|
|
WRITING AT WESLEYAN
presents
THE RUSSELL HOUSE SERIES
Prose, Poetry, and
Center For the Arts Music Series
Fall 2009
All events are free and open to the public
Event information: Jessica Posner, Russell House Arts Fellow,
RussellHouse@wesleyan.edu,
860-685-3448.
For Russell House Series and Writing Programs information:
Anne Greene, Director of Writing Programs,
agreene@wesleyan.edu,
860-685-3604.
Support for this series is provided by the Wesleyan Writing
Programs, the Center for the Arts, the Shapiro Creative Writing Center,
the English Department,Wesleyan University Press, the Center for the
Humanities, and the Jacob Julien Fund.
|
|
|
|
Wesleyan Writing Faculty |
|
| Wednesday, September 23 |
Russell House, Prose/Poetry 8 p.m. |
|
LISA COHEN's
biography of three neglected twentieth century figures -- the eccentric
scholar Esther Murphy, the fan and collector Mercedes de Acosta, and the
fashion writer and icon Madge Garland -- will be published by Farrar,
Straus and Giroux. Her essays have appeared in journals including
Ploughshares, Fashion Theory, GLQ, Bookforum, and The Boston
Review.
DEB OLIN UNFERTH is the author of a collection of
stories, Minor Robberies, and a novel, Vacation, both
published by McSweeney's. Her work has appeared in Harper's,
3rd Bed, Fence, and other publications. She has
received a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant from the Warhol
Foundation, and in 2009 the Cabell First Novelist Award. She joins
Wesleyan's English department this year.
ELIZABETH WILLIS is the
Shapiro-Silverberg Associate Professor of Creative Writing at
Wesleyan University. She is the author of four books of poetry,
Second Law, The Human Abstract, Turneresque,
and Meteoric Flowers. Her work has been selected for the
National Poetry Series and her awards include the Boston Review Prize,
an award from the Howard Foundation, a Walter N. Thayer Fellowship for
the Arts, and a grant from the California Arts Council. As a critic,
she has written on 19th- and 20th- century poetry,
and she has edited a collection of essays entitled Radical
Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Politics of Place. |
|
|
|
For a clip of the Creative Writing Faculty Event
click here |
|
|
|
| Ethan Bronner |
|
| Wednesday, October 7 |
Memorial Chapel, 8 p.m. |
|
ETHAN BRONNER is currently the Jerusalem bureau
chief of The New York Times. He has also held positions as
foreign editor, education editor, and editorial page editor at the
Times, where he wrote a number of the paper's editorials about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As editor he worked on a series of
articles about Al Qaeda that were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for
explanatory journalism. Previously at the Boston Globe he served
as Supreme Court and legal affairs correspondent. He is the author of
Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America, chosen by
The New York Public Library as one of the best 25 books of the year.
For a clip of "An Evening with Ethan Bronner"
click here
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Bernadette Mayer |
|
| Wednesday, October 14 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
BERNADETTE MAYER poetry has been praised by John
Ashbery as "magnificent." Brenda Coultas calls her a master of
"devastating wit." Mayer is the author of more than two dozen volumes
of poetry, including Midwinter Day, Sonnets, The Desires of Mothers
to Please Others in Letters, and Poetry State Forest. A
former director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery
and co-editor of the conceptual magazine 0 to 9 with Vito Acconci,
Mayer has been a key figure on the New York poetry scene for decades.
