Visiting Writers and Speakers, Fall 2008 and Spring 2009
Friday, September 19th, Union 212, 4:00 PM
V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan
Novelist
EDUCATION:
-Harvard Graduate, 2002
-Iowa's Writers' Workshop, M.F.A., 2005
-Columbia Graduate School Journalism, M.A., 2007
HONORS:
-Bennett Fellow and Writer-In-Resident at Phillips Exeter Academy, 2005-2006
-Bollinger Fellow specializing in Arts & Culture journalism, 2007
-Vice President of the South Asian Journalists Association
-Member of the graduate board of the Harvard Crimson
REVIEWS:
"As if she were stringing a necklace of bright beads, the author relates the stories of Yalini's Sri Lankan forebears in lapidary folkloric narratives, some no longer than a few sentences…. What she does here, she does quite affectingly." As reviewed in The Boston Globe.
 Friday, October 10th, Union 212, 4:00 PM
Meredith Hall
Memoirist
EDUCATION:
-Bowdoin College Graduate (at age 44)
HONORS:
-Won $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation
-Pushcart Prize
-Notable essay recognition in Best American Essays
REVIEWS:
Francine Prose, of O Magazine, states that Hall's Without a Map "…may forever change the way you look at small-town life. [Her] memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance. Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind, have made us who we are."
Wednesday, October 22nd, Forum Hall, 7:30 PM
Charles Simic
Poet
EDUCATION:
-New York University, B.A., 1966
HONORS:
-15th Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress, 2007
-Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, 2000
-Jackstraws, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, 1999
-Academy Fellowship, 1998
-American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1995
-Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1990
REVIEWS:
The Harvard Review-
"There are few poets writing in America today who share his lavish appetite for the bizarre, his inexhaustible repertoire of indelible character and gestures… Simic is perhaps our most disquieting muse."
 Wednesday, November 19th, Union 212, 4-5 PM
Janice A. Radway
Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Professor of Gender Studies and American Studies at Northwestern University
"Girls' Zines and the Problem of the Future: Gender, Narrative, Subjectivity"
Friday, April 3rd, Location TBA
 KEVIN RABAS
Poet
EDUCATION:
-Kansas State University Alumnus, M.A., 1998
-Kansas University, Ph.D., 2002-2007
HONORS:
-Langston Hughes Award
-Salina New Voice Award
REVIEWS:
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate-
"…Rabas has an authentic voice." She goes further to say, "…As an accomplished musician, he has the ability to translate sound into words."
 Friday, April 10th, Union Little Theatre, 4-5 PM
Helena Maria Viramontes
Fiction Writer
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