The language and literature department at EMU will hold its first “Writers Read” program of the new school year Thursday, Sept. 22.
Renown poet and author, G.C. Waldrep, will read from his works following the dinner at 5:30 p.m. in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU. Several of the author’s books will be available for purchase. A book signing and short question and answer session with the author will follow the dinner.
Writers Read, a program sponsored by the EMU language and literature department, is a special dinner event featuring authors who read from and comment on their work.
A full schedule of Writers Read authors is listed below.
G. C. Waldrep, poet from Bucknell University – September 22, 2011
G. C. Waldrep Professor is an assistant professor of English at Bucknell University. He is the author of four full-length collections of poems: Goldbeater’s Skin (2003); Disclamor (2007); Archicembalo (2009), winner of the Dorset Prize; and, in collaboration with John Gallaher, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts.
His work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Harper’s, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, New England Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Tin House, as well as in Best American Poetry 2010. Waldrep has earned accolades from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the North Carolina Arts Council and the Campbell Corner Foundation. He is a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Literature.
Waldrep authored Southern Workers and the Search for Community, a historical monograph on the lives of Southern textile workers during the early twentieth century. Waldrep teaches creative writing and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets while serving as editor-at-large for the Kenyon Review.
Sehba Sarwar, multidisciplinary artist and director of Voice Breaking Boundaries – October 13, 2011
Sehba Sarwar is a writer, multidisplinary artist, and activist, currently based in Houston, Texas, where she serves as founding director of Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB), and is an active voice at KPFT Pacifica Radio 90.1 FM.
Sarwar has continued to teach writing and multidisciplinary arts workshops at all levels, in both Pakistan and in the United States. Sarwar has moved between the city of her birth Karachi, Pakistan, to her adopted city, Houston, Texas where she has recreated a community similar to the one in which she was raised. Her writings have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines in India, Pakistan, and the U.S., and her work (writings, installations and videos) explores displacement and women’s issues between South Asia and the U.S.
Sarwar is the author of the novel Black Wings, and her short stories have appeared in Muneeza Shamsie’s 2008 anthology of Pakistani women writers And The World Changed and in Neither Night Nor Day. Her essays have appeared in publications including The News on Sunday, The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine and Callaloo.
Diane Gilliam, poet from Akron, Ohio – January 26, 2012
Diane Gillam is the author of several poetry collections, most recently, Kettle Bottom, which earned her numerous honors, including a spot on the American Booksellers Association Book Sense 2005 Top Ten Poetry Books list, the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and inclusion in The Pushcart Prize XXX anthology.
In her review of Kettle Bottom, Catherine MacDonald gives the book high praise, “Set in 1920–21, a period of violent unrest known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, the poems in Kettle Bottom combine compelling narratives with the charged, heightened language of lyric poetry. It is an unforgettable combination, one that characterizes the very best contemporary verse.”
Gillam has had her poems published in literary journals and magazines including Wind Magazine, Appalachian Journal, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, and The Spoon River Poetry Review.
Lee Peterson, poet from Penn State University, Altoona campus – February 23, 2012
Lee Peterson currently teaches creative writing courses full time at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona campus, where she held the position of 2004 “Emerging Writer-in-Residence.”
Peterson is author of Rooms and Fields: Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia, winner of the 2003 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. She gives readings and leads workshops nationally, including the 2007 Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including North American Review, Runes: A Review of Poetry, Nimrod: International Journal of Prose and Poetry, and The Seattle Review.
Tickets and reservations
Reserve tickets online or by calling the language & literature department at 540-432-4168.
- General Admission $15
- EMU students with meal plan $5
- All other students $7
- Season tickets $50 (for all four events)