Event Organized by Professor Elizabeth Willis,
English Department
|
|
|
|
For a clip of the Bernadette Mayer event
click here |
|
|
|
|
 |
| John Brandon |
|
| Wednesday, October 21 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
JOHN BRANDON is one of the nation's
most distinguished new fiction writers. He is the author of the
novel Arkansas and the forthcoming novel The Semester,
both from Sweeney's. His shorter work has been published in
Mississippi Review, The Believer, Subtropics, McSweeney's
Quarterly Concern, and other publications. He received an MFA
from Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently the
Grisham Writer-in-Residence at University of Mississippi. Event Organized by Professor Deb Olin Unferth,
English Department |
|
|
|
|
For a clip of the John Brandon event
click here |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Maria
Mazziotti Gillan, CT Circuit Poet |
| Thursday, October 29 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
MARIA MAZZIOTTI
GILLAN has published eleven books of poetry, including The Weather of
Old Seasons, Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me,
and Italian Women in Black Dresses. Her newest book All
That Lies Between Us received the American Book Award. She
is the editor of the Paterson Literary Review and the
founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic
County Community College in Paterson, NJ . She is also the Director of
the Creative Writing Program and a Professor of Poetry at SUNY
Binghamton. |
|
|
|
Following
the Circuit Poet's reading, winners of the Wesleyan Student Poets competition will be
reading
their work |
|
|
|
| Thomas Sayers
Ellis |
| Wednesday, November 4 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Thomas Sayers Ellis
is the author of The Maverick Room (2005), which won the John
C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a recipient of a Whiting Award. His
poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals and
anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Best
American Poetry (1997 and 2001), Grand Street, The Baffler, Jubilat, Tin
House, Poetry, and The Nation Mr. Ellis is a contributing
writer to Waxpoetics, Poets & Writers and contributes to
TSE's Pick of the Week at
www.tmottgogo.com. He is also an Assistant Professor of Writing at
Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University
low-residency M.F.A Program. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and spends his
summers in Washington, D.C. working on The Go-Go Book: People in the
Pocket in Washington, D.C. His new book, Skin, Inc., is
forthcoming from Graywolf Press in fall 2010.
Event organized by Professor Elizabeth Willis,
English Department |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Hanna Ingber
Win '03 |
| WESeminar:
Celebration Of Wesleyan Writing |
|
| International
Journalism and New Media: A conversation with Hanna Ingber Win '03 |
|
| Saturday, November 7 |
Usdan, Room 108, Prose 11:00 a.m. |
Join this award-winning multi-media
journalist for a talk about global news coverage and internet reporting.
Hanna Ingber Win is currently World Editor of the Huffington Post.
She has reported from Burma, Ethiopia, South Africa, Malaysia and
Thailand. Her work has appeared in publications such as LA Weekly,
Washingtonpost.com and the Hartford Courant and on NPR's "Morning
Edition" and "Day2Day." She won InterAction's 2009 Award for Excellence
in International Reporting.
Sponsored by the Wesleyan Writing Program and Wesleyan Writers
Conference
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Amy Bloom, Jacob Julien Visiting Writer |
| Saturday, November 7 |
Memorial Chapel, Prose 1:30 p.m. |
AMY BLOOM
is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories, and
she has been a nominee for both the National Book Award and the National
Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in Best American
Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous anthologies
here and abroad. She has written for the New Yorker, the New
York Times Magazine, and the Atlantic, among many other
publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her latest novel,
Away, is an epic story about a Russian immigrant. A graduate of
Wesleyan, she teaches at Yale University
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jill Hunting
on Writing Memoir |
| Wednesday, November 10 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Before
turning to the story of her brother's life and death in the early days
of the Vietnam war, Jill Hunting published numerous reviews, profiles,
and feature articles about food and wine. A regular Perspectives
essayist for San Francisco NPR-affiliate KQED, the country's largest
public radio station, she initiated the sister-city relationship between
Sonoma and Phan Rang, Vietnam. Hunting proposed and currently leads
the drive to create a Book of Remembrance sculpture to honor
civilians claimed by war in Washington, D.C
Cosponsored with Wesleyan University Press |
|
|
|
|
|
| Renee Gladman |
| Wednesday, November 18 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
RENEE
GLADMAN's investigations of genre have been called "spectacular
instances of art." Her books include Arlem, Not Right Now, Juice, The Activist, Newcomer Can't Swim,
A Picture Feeling,
and To After That (TOAF). She is the editor and publisher of Leon Works,
an independent press for experimental prose and other thought projects
based in the sentence.
