Visiting Writers Series 2011-2012

Monica Wood, Stahl Writer in Residence and Edwin Kenney Memorial Nonfiction Reading. Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Robinson Room, Miller Library, 7:00 pm 

Monica Wood is the author of four works of fiction, most recently the ABA bestseller Any Bitter Thing.  Her newest book, When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine, is due out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in July 2012. Other fiction includes My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award; Ernie's Ark, selected by ten towns for "One Book, One Community" programs; and Secret Language, her first novel.  Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been featured on public radio, including the NPR program Selected Shorts.  She also writes books for writers and teachers, including The Pocket Muse, volumes one and two; and Description. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband and a portly, toothless cat named Minnie. She also conducts a writing program for women at the Maine Correctional Center.

From Away: Dramatic Readings of New Work by Writers from the Iowa International Writers Program, Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. Page Commons

From Away is an innovative evening seamlessly blending creative writing (poems, plays and short fiction) with performance and dialogue. The evening begins with a team of actors from Portland Stage interpreting the work of three resident fellows from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Stick around for an intimate conversation with the writers about the ins and outs of the creative process. 

Diane Seuss, poet, Thursday, November 17, 2011, Robinson Room, Miller Library, 7:00 pm.

Diane Seuss's most recent collection of poems, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, received the Juniper Prize for Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Press and was published in 2010.  Her poem "Either everything is sexual or nothing is. Take this flock of poppies" won the Cultural Center of Cape Cod's 2011 Poetry Prize, judged by Gerald Stern.  Recent work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird and Brevity.  Diane was raised by a single mother in very small towns in southwest lower Michigan.  As a student, she was ousted from Kalamazoo College, where she is now Writer in Residence.  

ZZ Packer, fiction writer, Thursday, February 7, 2012, Robinson Room, Miller Library, 7:00 pm. 

ZZ Packer was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. She currently lives in Austin, Texas. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale, and afterward received degrees from Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Story, Ploughshares, Zoetrope All-Story and Best American Short Stories 2000, Best American Short Stories 2003 and NPR’s Selected Shorts Series. Her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Essence, O Magazine, Glamour, The American Prospect, The Oxford American, The Guardian, The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker Online.

She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Whiting Award, and, most recently, a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her book Drinking Coffee Elsewhere won the Commonwealth First Fiction Award, and an ALEX Award. It became a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2004, and was selected for the Today Show Book Club by John Updike. She is editor of New Short Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2008. She was most recently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and is at work on a novel about the Reconstruction and Buffalo Soldiers entitled The Thousands, an excerpt of which appeared in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction Issue under the titleDayward.

As a professor of Creative Writing, she has taught the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Johns Hopkins University, Tulane University, Vassar College, San Jose State University, The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University at San Marcos, and Stanford University.