a number of years.  An avid reader and lover of books, she frequently persuaded authors to do readings for persons in the St. Charles community and became friends with a number of them.  When her husband, James Kelly, an executive with Goldman Sachs in Chicago, former chair of the Board of Trustees, and former chair of the Sesquicentennial Campaign, passed away January 8, 1994, she was interested in making a gift to DePauw.

 

Fiction Writer
Charles D'Ambrosio

reading
Thursday, February 19
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

Charles D'Ambrosio is one of our most widely respected writers of modern American fiction, and is the author of two collections of stories, "The Point" and "The Dead Fish Museum", as well as a collection of non-fiction, "Orphans". His work has been featured regularly in The New Yorker, as well as publications like The Paris Review and Zoetrope: All-Story. He is the recipient of the Paris Review's Agha Kahn Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and most recently, the USA Artist's Foundation Grant. His stories have been selected for editions of the annual O.Henry Awards and the Best American Short Stories, and "The Dead Fish Museum" was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award.

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Poet
Kimiko Hahn

reading
Wednesday, March 4
7:30 PM, Peeler Auditorium

 

Kimiko Hahn is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Narrow Road to the Interior (W.W. Norton, 2006); The Artist's Daughter (2002); Mosquito and Ant (1999); Volatile (1998); and The Unbearable Heart (1995), which received an American Book Award. Hahn is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. She is a Distinguished Professor in the English department at Queens College/CUNY and lives in New York.

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GLCA Award Winner for nonfiction
Ander Monson

Wednesday, April 15 7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

Ander Monson won The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize for Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, a collection of essays that uses  forms such as the index, the Harvard Outline, and the mathematical proof, to explore subjects from the history of mining in northern Michigan to his experiences at Cranbrook boarding school near Detroit.  Robert  Polito writes, “For Monson the essay is something like a schematics for our fiercest longings and most ecstatic inventions.”  Monson is also the author of the novel Other Electricities and the poetry collection Vacationland.  He lives in Michigan and edits the magazine.

 

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Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Writer
Greg Schwipps

reading from his new novel
Wednesday, April 29
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium


Greg Schwipps has taught creative writing at DePauw for eleven years and his creative nonfiction has appeared in outdoor magazines like In-Fisherman. His debut novel, What This River Keeps, will be published in the spring of 2009 by Ghost Road Press.

 

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Previous Participants in the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series

Fall 2008
NonFiction Writer Rich Cohen
Writer Michael Martone
Poet Lynne Thompson
Fiction Writer Dagoberto Gilb

Spring 2008
Author Susan Neville
Novelist Samrat Upadhyay
Poet Jay Hopler
Poet Metta Sama

Fall 2007
Poet Maurice Manning
Author Kent Haruf
Author & Poet Barbara Ras
Poet Sterling Plumpp
Fiction Writer Tony D'Souza

Spring 2007
Fiction Writer Brock Clarke
Playwright Arthur Kopit
Poet Kay Ryan
Fiction Writer and Novelist Sara Pritchard
Creative Nonfiction Writer J. D. Scrimgeour
Poet Anele Rubin

Fall 2006
Poet Eugene Gloria
Essayist Scott Russell Sanders
Writer Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Fiction Writer David Harris Ebenback
Poet Martin Espada

Spring 2006
Memoirist Nick Flynn
Poet Talvikki Ansel
Fiction Writer Charles Baxter
Poet Rigoberto González
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks
Poet Dana Roeser

Fall 2005
Fiction Writer Beth Lordan
Poet Li-Young Lee
Shakespeare Scholar David Bevington
Fiction Writer Scot Nadelson

Spring 2005
Fiction Writer Pam Houston
Fiction Writer Cathy Day
Author Stuart Dybek
Author Phillip Lopate
Poet Terrance Hayes
Poet Mary Szybist

Fall 2004
Novelist Douglas Bauer
Poet Maurice Manning
Science Fiction Writer Kim Stanley Robinson
Performance Poet Jessica Care Moore
Prose Writer Patricia Sarrifian Ward

Spring 2004
Biographer~Writer Jonathan Coleman
Critic Susan Gubar
Poet Tracie Morris
Poet Vince Gotera
Fiction Writer Pam Houston
Poet Beth Ann Fennelly

Fall 2003
Fiction & Creative Non-Fiction Writer Tom Chiarella
Fiction Writer Dan Chaon
Poet Kevin Young
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye
Fiction Writer Kellie Wells

Spring 2003
Poets Robert Wrigley & Brently Johnson
Fiction Writer Brady Udall
Poets Mông-Lan & Patti White
Poet & Critic Peter Balakian
Author Beth Hawkins

Fall 2002
Poet Amiri Baraka
Speaker Kristina Bross
Memoirist Lili Wright
Fiction Writer Erin McGraw
Literary Critic Bill Little
Screenwriters Mark & Virginia Spragg
Prose Writer Elizabeth Rosner

Spring 2002
Poet Robin Behn
Fiction Writer Susan Minot
Poet Tenaya Darlington
Author Bobbie Ann Mason

Fall 2001
Poet Maurice Manning
Writer Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Writer Dr. Lee Clark Mitchell
Poet Garrett Hongo
Fiction Writer Michael Zadoorian

Spring 2001
Author & Editor Houston A. Baker, Jr
Poet Dana Levin
Literary Critic Pamela Caughie
Fiction Writer Geoff Schmidt
Fiction Writer Barbara Bean
Literary Critic Joy Castro

Fall 2000
Poet Billy Collins  
Poet Kevin Stein  
Essayist David Sedaris

Spring 2000
Poet Robin Metz

Fall 1999
Poet Marianne Boruch
Fiction Writer Patricia Henley

Spring 1999
Fiction Writer Kent Haruf
Fiction writer Jesse Lee Kerchavel
Fiction Writer Alyce Miller