RC alum Alyson Foster will read from her debut novel, God is an Astronaut. Set in the immediate future of civilian space tourism, the novel unfolds through the emails of one woman whose marriage is crumbling beneath her.
U-M alum (and former NELP professor) Diane Cook who will read from her debut story collection Man V. Nature. Diane’s fiction has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Tin House, Zoetrope, One Story,Guernica, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and on This American Life, where she worked as a radio producer for six years. She earned an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Teaching Fellow. She lives in Oakland, California.
RC Writing Alum and U-M Professor of English Laura Kasischke will participate in a live broadcast of Word Squared with T Hetzel.
Sweetland Center for Writing’s Word Squared lets you hear directly from U-M professors about their challenges, processes, and expectation as writers and also as readers of student writing. Word Squared pairs on esteemed University professor with Sweetland faculty member and WCBN Living Writers T Hetzel for a conversation about writing. These conversations offer a rare glimps into the writing that professors do outside the classroom and how they handle the same challenges student writers face.
Laura Kasischke is the Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English at U-M, where she has won a number of awards for her teaching, including the Henry Russel Award, 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, and a Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award.
She has published nine collections of poetry and nine novels. Her fiction has been translated into many languages, and her last four novles habe been international best-sellers. For her eighth book of poetry she received the National Book Critics Circle Award. The collection was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Local poet Scott Beal, an award-winning U-M creative writing grad, reads from his recently published debut collection, which deploys familiar characters from Rapunzel to Perseus and whimsically surreal tall tales to explore the varied and violent forces that shape human identities. MacArthur-winning poet and former U-M English professor Alice Fulton praises Beal’s “revelatory” tales for their “surprising linguistic and narrative moves [that] elicit the unbidden traumas and dazzling weirdness of lived experience. Refreshments. Signing.
8-9 p.m., Neutral Zone, 310 E. Washington.
