ENGLISH DEPARTMENT VISITING WRITERS

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 circa 1992, she was interested in making a gift to DePauw.

 

NonFiction Writer
Rich Cohen

Wednesday September 17
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

 

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Writer
Michael Martone

Wednesday, October 1
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

"Michael Martone's short fiction combines remarkable originality...with a keen eye, deadpan humor, and an amused, massively knowledgeable obsession with his native Indiana." --John Barth
Michael Martone is the author of seven works of fiction, including Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler's List, The Blue Guide to Indiana, and Double-Wide, a new book of his collected fiction. His collections of non-fiction include The Flatness and Other Landscapes and Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art.

 

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GLCA Award Winning Poet
Lynn Thompson

Tuesday, October 14
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

Winner, Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award
“In Lynne Thompson’s new collection, Beg No Pardon, the poems move from precise reflections on childhood to the rights of passage of young adult years, and then on to all the days of joy and despair, solitude, longing, and self-knowledge that follow in a life richly lived and acutely observed. Thompson is a poet who revels in language — that ‘house of many pleasures.’ Like the ‘one good eye’ of her ‘Unworshipped Woman,’ this collection delights, ‘it flash -’ ” —Natasha Trethewey

 

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Photo by Nancy Crampton

Fiction Writer
Dagoberto Gilb

Thursday, November 6
7:30 PM
Peeler Auditorium

Dagoberto Gilb’s new novel, The Flowers (Grove Press, 2008), is the story of Sonny Bravo, a young Mexican-American who comes of age falls in love while sweeping the decks of an apartment building named The Flowers, where he has come to live when his mother remarries. The Flowers is a commanding story about the confused divisions that separate neighbors and the want for love that transcends age, race, and time. Gilb is the author of Gritos, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Woodcuts of Women, The Magic of Blood, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acua, and the editor of Hecho in Tejas: An Anthology of Texas American Literature. His essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Best American Essays.

 

 

Previous Participants in the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series

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