Summer 2017 VISITING WRITERS SERIES, July 8-15
WV Wesleyan’s MFA will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Summer 2017 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. Readings will be held on Wesleyan’s campus in the Library (see #7 on the campus map (PDF) and click here for directions to campus), or in the Old Brick Playhouse in Elkins, WV, as noted below.
Jason Howard, July 8 at 7 pm, WVWC Library
JASON HOWARD is the author of A Few Honest Words and coauthor of Something’s Rising. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Louisville Review, Utne Reader, and on NPR. Howard serves as editor of Appalachian Heritage, a literary quarterly based at Berea College, where he also teaches.
Yuri Herrera, July 9 at 7 pm, WVWC Library
YURI HERRERA (Actopan, México) is the author of three novels, all of them translated into several languages: Trabajos del reino, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo, and La transmigración de los cuerpos (English translations published by And Other Stories). He is an assistant professor at the University of Tulane in New Orleans.
Rahul Mehta & Rachael Peckham, July 10 at 7 pm, WVWC Library
RAHUL MEHTA is the author of the novel No Other World (Harper, 2017) and the short story collection Quarantine (HarperPerennial, 2011), which won a Lambda Literary Award and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Sun, the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere.
RACHAEL PECKHAM is an associate professor of English at Marshall University, where she teaches creative nonfiction. She is the 2016 winner of the Indiana Review ½ K Prize, the Orison Anthology Nonfiction Award, and the Crab Orchard Review Special Feature Literary Nonfiction Award. Her chapbook of prose poems, “Muck Fire,” appeared at Spring Garden Press in 2011.
Mesha Maren, Katie Fallon, & Mary Carroll-Hackett, July 12 at 7 pm, WVWC Library
MESHA MAREN’s debut novel Sugar Run is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in Fall 2018. Her short stories and essays appear in Tin House, Oxford American, Hobart, The Barcelona Review, and Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, and she has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation.
KATIE FALLON is the author of Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird (2017), Cerulean Blues (2011), and a book for children, Look, See The Bird! (2017). Her nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Ecotone, and elsewhere, and she has taught writing at Virginia Tech and West Virginia University.
MARY CARROLL-HACKETT is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Night I Heard Everything (2015), Trailer Park Oracle (2016), and A Little Blood, A Little Rain (2016). Death for Beginners is forthcoming from Kelsey Books in September 2017. She teaches Creative Writing at Longwood University in Virginia.
Jonathan Corcoran & Kim Dana Kupperman, July 13 at 7pm, WVWC Library
JONATHAN CORCORAN is the author of the story collection, The Rope Swing, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and long-listed for The Story Prize. He received a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Rutgers University-Newark, where he teaches writing.
KIM DANA KUPPERMAN is the author of The Last of Her (2016) and I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence (2010). She is the lead editor of You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person (2013), and publisher of Essaying the Essay (2014). She is the founder of Welcome Table Press.
Rodney Jones, July 15 at 7 pm, Old Brick Playhouse, Elkins, WV
RODNEY JONES is the author of eleven books of poems, most recently Village Prodigies (2017). His many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Harper Lee Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and he has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New Orleans and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Jessie van Eerden: vaneerden@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.
This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.