Visiting Writers 2001 - 2002
Ann Beattie
Monday, September 24, 2001
8:00pm Thomas Great Hall
The Washington Post Book World has called Ann Beattie "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." She is the author of six collections of short stories, including Park City and, most recently, Perfect Recall. Her six novels include My Life, Starring Dara Falcon, Picturing Will, and Chilly Scenes of Winter. Forthcoming in the spring of 2002 is her lat est novel The Doctor's House. Beattie received the PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for lifetime achievement in the short story form. (Reading sponsored by the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series)
Heather McHugh
Thursday, October 25, 2001
8:00pm Goodhart Music Room
Recipient of the 2000 PEN/Voelcker Poetry Prize, Heather McHugh is the author of six books of poems, including The Father of the Predicaments, Hinge and Sign, Shades and To The Quick. Her translations include the Cyclops of Euripides and Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, with her husband Nikolai Popov, and the work of Jean Follain and Blaga Dimitrova. McHugh's book of essays is Broken English: Poetry and Partiality. She is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. (Reading sponsored by the Marianne Moore Fund for Poetry)
Amos Oz
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
8:00pm Thomas Great Hall
Israel's foremost fiction writer and a leading figure in the Israeli Peace movement, Amos Oz holds the Agnon Chair of Hebrew Literature at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His first collection of stories, Where the Jackals Howl, was published in 1965; his novel My Michael appeared in 1968, and his cycle of three novellas The Hill of Evil Counsel appeared in 1976. Among his other works are In the Land of Israel (essays), Black Box (fiction), and Ponther in the Basement (fic tion). His new novel is The Some Sea. Oz will read in English. (Reading sponsored by the Whitehiff-Linn Fund)
Singer and Actor Benjamin Bagby
Performs Beowulf
Monday, January 28, 2002
8:00pm Thomas Great Hall
Benjamin Bagby was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory and at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland.Together with Barbara Thornton in 1977, Bagby established Sequentia, an ensemble for medieval music. Bagby has performed excerpts from the epic poem Beowulf nationally and internationally to great acclaim. He performs the poem in Anglo-Saxon (with the modern English trans lation in running super-titles), accompanying himself on a six-stringed lyre copied from a seventh-century German original.The effect is that of an extraordinary musical and poetic fusion, providing the closest possible approxi mation of what it must have been like to hear an Anglo-Saxon scop (creator) chant and sing one of the earliest poems in English literature. (Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund)
Louise Gluck
Wednesday, April 3, 2002
8:00pm Thomas Great Hall
Louise Gluck's nine volumes of poetry include Descending Figure, The Triumph of Achilles, Ararat The Wild Iris (recipient of the Pulitzer Prize), Meadowlands, Vita Nova, and The Seven Ages. Her book of essays is Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (recipient of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction). Gluck has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and she teaches at Williams College. (Reading sponsored by the Marianne Moore Fund for Poetry)
Fiction/Nonfiction: a Reading and Panel Discussion With Maureen Howard, Philip Lopate, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and Lore Segal
"Fiction isn't delivering the news. Memoir is....Fact has become as compelling a medium as fiction," wrote critic James Adas. Four vis iting writer-teachers who Nave distinguished th emselves both in fiction and nonfiction will read from their work and discuss the contro versial dividing line between these two gen res. Maureen Howard's books include Facts of Life, a memoir, and Natural History and A Lover's Almanac, novels. She edited The Penguin Book of Contemporary American Essays. Phillip Lopate's books, of essays include Against Joie de Vivre and bachelorhood. His fiction includes The Rug Merchant, and he has edited The Art of the Personal Essay and Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. Lynne Sharon Schwartz's memoir is Ruined by Reading : a Life in Books. Her novels include The Fatigue Artist and Leaving Brooklyn. Lore Segal's works of fiction include Her First American and the autobio graphical novel Other People's Houses. (Reading sponsored by the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series and the Whitehill-Linn Fund).