Emily A. Benton

I plan on a low-key weekend mostly cleaning, cooking, and killing Christmas in my apartment. But, I’ll interrupt my usual schedule on Sunday and attend the first of the three January readings by Queens University of Charlotte MFA in Creative Writing faculty. I love these events, and try to make it to all of them each January and May. Below is the press release with further details. I hope to see all my Charlotte readers/fellow writers in attendance! I’ll be there, probably sitting on the left hand side and scribbling notes into my pocket notebook. It’s fun to step back on my undergraduate alma mater campus and pretend to be a student again. Also, I usually leave there inspired with a few new poem ideas, and a few more books from the Park Road Books booth set up in the lobby. Seriously, I think this is one of Charlotte’s best literary events (and you know there aren’t many), so try to make it if you’re in the area!

Reading Series Features Creative Writing MFA Faculty

Creative Writing Faculty To Give Readings in January

The low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte is pleased to announce its next series of faculty readings. They are scheduled for 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11; and 8:15 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15 and Friday, Jan. 16. All readings will be held in Sykes Auditorium in The John H. Sykes Learning Center on the Queens campus, and are free and open to the public.

This semester’s series features Andrew Levy, reading from his upcoming memoir “A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary,” to be published in May by Simon & Schuster. Levy’s previous book The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter was featured in a front-page review by The New York Times Book Review, which praised Levy’s ability to bring “a literary sensibility to the study of history.”

The series also features the debut reading by Queens’ new writer-in-residence, poet Morri Creech.

More details:

Sunday, January 11
Sally Keith’s first book, “Design” (University Press of Colorado, 2001), won the 2000 Colorado Prize, judged by Allen Grossman. Her second book, “Dwelling Song,” was chosen by Bin Ramke and Fanny Howe for the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series and was published in Spring, 2004. She has published poems in several journals, including: American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, and Volt.

Kym Ragusa is the author of “The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging,” published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2006. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies “Are Italians White: The Making of Race in America, The Milk of Almonds,” and “About Face: Women Write What The See When They Look In the Mirror,” as well as the journals Leggendaria and TutteStorie. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Ida and Daniel Lang Award for Excellence in the Humanities. She has taught Creative Writing at City College, Queens College, and Eugene Lang College in New York, and at Josai International University in Japan. Her films Passing and Fuori/Outside have been shown on PBS and at festivals throughout North America and Europe. Her video, Demarcations, had its premiere at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “The Skin Between Us” was named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s 2007 Legacy Award in Nonfiction, and was published in Italy in May, 2008. In addition to teaching Nonfiction in the MFA program at Queens, she also teaches in the Writing and Humanistic Studies Program at MIT.

Thursday, January 15
Katherine Min is the author of the novel “Secondhand World” (Knopf), which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Award, given to “an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.” Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, and Prairie Schooner, and have been widely anthologized. Min has received a Pushcart Prize, two New Hampshire Arts Council fellowships, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition, she has been a fellow at VCCA, the Millay Colony, Ledig House, and seven times at The MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Morri Creech is the author of two collections of poetry, “Field Knowledge” (Waywiser Press, 2006) and “Paper Cathedrals” (Kent State University Press, 2001), and, in collaboration with the photographer Robert Parke Harrison, of two museum-quality limited editions (21st). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The Southwest Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Critical Quarterly, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He has received the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize from Waywiser Press, the Stan and Tom Wick Award from Kent State University Press, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Foundation, an artist’s fellowship from The Louisiana Division of the Arts, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In addition to serving on the faculty of the MFA program, he teaches in the English department at Queens.

Friday, January 16:

Elissa Schappell is the author of Use Me, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Los Angeles Times best book of the year. She is a founding editor of Tin House Magazine, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a frequent reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and formerly senior editor of The Paris Review. She is also co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, “The Friend Who Got Away” and “Money Changes Everything.” Her short fiction, essays and non-fiction have appeared in places such as The Paris Review, SPIN, GQ, The Bitch in the House, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, The KGB Bar Reader and Cooking and Stealing. She lives in Brooklyn.

Andrew Levy is Edna Cooper Chair in English at Butler University in Indianapolis. He is author of “The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story,” co-author of “Creating Fiction: A Writer’s Companion,” and co-editor of “Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology.” His most recent book, “The First Emancipator” (Random House), was cited as a “Best of 2005” by the Chicago Tribune, Amazon, and Booklist, and received the Slatten Award from the Virginia Historical Society. His essays and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, The American Scholar, Dissent, Best American Essays, Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere.

For more information on the readings or on the Queens MFA Program in Creative Writing, contact Michael Kobre, Professor of English and On-Campus Director, at 704-337-2335.