Event organized by Professor Lisa Cohen,
English Department |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
MUSIC AT THE RUSSELL HOUSE Presented by the Center
for the Arts |
| |
|
| Sunday, September 20 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Charlie
Suriyakham |
|
In this recital, Suriyakham will play a wide variety of pieces with
expressive nuances from South American Jazz to German Romanticism to
Klezmer to French Impressionism. Joining Suriyakham will be
pianist John Metz, harpist Megan Sesma and soprano Lisa Williamson. |
| |
|
| Sunday, November 1 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Jeremiah
McLane and David Surette |
|
Jeremiah McLane (accordion and piano) and David Surette (mandolin,
bouzouki and guitar) are two of New England's finest traditional
players. They bring a fresh, inventive and playful approach to
their repertoire of music from France, the British Isles and Quebec.
Both McLane and Surette have spent extensive time performing and
studying music in these areas and have assimilated these musical
traditions into a new brand of New England music, one that combines the
old world and the new--a contemporary take on centuries-old melodies.
|
Our Distinguished Writers/New Voices Series
for Spring 2009 included the following special
guests:
WESLEYAN WRITING and
THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS present
DISTINGUISHED WRITERS SERIES
Prose, Poetry, and Music
Spring 2009
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.
Click here to view podcasts of our events.
http://www.wesleyan.edu/podcast/full_writing.html
 |
|
| Tony Kushner |
|
| Friday, January 23 |
Memorial Chapel, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is best known for his
two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
Kushner was hailed as "the most highly acclaimed playwright of his
generation" by Salon.com. Kushner tackles some of the most difficult
subjects in contemporary history, giving voice to characters who have
been rendered powerless by the forces of circumstances. He has
translated and adapted works by Bertolt Brecht, among others, and wrote
the screenplays for the film of Angels in America and Steven
Spielberg's
Munich. Kushner is also the recipient of an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards,
three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Mid-Career
Playwright, and many other awards and honors. Sponsored by the CFA |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Steven Greenhouse |
|
| Monday, February 2 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Steven Greenhouse is the labor and workplace reporter for The New
York Times. His critically acclaimed book The Big Squeeze: Tough
Times for the American Worker, is an in-depth account of how
American companies violate wage and hour laws. Greenhouse earned an MA
in journalism from Columbia and a law degree from NYU. He served as a
law clerk for Federal District Court Judge Robert L. Carter, who helped
argue Brown v. Board of Education.
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities.
http://www.stevengreenhouse.com
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Rebecca Brown |
|
| Wednesday, February 11 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Rebecca Brown is an author, teacher, and activist. Her best-known
novel, The Gifts of the Body, won the Lambda Literary Award.
Among her other books are The End of Youth and The Terrible
Girls. Several of her books have been adapted for the stage, and her
work has been widely translated. She is the recipient of the Boston Book
Review Award for fiction and a Washington State Governor's Award.
Presented by Lisa Cohen, Assistant Professor of English.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Photo
by Beth Kelly |
| Amy Bloom- Jacob Julien
Visiting Writer |
|
| Wednesday, February 18 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Amy Bloom is the author of the novel Love Invents Us; a
collection of short stories, A
Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You; and the nonfiction work Normal. Her
most recent novel, Away, was a New York Times bestseller,
and she has received the National Magazine Award, and been nominated for
the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her
work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry
Prize Stories, and numerous anthologies here and abroad.
http://www.amybloom.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Carlo
Rotella |
| Wednesday, February 25 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Carlo Rotella is the author of October Cities, Good With Their
Hands, and, most recently, Cut Time, which received the L.L.
