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WESLEYAN WRITING and
THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS present
THE RUSSELL HOUSE SERIES
DISTINGUISHED WRITERS/ NEW VOICES
and Concerts
Prose, Poetry, and Music
Spring 2008
Support for this series is provided by the Wesleyan Writing
Program, the Center for the Arts, the Edward W. Snowdon Fund, Wesleyan
University Press, the Center for the Humanities, the English Department, and
the funds for the Joan Jakobson Visiting Writer, the Annie Sonnenblick
Lecture, and the English Department's Millett Writing Fellow.
| Wednesday, February 6, |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Kit Reed, Paul FaFarge |
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Kit Reed's most recent novel, The Baby Merchant, is about
the man who will do anything for a couple that wants a baby-- for a
price. Publishers Weekly calls her "one of our brightest
cultural commentators" and the New York Times Book Review says of
her work: "Most of these stories shine with the incisive edginess of
brilliant cartoons... they are less fantastic than visionary." She is
the author of ten novels including Thinner Than Thou, a winner of
the A.L.A. Alex Award, Captain Grownup, and Little Sisters of
the Apocalypse as well as the short story collection Dogs of
Truth. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the first American recipient of
an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. A
founder of Wesleyan's writing programs, she was recently named Resident
Writer at Wesleyan.
Paul La Farge is the author of two novels, The Artist of the
Missing and Hausmann or The Distinction, both
published by Farrar, Straus. His
collection of short fiction, The Facts of Winter (McSweeney's)
was published in 2005. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship and of the Bard Fiction Prize. This year he is teaching
fiction writing at Wesleyan.
Organized and sponsored by the Wesleyan Writing Program
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| Wednesday, February 13 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Chimamanda Adichie- 2008 Joan Jakobson
Visiting Writer |
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Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian novelist whose latest book
Half of a Yellow Sun gives a vivid account of post-colonial Nigeria,
of Biafra, and civil war. It received one of Britain's major prizes, the
2007 Orange Broadband Award for Fiction. Her first novel, Purple
Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright
Legacy Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta,
Prospect, and The Iowa Review among other literary journals.
She is now a graduate student at Yale.
Click here for a movie clip of the Wesleyan
Writing Program's Joan Jakobson Visiting Writer 2008 Chimamanda Adichie
event.
Organized by the Wesleyan Writing Program and sponsored by the Joan
Jakobson fund
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| Wednesday, February 20 |
Russell House, Poetry 8 p.m. |
| Connecticut Circuit Student
Poets |
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The Connecticut Poetry Circuit's 38th annual Student Poetry contest
brings five students poets to Wesleyan as part of their state tour,
including Wesleyan's Circuit Poet, Chiara DiLello
̀10. Other winners
this year come from the University of Connecticut, Manchester Community
College, Connecticut College and Yale University. The students' work
will be published in the fall edition of Connecticut Review.
Organized and sponsored by the Wesleyan Writing Program
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| Monday, February 25 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Andre Aciman |
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Andre Aciman, born in Alexandria, Egypt, is the author of the new
novel Call Me By Your Name, and the nonfiction books Out of
Egypt: A Memoir and False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory.
He is co-author and editor of The Proust Project and Letters
of Transit. He has received a Whiting Writer's Award, and a
Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a fellowship from The New York Public
Library's Center for Scholars and Writers. He has written for The New
York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and
The New York Review of Books, and his pieces appear in several
annual collections of the Best American Essays. Click
here for a movie clip of the Wesleyan Writing
Program's 2008 Andre Aciman
event.
Organized and sponsored by the Wesleyan Writing Program and The
Center for Humanities
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| Wednesday, March 5 |
Old Cinema, Center for the Arts, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Alex Ross- Wesleyan's first
Jacob Julien Visiting Writer in Arts Criticism |
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Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker
since 1996, after serving as arts critic for the New York Times
for four years. His work has also appeared in The New Republic,
The London Review of Books, and The Guardian. He has
received two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships
from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter
of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the
field of contemporary music. His first book, The Rest is Noise:
Listening To The Twentieth Century, a cultural history of music
since 1990, was selected by many critics as one of the best nonfiction
books of 2007. Click here for a movie clip of
the Wesleyan Writing Program's Jacob Julien Visiting Writer 2008 Alex
Ross
event.
Organized by the Wesleyan Writing Program and sponsored by the Jacob
Julien fund
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| Wednesday, March 26 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Rae Armantrout. |
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Rae Armantrout's most recent books of poetry are Next Life
(2007), Up to Speed (2003), and Veil: New and Selected Poems
(2001), all from Wesleyan University Press. She is a professor of
writing in the literature department at the University of California at
San Diego. Her work frequently appears in the Best American Poetry
as well as in such literary magazines as American Poetry Review,
Boston Review, and the New Yorker.
