Acclaimed British Novelist Zadie Smith To Open 2005-06 Creative Writing Program Reading Series

A reading by British novelist Zadie Smith opens Bryn Mawr College 's yearlong Creative Writing Program Reading Series. This year's series also features three Pulitzer Prize winners – a playwright, novelist and poet – as well as several other celebrated poets and essayists. 

Smith will read from her works at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 19, in Thomas Great Hall.

Smith's latest book, On Beauty, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writer's Best Book Award.  Her first novel, White Teeth, also received numerous awards in Great Britain, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award.

The Washington Post has called Smith “brilliant…a postmodern Charles Dickens.”

The Creative Writing Program Reading Series is free and open to the public.  This year's series will also feature:

Mary Gaitskill, Monday, Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., Thomas Great Hall

Richard Ford, Friday, Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m., Thomas Great Hall

Linda Bierds, Thursday, Feb., 15, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House

Paula Vogel, Thursday, March 1, 7:30 p.m., Thomas Great Hall

J.D. McClatchy, Thursday, March 8, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House

Marie Ponsot, Thursday, April 5, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House

Yusef Komunyakaa, Thursday, April 19, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House

Mary Gaitskill, Monday, Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m. , Thomas Great Hall
Author Mary Gaitskill's 2005 novel Veronica was named one of that year's “10 best books” by The New York Times and a National Book Award nominee. Her earlier works, the novel Two Girls Fat and Thin and the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, also garnered critical praise.

Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories.

The New York Times Book Review wrote of Gaitskill that her “palpable talent puts her among the most eloquent and perceptive contemporary fiction writers.”

Richard Ford, Friday, Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m., Thomas Great Hall
Richard Ford will be appearing just days after the release of his highly anticipated new novel The Lay of the Land, which continues the tale of protagonist Frank Bascombe, a character The New York Times Book Review said “has earned himself a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape.”

Ford introduced readers to Bascombe in The Sportswriter and continued his tale in Independence Day, the first book ever to receive both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

The Lay of the Land is described by Amazon.com as the “funniest, most engaging (and explosive) book he's written, and a major literary event.”

Linda Bierds, Thursday, Feb., 15, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House
Critic William Pritchard has described Linda Bierds as “an original poet whose poems combine fact and dream in surprising and exhilarating ways.”  Some of her best-known collections of poetry include Flights of the Harvest Mare; The Stillness, the Dancing; Heart and Perimeter; and The Ghost Trio.

Bierds' work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker, and in 1998 she was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.

Paula Vogel, Thursday, March 1, 7:30 p.m. , Thomas Great Hall
Playwright Paula Vogel has no fear of controversial subjects.  Her plays have dealt with AIDS, pornography, prostitution, pedophilia and gay and lesbian relationships.  However, controversy has not kept her from earning critical praise.  Her play How I Learned to Drive was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and she has won two Obies.

Vogel's latest play is A Civil War Christmas, a family musical set on Christmas Eve in the final days of the U.S. Civil War.

J.D. McClatchy, Thursday, March 8, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House
Bryn Mawr native J.D. McClatchy's five books of poems are Hazmat , which was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize; Ten Commandments; The Rest of the Way; Stars Principal and Scenes from Another Life.

He has also published two collections of essays, White Paper and Twenty Questions.

Poet W.S. Merwin has written of McClatchy's work, “The complexities and lucid articulation of feeling, the intent awarness, the informed play of language have distinguished each of his books.”

Marie Ponsot, Thursday, April 5, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House
Marie Ponsot's books of poems include The Bird Catcher, recipient of the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award; The Green Dark; True Minds; and Springing: New and Selected Poems.  She is also the recipient of the 2005 Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal.

Yusef Komunyakaa, Thursday, April 19, 7:30 p.m., Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House
Yusef Komunyakaa has received numerous honors and awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his collection Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989.  His latest works include Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999 and Talking Dirty to the Gods.

"Yusef Komunyakaa is a poet of the human heart in all its joys and horrors, fiercely present as it pounds away at the center of every human being's consciousness. He enlarges our idea of what poetry is, challenging us to go beyond our own narrow definitions." -- The Washington Post Book World.

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