Winship/PEN New England Award and was a finalist for the L.A. Times
Book Prize. He writes for The New York Times Magazine,
Washington Post Magazine, and Slate, and his work has
also appeared in Harper's and Best American Essays. He is
Director of American Studies and Professor of English at Boston College.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Andre
Aciman |
| Wednesday, March 25 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
Andre Aciman is the author of the novel Call Me By Your Name and
the nonfiction works 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 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| An Evening of
Student Poetry |
| Thursday, March 26 |
Russell House Poetry 8 p.m. |
A reading by the 2009 Wesleyan Student Poets and the Connecticut Poetry
Circuit Student Poets, including Wesleyan’s winner, Susanna Myrseth
'09.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Junot Diaz-
English Department's 2009 Millett Writing Fellow |
| Wednesday, April 1 |
Memorial Chapel, Prose 8 p.m. |
Junot Diaz is the author of the short story collection Drown and
the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the
2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His
fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices,
Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize
Stories 2009. Díaz is the fiction editor at the Boston Review
and The Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor at MIT.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Forrest
Gander |
| Tuesday, April 7 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
Poet, translator, essayist, and novelist, Forrest Gander is the author
of more than a dozen books, including the poetry collections Eye
Against Eye (New Directions, 2005) and Torn Awake (New
Directions, 2001), and the highly acclaimed novel As a Friend
(New Directions, 2008). His essays on poetry and poetics have appeared
in numerous publications, including the Nation and the Boston
Review and a collection of his essays, A Faithful Existence
(Counterpoint Press), was published in 2005. He is the editor of the
bilingual anthology of poetry Mouth to Mouth: Twelve Contemporary
Mexican Women Poets (1993), and he is the translator of No
Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura López Colomé and Firefly Under the
Tongue: Poems by Coral Bracho. He has also translated work of
Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz with Kent Johnson, including Immanent
Visitor: The Selected Poems. Gander is Professor of English and
Comparative Literature at Brown University.
His visit was organized by visiting writer Martine Bellen.
|
| |
|
 |
|
| Edward P.
Jones- The Annie Sonnenblick Lecture |
| Friday, April 17 |
CFA Cinema, Prose 8 p.m. |
Widely regarded as one of the nation's most distinguished contemporary
fiction writers, Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize, the National
Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary
Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for his novel, The Known
World, an epic story examining the complexities of slavery. His
previous book, Lost in the City, a collection of short stories,
received the PEN/ Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National
Book Award. His most recent collection, All Aunt Hagar's
Children, has become a bestseller. His work appears in Best
American Short Stories and in major anthologies here and abroad. In
2004 he received a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2005 Wesleyan University
awarded him an honorary degree.
|
| |
|
| Wesleyan
Student Prize Winners |
| Wednesday, April 29 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
Student winners of Wesleyan's Writing Prize.
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
MUSIC AT THE RUSSELL HOUSE- Presented by the Center
for the Arts |
|
|
| |
|
| Sunday, February 22 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Charlie Kohlhase |
|
Alto, tenor and baritone saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase has been a part of
Boston's jazz scene for more than 20 years. Kohlhase's music spans
a broad range of styles with an emphasis on the contemporary and the
improvised. Featured artists in the group: Eric Hofbauer on
guitar, Jef Charland on bass and Mike Connors on drums. |
| |
|
| Sunday, March 1 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Linda Skernick: An All-Bach
Concert |
|
Linda Skernick, harpsichordist, performs the works of Johann Sebastian
Bach, Pieces include the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro; the Four Duets; the
French Suite in G major; and the Partita in 3 minor. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
Our Distinguished Writers/New Voices Series
for Fall 2008 included the following special
guests:
WESLEYAN WRITING and
THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS present
THE RUSSELL HOUSE SERIES
Prose, Poetry, and Music
Fall 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.
 |
|
| Charles Simic |
|
| Sunday, September 14, |
Memorial Chapel, Poetry 7 p.m. |
|
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938. In 1953 he left
Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United
States. They lived in and around Chicago until 1958. His first poems
were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. His first full-length
collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published in 1967.
Since then, Simic has published more than sixty books, among them
Jackstraws, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times;
Walking the Black Cat, which was a finalist for the National Book
Award in poetry; and The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems, for
which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and Unending Blues.