Organized and sponsored by Wesleyan University Press and the Edward
W. Snowdon Fund
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| Wednesday, April 2 |
The Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Hilton Als- The English
Department's Millett Writing Fellow |
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Hilton Als has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since
1996. Prior to that, he was a staff writer at The Village Voice
and an editor-at-large at Vibe. His first book, The Women,
a meditation on gender, race, and personal identity, was published in
1996. He collaborated on film scripts for Swoon and Looking
for Langston and has edited and contributed to numerous museum
catalogues, including the catalogue for the Whitney Museum of American
Art’s exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in
Contemporary American Art.” In 1997, the New York Association of Black
Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and
Magazine Arts and Entertainment. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in
2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for
2002-03.
Organized and sponsored by the English Department and the Wesleyan
Writing Program
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| Wednesday, April 9 |
The Chapel, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Philip Gourevitch |
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Philip Gourevitch is the editor of The Paris Review and a
longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book,
Standard Operating Procedure, is a collaboration with the filmmaker
Errol Morris, which will be published this spring. He is also the author
of A Cold Case and of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We
Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, which won
numerous prizes, including a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los
Angeles Times Book Prize, a George Polk Book Award, and The Guardian
First Book Award in Britain. Organized by the Wesleyan Writing Program and sponsored the Annie
Sonnenblick fund
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| Wednesday, April 16 |
The Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Lisa Robertson |
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Lisa Robertson, a member of Vancouver's Kootenay School of
Writing, is the author of XEclogue (1993, 1999), Debbie: An
Epic (1998), The Weather (2002), and The Men
(2006). Her essays and collaborative texts for the visual arts have been
collected in the book Occasional Works and Seven Walks from
the Office for Soft Architecture, (2003, 2006). Currently she is a
visiting artist at California College of the Arts.
Organized by Prof. Elizabeth Willis. Sponsored by Edward W. Snowdon
Fund and the Wesleyan Writing Program
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| Wednesday, April 30 |
Russell House, Poetry 8 p.m. |
| Winners of Wesleyan's
Writing Prizes |
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Students who have received Wesleyan's 2008 awards for fiction,
nonfiction, and poetry will read from their work.
Organized and sponsored by the Wesleyan Writing Program
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MUSIC AT THE RUSSELL HOUSE- Presented by the Center
for the Arts |
| Sunday, February 24 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Alturas Duo |
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The Alturas Duo was formed with the idea of playing South
American and classical music by bringing together the unusual
combination of viola, charango (a small South American stringed
instrument) and guitar. The ensemble creates fiery programs that move
between J. S. Bach, South American folk rhythms and new music. |
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| Sunday, March 30 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Julie Ribchinsky, Cello |
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Cellist Julie Ribchinsky, graduate of the Eastman School of Music
and Wesleyan private lessons teacher, is an avid performer of solo and
chamber works. Ms. Ribchinsky founded the Orion String Quartet and
currently performs regularly as a member of the Central Connecticut
State University's resident Connecticut Trio. For this concert, Ms. Ribchinsky will perform works by Mozart, Schubert and Rorem with the
Connecticut Trio, which also features Linda Laurent, Piano and Gerard
Rosa, violin. |
Our Distinguished Writers/The Russell House Series
for Fall 2007 included the following special
guests:
PROSE AND POETRY
| Wednesday, September 19 |
Russell House, Prose 7:30 p.m. |
| Lisa Cohen, Matthew Sharpe and Elizabeth
Willis |
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LISA COHEN is completing a book (to be published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux) that explores fashion, fandom, and failure through portraits of
three neglected early 20th-century figures. She is assistant
professor of English at Wesleyan.
MATTHEW SHARPE is the author of the novels Jamestown, The
Sleeping Father, and Nothing Is Terrible. He is
assistant professor of English at Wesleyan. ELIZABETH WILLIS is
the author of four books of poetry: Turneresque, The Human Abstract,
Second Law, and her most recent project, Meteoric Flowers
(Wesleyan 2006). A winner of the National Poetry Series, Willis
recently received a fellowship from the Howard Foundation. She is
associate professor of English at Wesleyan. |
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| Wednesday, September 26 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Katha Pollitt |
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KATHA POLLITT is a poet, essayist, and columnist/blogger for
The Nation. She has won many prizes and awards, including the
National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship,
a Whiting Writer's Award, and two National Magazine Awards. She
has published three collections of essays and columns, including
Virginity or Death and her new collection Learning to Drive and
Other Life Stories.
