English department

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT VISITING WRITERS
Spring 2010

Origin of the Kelly Writers Series:
The James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series was established in 1998 with gifts from Marilou Morrell Kelly, Class of 1955, and her husband, James J. Kelly. Marilou Kelly 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.

Generous gifts from Professor Emeritus of English J. David Field provide additional support.

Writer Aleksandar Hemon reading Wednesday February 24, 2010 7:30 PM Thompson Recital Hall Green Center for the Performing Arts

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of a novel, The Lazarus Project, finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of stories, Nowhere Man, The Question of Bruno, and most recently, Love and Obstacles.  Born in Sarajevo, he came to the United States—Chicago—in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months.  While Hemon was there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home.  He wrote his first story in English in 1995.  His work now appears regularly in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories.  Hemon, who in 2004 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, lives in Chicago.

 

Jacket design by Martha Kennedy Jacket photograph by Carmel Zucker

Writer Nick Reding reading Wednesday March 10, 2010 7:30 PM Peeler Arts Center Auditorium

Nick Reding was born in St. Louis, Missouri.  His second book Methland:  The Death and Life of an American Samll Town, is the story of how methamphetamine infiltrates the community of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), a once thriving farming and railroad community.  Tracing the connections between the lives touched by meth and the global forces that have set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.  Methland is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives the drug has devastated, and of the heroes who continue to fight the war.  It is an important book that will resonate with anyone concerned about the future of America’s heartland.

 

GLCA Award Winning Poet Aracelis Girmay reading Wednesday April 7, 2010 7:30 PM Peeler Arts Center Auditorium

Cover design: Stone Graphics

Aracelis Girmay was born in Santa Ana, California in 1977, and was raised in Southern California. She is of Eritrean, Puerto Rican, and African American descent. Girmay holds a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.F.A. in poetry from New York University. Her children's art book, Changing Changing, was published by George Braziller in 2005. A former Watson fellow and Cave Canem fellow, she has published extensively in journals and literary magazines. Girmay leads community writing workshops throughout New York and California. She currently lives in New York.

 

Poet Crystal Williams reading Wednesday April 28, 2010 7:30 PM Peeler Art Center Auditorium

CRYSTAL WILLIAMS, Mary R. Field Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing, received her BA from NYU and her MFA from Cornell University. She is currently an associate professor at Reed College in Oregon and she has been a visiting professor at Columbia College in Chicago and an artist or scholar in residence at College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Wooster College, and even the Washington, D.C. jail. Williams’s work has appeared most recently in the American Poetry Review, Court Green, and Callaloo.  She is the author of three books, Kin, Lunatic, and Troubled Tongues, which won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, a prize given to a collection of poetry by an African American poet.

Previous Participants in the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series

Fall 2009
Memoirist Honor Moore
Poet Khaled Mattawa
Fiction Writer Ron Carlson
Nonfiction Writer Scott Raab

Spring 2009
Fiction Writer Charles D'Ambrosio
Poet Kimiko Hahn
NonFiction Writer Ander Monson
Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Writer Greg Schwipps

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