He has also published many translations of French, Serbian, Croatian,
Macedonian, and Slovenian poetry, and four books of essays, most
recently Orphan Factory. He was the guest editor of The Best
American Poetry 1992. Elected a Chancellor of The Academy of
American Poets in 2000, his many awards include fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National
Endowment for the Arts. Since 1973 he has lived in New Hampshire; he is
Professor of English Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire. Simic
was named poet laureate of the United States in 2007.
Click here for Wesleyan Connection article
Co-sponsored by Neely Bruce
|
|
|
 |
| Gayle Pemberton |
|
| Wednesday, September 17 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
Gayle Pemberton is the author of The Hottest Water in Chicago: Notes
of a Native Daughter and the forthcoming The Road to Gravure: Black
Women and American Cinema. For her numerous essays on family, American
culture, literature, and race, Pemberton has been lauded as the most
notable African-American essayist to have appeared on the scene since
the death of James Baldwin. Pemberton has been a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellow and W.E.B DuBois Fellow at Harvard University, and she is a
former professor of English, African American Studies, and American
Studies at Wesleyan University. Her work appears in many major
anthologies including The Art of The Personal Essay.
|
|
|
 |
| M. NourbeSe Philip |
|
| Wednesday, September 24 |
Russell House, Poetry 8 p.m. |
|
M. NourbeSe Philip is a poet, essayist, novelist and playwright. She was
born in Tobago and now lives in Toronto, where she practiced law for
seven years before deciding to write fulltime. Philip has published four
books of poetry, one novel, and three collections of essays. She was
awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Casa de las Americas Prize (Cuba), and a
Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. Her most recent book of poetry is Zong!
(Wesleyan University Press), a work of experimental verse that draws
upon the historical intentional drowning of 150 Africans by the captain
of a slave ship. M. NourbeSe Philip’s work – poetry, fiction and
non-fiction – is taught widely at the university level and is the
subject of much academic writing and critique. Sponsored by the Wesleyan University Press
|
|
|
 |
| Michael Palmer |
|
| Wednesday, October 15 |
Russell House, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Born in Manhattan, poet and translator Michael Palmer has lived in San
Francisco since 1969. Palmer has worked with the Margaret Jenkins Dance
Company for over thirty years and has collaborated with many visual
artists and composers. His most recent collections are Codes Appearing
(Poems 1979-1988) and Company of Moths. A prose work, The Danish
Notebook, was published in 1999, and his selected essays and talks,
Active Boundaries, appeared in July of 2008. Among his awards, Palmer
has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest
Fund Writer’s Award, two National Endowment for the Arts grants in
poetry, the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America and,
in the fall of 2006, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of
American Poets. He has taught at various universities in the United
States and Europe, and his writings have been translated into more than
twenty-five languages.
CLICK HERE FOR CLIP OF EVENT
Sponsored by Elizabeth Willis
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Alastair Reid |
| Saturday, October 18 |
Russell House, Poetry 3 p.m. |
|
Alastair Reid is a distinguished poet, translator, essayist, and
traveler. Born in Scotland in 1926, he graduated from St. Andrews
University and has since lived in countries across Europe, in Morocco,
in the United States, and in Central and South America. Since 1959, Reid
has written for The New Yorker, playing a major role as staff writer,
South American editor, traveling correspondent, and noted champion of
Latin American literature. He is the author of over twenty books -
poems, essays, prose chronicles, and translations - and his writings
have been widely translated. Reid’s collections include Oases (1997),
Whereabouts (1987), Weathering (1978) and To Lighten My House (1953).
On
the Blue Shore of Silence (2004) is a new selection of his translations
of Neruda’s poems of the sea. Reid has taught Latin American studies and
literature as a visiting professor at schools across the United States
and in England. In 2001, he received the PEN Kolovakos Award for
Translation.
