Creative Writing Reading Series has two speakers in November
The 2017–2018 Creative Writing Reading Series at UC Davis will showcase writers exploring their Native American, African American, Sri Lankan and Hmong heritage as well as LGBTQ and feminist issues.
All the readings are free and open to the public at the Peter J. Shields Library, second floor, at 7 p.m. The series is presented by the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English, College of Letters and Science, and co-sponsored by the UC Davis Library.
Coming up Nov. 14: Oakland native Tommy Orange. His first novel, There There, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. He has been a MacDowell Fellow, a Writing by Writers Fellow and a Yaddo Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
On Tuesday, Nov. 28, UC Davis Creative Writing Graduates Melissa Mack and Eric Sneathen will read. Mack is author of The Next Crystal Text (2017) and her writing has appeared in the journals Elderly, Try!, With+Stand and anthologies Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot and What We Want: A List of Our F****** Demands.
Eric Sneathen’s most recent publication is the chapbook Snail Poems. His writing has been published in Mondo Bummer, The Equalizer 2.0 and Gay Annals of Sexuality. He edits the Bay Area literary magazine Macaroni Necklace.
More about the Visiting Writers Series is available on the College of Letters and Science web site.
Author on Hawaii speaks Nov. 1
Renee Pualani Louis, author of Kanaka Hawai'i Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory, will speak about her book on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 12-1 p.m., in the David Risling Room, Hart Hall.
She is co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, and 2014 co-recipient of the AAG Enhancing Diversity Award. She is employed by the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas while living in Hilo, Hawai'i.
Copies of her book will be sold at the presentation (no cash, please). And refreshments will be served.
Grads win Flannery O'Connor Award
Graduates of the UC Davis English department’s creative writing program have scored back-to-back wins of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Winners have a short story collection published by the University of Georgia Press.
Becky Mandelbaum (M.A., ’16) won the award last year, and her collection Bad Kansas was published last month. In early October, Kirsten Lunstrum (M.A., ’03) was named this year’s winner, and her collection What We Do With the Wreckage will be published next fall. The award, started in 1983, is named for O’Connor, a Georgia writer whose stories are infused with dark humor and her Catholic faith.
More information is available on the College of Letters and Science web site.
Jeffrey Day, in the College of Letters and Science, contributed to this report.