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 Readers
For 2004....
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Ishmael Reed |
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April 14 & 15, 2004 |
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Ishmael Reed has
written many highly acclaimed novels including
Mumbo Jumbo, The Terrible Twos,
The Free-lance Pallbearers, and The Last
Days of Louisiana Red, as well as several
books of poetry. He has been nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize and has been twice nominated for
the National Book Award. Mr. Reed has received a
MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award,
the Pushcart Prize, and the American Civil
Liberties Award, among others. He lives in
Oakland, California. |
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Galway Kinnell |
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October, 2004 |
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Galway Kinnell is a former MacArthur Fellow and
has been state poet of Vermont. In 1982 his
Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Award. He teaches at New York
University, where he is the Erich Maria Remarque
Professor of Creative Writing. For thirty-five
years-from What a Kingdom it Was to the Book of
Nightmares to Three Books--Galway Kinnell has
been enriching American poetry, not only by his
poems but also by his teaching and his powerful
public readings. |
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John Burnside |
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Wednesday February 4, 2004 |
John Burnside was born in 1955, and now lives in
Fife. There is a marked divergence in theme and
tone between his poetry and his prose work. He
allows poetry sequences to emerge organically in
his imagination, without much conscious
intervention. The Hoop (1988) was
followed by Common Knowledge (1991),
Feast Days (1992, winner of The Geoffrey
Faber Memorial Prize), The Myth of the Twin
(1994), Swimming in the Flood (1995),
A Normal Skin (1999), and The Asylum
Dance (2000). Elvis Presley, an iconic
figure to the young John Burnside, gives his
name to the title of the short story collection
Burning Elvis (2000). His novels, in
contrast to his poetry, are the result of a
controlled process and they are altogether
darker. The Dumb House (1997) is a
sinister tale of children being used in a crazy
experiment on language. Questions concerning the
nature of masculinity have inspired The Mercy
Boys (1999), centering on the hard-drinking
Scottish male, and The Locust Room
(2001), an unnerving but ultimately tender take
on male sexuality. The Asylum Dance won
the 2001 Whitbread Poetry Award.
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Julia Glass |
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Monday February 23, 2004 |
Julia Glass was
awarded a 2000 New York Foundation for the Arts
Fellowship in fiction writing and has won
several prizes for her short stories, including
three Nelson Algren Awards and the Tobias Wolff
Award. "Collies," the first part of Three
Junes, won the 1999 Pirate's Alley Faulkner
Society Medal for Best Novella. She lives with
her family in New York City, where she works as
a freelance journalist and editor.
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Sven Birkerts |
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Thursday April 15, 2004 |
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Sven Birkerts was born in Pontiac, Michigan into
a family of Latvian immigrants. He
attended the University of Michigan and spent
many of his youthful years as a bookseller.
He has been a reviewer and critic for many
publications including The Nation, The New
Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Wig
Wag, Esquire and The New York Observer.
His books include An Artificial Wilderness:
Essays on 20th Century Literature,
The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry, The
Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an
Electronic Age, American Energies: Essays on
Fiction, Readings
and he has edited
Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse.
His newest book—a memoir of sorts—is
My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a
Contrary Time.
Sven Birkerts teaches at Mount Holyoke College,
is a member of the core faculty of the
low-residency Bennington Writing seminars, edits
the literary journal
AGNI
and lives in Arlington,
Massachusetts with his
family. |
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Madeline DeFrees |
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Wednesday April 21, 2004 |
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Madeline DeFrees was born in Ontario, Oregon in
1919 and moved to Hillsboro in 1923. After
graduation from St. Mary's Academy in Portland,
she entered the Sisters of the Holy Names of
Jesus and Mary, where she was known for many
years as Sister Mary Gilbert. After receiving a
B.A. degree from Maryhurst College and an M.A.
from the University of Oregon, she taught at
Holy Names College in Spokane from 1950 to 1967.
While still a nun, she taught at the University
of Montana, in Missoula, from 1967 to 1979. In
late 1973 she was dispensed from her religious
vows. She taught at the University of
Massachusetts from 1979 to 1985, after which she
retired to Seattle. DeFrees is the author of
seven full-length poetry collections, including
Blue Dusk (Copper Canyon, 2001), winner
of the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and a
Washington Book Award, and two chapbooks, as
well as two non-fiction books about convent
life. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship
in Poetry and a grant from The National
Endowment for the Arts. |
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