Click here for movie clip of event
Organized by the Wesleyan Writing Program
|
|
|
 |
| Kurt Brown- CT Circuit Poet |
| Wednesday, October 22 |
Russell House, Poetry 8 p.m. |
|
Connecticut Poetry Circuit Poet Kurt Brown was born in Brooklyn and grew
up on Long Island and in Connecticut, where he attended the University
of Connecticut. He spent many years in Aspen, Colorado, where he founded
the Aspen Writers' Conference and edited the Aspen Anthology. Brown is
editor of The Measured Word: On Poetry and Science and Verse & Universe:
Poems about Science and Mathematics as well as The True Subject,
Writing
It Down for James, and Facing the Lion. He is the author of three
award-winning chapbooks and two collections of poems, Return of the
Prodigals and More Things in Heaven & Earth. Brown’s poems have appeared
in many periodicals, including Ontario Review, Massachusetts Review,
Crazyhorse, and Southern Poetry Review.
Organized by the Wesleyan Writing Program
|
|
|
 |
| Tony Kushner |
|
(Rescheduled to January 23, 2008)
Thursday, October 30 |
Memorial Chapel, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is best known for his
two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
Kushner was hailed as “the most highly acclaimed playwright of his
generation” by Salon.com. Kushner tackles some of the most difficult
subjects in contemporary history, giving voice to characters who have
been rendered powerless by the forces of circumstances. He has
translated and adapted works by Bertolt Brecht, among others, and wrote
the screenplays for the film of Angels in America and Steven Spielberg’s
Munich. Kushner is also the recipient of an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards,
three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Mid-Career
Playwright, and many other awards and honors. Sponsored by the CFA
|
|
|
 |
| Michael Ondaatje-
Joan Jakobson Visiting Writer |
| Wednesday, November 5 |
Memorial Chapel, Prose 8 p.m. |
|
Michael Ondaatje is winner of the British Commonwealth’s highest
literary award, the Booker Prize, and he is regarded as one of the
foremost contemporary fiction writers and poets. Born in Sri Lanka of
Indian/Dutch ancestry, he went to school in England and then moved to
Canada. Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work also
encompasses memoir, poetry, and film. He is the author of four
collections of poetry including The Cinnamon Peeler and most recently,
Handwriting. Among his works of fiction are Anil's Ghost,
The English
Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, and
The
Collected Works of Billy the Kid. In 2000, Ondaatje was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the Prix Medicis, the
Governor-General’s Award, and the Giller Prize for Anil’s Ghost. His
most recent nonfiction work is The Conversations: Walter Murch & the Art
of Editing Film. Ondaatje’s latest novel, Divisadero (2007), recently
won the Governor-General’s Award novel. Organized by the Wesleyan
Writing Program and the Joan Jakobson Fund
Click here for The Wesleyan Connection article on Michael
Ondaatje
|
| |
|
|
MUSIC AT THE RUSSELL HOUSE- Presented by the Center
for the Arts |
|
|
| |
|
| Sunday, September 28 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Songs of Love and Loss |
|
Songs of Love and Loss features Megan Sesma, harp, Patricia Schuman,
soprano, and Elizabeth Detweiler Jackson, flute. This program features
music by Ravel, Britten and contemporary composers Tobenski and Krouse. |
| |
|
| Sunday, October 12 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Sue Burkhart & Ed Vadas |
|
Guitarists and singers, Sue Burkhart and Ed Vadas perform an arresting
blend of jazz, country, folk, old timey, blues and purely original
material in an eclectic, humorous and sophisticated manner. |
| Sunday, November 23 |
The Russell House, 3 p.m. |
| Poulenc Sextet |
|
Chamber music featuring winds and piano will be performed by Wesleyan
MusicDepartment faculty members Gary Bennett, Robert Hoyle, Tom Labadorf,
Erika Schroth, Peter Standaart, and Libby Van Cleve. Poulenc's charming
Sextet will beperformed along with Mozart's sublime Quintet. |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|