Date: Sep 21, 2011

Great Authors Announced for Hofstra Reading Series

Meet This Year's Great Writers, Great Readings Series Guests

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … Hofstra University’s Department of English and the M.F.A. in Creative Writing present the eighth annual Great Writers, Great Readings Series at Hofstra.

“Great Writers, Great Readings” was launched by Hofstra University in recognition of the importance of writing and literature in a liberal arts education. In addition to a baccalaureate degree in English, Hofstra offers a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and an Master of Arts in English Literature. The program’s faculty includes playwright Erik Brogger, poet Phillis Levin and novelists Julia Markus and Martha McPhee.

Admission to all Great Writers, Great Readings events is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 516-463-5410 or visit hofstra.edu/gwgr.

Meet the 2011-2012 guest authors:

Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 11:15 a.m.
John Edgar Wideman is Asa Messer Professor and professor of Africana studies and English at Brown University. He was the first individual to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice – in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. His second memoir, Fatheralong, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the recipient of many other awards and honors, including the O. Henry Award, the American Book Award for Fiction, the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, and a MacArthur Fellowship. His articles on Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, and Thelonius Monk have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, Esquire, Emerge, and the New York Times Magazine. Professor Wideman is also subject of the text Conversations with John Edgar Wideman, a collection of 19 interviews spanning three decades.

Location: Rochelle and Irwin A. Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, 10th Floor, South Campus.

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Monday, November 14, 2011, 7 p.m.
Gerald Stern is the author of 15 books of poetry, including Everything is Burning, as well as This Time: New and Selected Poems, which won the 1998 National Book Award.  The paperback of his personal essays, titled What I Can’t Bear Losing, was published in fall 2009 by Trinity University Press.  He was awarded the 2005 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets and is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  He has been published in every leading magazine, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation and The Atlantic.  A new book of poems, Save the Last Dance, was released in 2008, and a first volume of his collected poems, Early Collected: Poems from 1965-1992, was released in 2010. Both were published by W. W. Norton. He was the 2010 recipient of the Medal of Honor by the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 11:15 a.m.
Alice McDermott is the author of six novels, the latest of which, After This, was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. Her fifth novel, Child of My Heart, was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, one of Book Magazine’s Ten Best Novels of 2002, and a nominee for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. Charming Billy received the 1998 National Book Award for fiction, the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was short-listed for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. At Weddings and Wakes, her third novel, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  That Night was nominated for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her articles, reviews and stories have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Redbook, Ms., Commonweal and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the 2008 Corrington Award for Literature.

Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 11:15 a.m.
Tom Sleigh's books include After One, winner of the Houghton Mifflin New Poetry Prize; Waking, a finalist for the Lamont Poetry Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award; The Chain, finalist for Lenore Marshall Prize; The Dreamhouse, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; Far Side of the Earth, an Honor Book Award from the Massachusetts Society for the Book; Bula Matari/Smasher of Rocks; a translation of Euripides' Herakles; a book of essays, Interview With a Ghost; and Space Walk, winner of the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Award.  He has also received the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, the John Updike Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Individual Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His new book, Army Cats, was published this spring by Graywolf Press. He teaches in the M.F.A. Program at Hunter College.

Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 11:15 a.m.
David Lindsay-Abaire was nominated for a 2011 Tony Award nomination for his play Good People, which starred Frances McDormand and Tate Donovan. The play also received the 76th annual New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the 2010-2011 season. In 2007 Mr. Lindsay-Abaire received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Rabbit Hole, which earned several Tony Award nominations. He also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, which starred Nicole Kidman. Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s recent projects include the book for the musical High Fidelity, and the book and lyrics for Shrek the Musical.  His earlier works include Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World, Dotting and Dashing, Snow Angel, The L'il Plays, and A Devil Inside.

Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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