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| Thursday, September 27 |
Russell House, Poetry 8 p.m. |
| Marilyn Nelson -
Sponsored by African American Studies and the Center for African
American Studies, the Wesleyan Writing Program, the Office of Affirmative Action and the
English department. |
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MARILYN NELSON is a prolific poet. Her books include The Fields
of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997), Magnificent (1994)
and The Homeplace (1990), which was a finalist for the 1991
National Book Award. Her honors include two Pushcart Prizes, two
creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,
a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award.
From 2001-2006 she was Connecticut's Poet Laureate. Since 1978,
she has been a professor of English at the University of Connecticut,
Storrs. |
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| Thursday, October 4 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Chris Offutt |
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Cancelled |
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| Wednesday, October 10 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| James Tate- Sponsored
and organized by Wesleyan University Press |
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JAMES TATE - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate will read in
celebration of the 50th anniversary of Wesleyan University Press.
Tate's work helped to define the press's poetry series, and he won the
Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Works, published by the press in
1991. Three of his earlier books were also published by Wesleyan
between 1976 and 1990. Tate is a chancellor of the Academy of
American Poets and teaches poetry at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. |
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| Wednesday, October 17 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Lore Segal -
Organized by Profs. Matthew Sharpe and Elizabeth Willis. Sponsored
by the Edward W. Snowdon Fund and the English Department. |
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LORE SEGAL - Novelist, essayist, translator, and children's book author
was born in Vienna and came to the United States in 1951. Segal's
book Her First American was hailed by The New York Times as a
contender for The Great American Novel. She is also the author of
the novel Other People's Houses and the short-story collection
Shakespeare's Kitchen. Her children's books include Tell Me
a Mitzi and Why Mole Shouted, and her book of translations of
Grimm's fairy tales, The Juniper Tree, was illustrated by Maurice
Sendak. She has taught at Columbia University, Princeton
University, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois. |
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| Wednesday, October 24 |
Fayerweather Building, Beckham Hall, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Daniel Hander -
Organized by Profs. Matthew Sharpe, Elizabeth Willis, and Kit Reed.
Sponsored by the Edward W. Snowdon Fund and the English Department |
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DANIEL HANDLER, Wesleyan class of '92, is a novelist, screenwriter,
children's book author, and musician. His fiction includes the
formally adventurous novels Watch Your Mouth and The Basic
Eight, and the recent short-story collection Adverbs.
He has played accordion on The Magnetics Fields' wildly popular
three-album set 69 Love Songs. Under the pen name Lemony
Snicket, he is the author of the children's books A Series of
Unfortunate Events. |
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| Wednesday, October 31 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Kim Bridgford - |
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KIM BRIDGFORD visits Wesleyan this year as the 2007 Connecticut Circuit
Poet. Her poetry and prose have appeared in North American
Review, Iowa Review, Georgia Review and many other publications, and
her books include In The Extreme: Sonnets about World Records,
Instead of Maps, and Undone. She has received awards
from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching. She is professor of English at
Fairfield University. |
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| Saturday, November 3 |
Chapel, Prose 2 p.m. |
| Art Spiegelman -
Organized by Anne Greene and Rabbi David Leipziger Teva and sponsored by
the Wesleyan Writing Program, the Office of Religious and Spiritual
Life, the Wesleyan Jewish Community , and Denise and Gary Rosenburg P'98
& P'07. Reception hosted by Denise and Gary Rosenburg |
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COMIX 101.1: ART SPIEGELMAN ON THE EVOLUTION OF COMICS - "Comix...fly
beneath the critical radar and enter your brain directly," says SPIEGELMAN, the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist whose comic books include
the Holocaust narrative Maus. In this talk he
offers a tour of graphic styles and comments on his provocative work.
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| Wednesday, November 7 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Amy Bloom - |
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AMY BLOOM's new novel Away has just been published. Her
four other books include Come to Me, a National Book Award
finalist, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated
for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She received a
National Magazine Award for her short fiction, and her stories have
appeared in Best American Short Stories and many other
anthologies here and abroad. She teaches creative writing at Yale
University and Smith College. |
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| Wednesday, November 14 |
Center for the Arts, old Cinema, Prose 8 p.m. |
| Charles Olson -
Organized by Prof. Elizabeth Willis. Sponsored by the English
Department, the American Studies Program, and the Wesleyan Writing
Program. |
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CHARLES OLSON: POLIS IS THIS WITH FILMMAKER HENRY FERRINI-
Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place is Henry
Ferrini's ground breaking documentary about the maverick poet,
multidisciplinary thinker and Wesleyan alumnus. Olson is considered by
many poets to have ushered in the postmodern period with his radical
rethinking of the page and his insistence on composition by field.
The film features John Malkovich, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka and Pete
Seeger. |
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