Emily A. Benton

Someone asked me the other day about my writing life this spring/early summer, and I summed it up by saying that I’ve been spending more time hearing the written word by attending literary events than actually with the written word (although, I did push through a few drafts last month that are turning out to be good poems, or at least will be, if I ever sit down with them again). During National Poetry Month (April), I saw the poet couple Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar read at UNC Greensboro, and then Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Tretheway read in Charlotte at Central Piedmont Community College’s ArtsFest. Both readings were fantastic! I also attended a release event for the 10th anniversary issue of Iodine Poetry Journal, for which I served as associate editor. Now, coming up the week of Memorial Day, it’s time for the semi-annual MFA faculty readings at my undergraduate alma mater, Queens University of Charlotte. As I’ve stated before here, I think these are the best readings we get in town! My only disappointment is that this spring’s readings are only 2 nights instead of 3, which narrowed the poets down to one.

I snagged a press release from an insider yesterday, so I’ll just paste it below:

The low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte is pleased to announce its next series of faculty readings.  The readings are scheduled for Sunday, May 24 and Friday, May 29.  The reading on Sunday evening will begin at 8:00.  The reading on Friday evening will begin at 8:15.  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. (note: I suggest parking across the street from Sykes at the Whithers House. – EB)

Sunday, May 24

Lauren Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, was a New York Times and Booksense bestseller, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, and translated into nine languages. Stories from her second book, Delicate Edibe Birds, were published in journals and anthologies including the Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story,  Best American Short Stories and Best New American Writers.  She is the recipient of a Pushcart prize and the Axton Fellowship in Fiction from the University of Louisville, and has received other fellowships from Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, and Ragdale. She lives with her family in Gainesville, Florida.

Geoffrey Becker’s book of stories, Black Elvis, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Prize for Fiction and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2009.  His novel, Hot Springs, is forthcoming from Tin House books.  He is the author of two previous books, Dangerous Men, a collection that won the Drue Heinz Prize, and Bluestown, a novel.  His other awards and honors include an NEA fellowship, selection for the Best American Short Stories anthology, the Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, and the Parthenon Prize.  He teaches writing at Towson University in Maryland, where he also directs the graduate program in Professional Writing.

Friday, May 29:

Jane Alison is the author of the memoir Sisters Antipodes and the novels Natives and Exotics (Harcourt 2005); The Marriage of the Sea (FSG 2003), which was a New York Times Notable Book; and The Love-Artist (FSG 2001), which has been translated into seven languages. Her short fiction and critical writings have appeared in TriQuarterly, Five Points, Seed, and The Germanic Review, among others. She has coedited a multivolume critical series on women writers and has also published several biographies for children.  Educated at Princeton and Columbia, she also teaches at the University of Miami.

Robert Polito received his Ph.D. from Harvard. His most recent books are the poetry collection Hollywood and God (forthcoming spring 2009) and The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (forthcoming fall 2009). He is also the author of Doubles (poetry), A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s Changing Light at Sandover, and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography/Autobiography, among other books. He edited the Library of America volumes Crime Novels: Noir of the 1930s & 1940s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, as well as The Selected Poems of Kenneth Fearing. His poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the Voice Literary Supplement, Verse, Threepenny Review, Yale Review, Bookforum, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, Bomb, Fence, Open City, Boston Phoenix, Paste, Best American Poetry, Beast American Essays, Best American Film Writing, and other journals and anthologies. He is a contributing editor to The Boston Review, Pequod, Open City, Bomb, Fence, and Lit. He directs the graduate writing program at The New School.