2018-19 Reading Series
Gregory Pardlo
Wednesday | Feb. 13, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. | Goodhart Music Room
Gregory Pardlo’s collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts; his first collection, Totem, was selected by Brenda Hillman for the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review. Air Traffic, a memoir in essays, was released by Knopf in April 2018.
This reading was made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.
Karen Russell
Wednesday | Feb. 27, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. | McPherson Auditorium
Karen Russell is the author of two story collections and the novel Swamplandia!, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has been named one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40, a Granta Best Young American Novelist, and one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35. Her stories have appeared three times in the Best American Short Stories anthologies. The recipient of a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Genius Grant, Russell was Bryn Mawr College’s Distinguished Visiting Writer in the fall of 2011.
Kate Hope Day, with Andrea Walker and Brettne Bloom
Wednesday | April 3, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham
Kate Hope Day is the author of one of the year’s most anticipated novels, her debut If, Then. An alumna from the Bryn Mawr class of 2000, Day later served as professor of English at Oregon State University. To mark the publication of the novel, the Reading Series will present a reading and roundtable with Day’s editor at Penguin Random House, Andrea Walker, an alumna from the Byrn Mawr class of 1998, and her agent Brettne Bloom of The Book Group. Walker and Bloom have edited many iconic books, including winners of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and dozens of New York Times bestsellers.
Yiyun Li
Wednesday | April 24, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham
Yiyun Li is the author of four works of fiction—Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and a memoir, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. A native of Beijing and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received many awards, including a PEN/Hemingway Award and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” fiction writers to watch. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Li teaches at Princeton University.
PAST EVENTS
Erin Belieu
Wednesday | Sept. 19, 2018 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham
Poet Erin Belieu’s work focuses on gender, love, and history, filtering wide-ranging subjects through a variety of theoretical frameworks. Her books of poetry are: Infanta, selected by Hayden Carruth for the National Poetry Series; One Above, One Below; Black Box, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist; and Slant Six. Belieu coedited, with Susan Aizenberg, the anthology The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women. She also cofounded VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, which explores “critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women” in contemporary culture.
This reading has been made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.
Wednesday | Oct. 3, 2018 | 7:30 p.m. | Goodhart Music Room
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Registers of Illuminated Villages as well as a previous poetry collection, Seam, winner of a VIDA Award, a GLCA New Writers’ Award, a Milton Kessler First Book Award, Drake University Emerging Writer Award, and other honors. Her poems are published widely in periodicals and anthologies both in the United States and abroad, including Poetry Magazine, Guernica, Tin House, and The Nation; are translated into Persian, Chinese, Bengali, Tamil, and Spanish; have been featured at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2016 she was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change.
This reading was made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.
Chris Abani
Wednesday | Oct. 10, 2018 | 7:30 p.m. | Goodhart Music Room
Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria. He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize and a Guggenheim Award. His six works of fiction include The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song For Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board.