Event Schedule, 2011-12
Fall 2011
19 October 2011: English Department Panel
4 o’clock, The Common Room, Old Main
Q & A: Possible Career/Graduate Paths for Majors in the English Department
Join the English Department faculty for this lively, informal conversation about some of the many things you can do post-Knox with your degree in Literature or Creative Writing.
*
21 October 2011: Off-Knox
at The Box, 7 o’clock
You'll get three minutes to beat a drum, read a poem, tell a joke, spin a yarn, conjure magic, sing a duet, belt a yodel, perform a monologue, pluck a guitar, improv some improv, a rap, a dance, a tap, a whistle--or anything else you can do for three minutes of fame. Interested? Contact Haley Beeson to get on the advance signup list. Questions? Contact Gina Franco (or x7087). After the first 10 performances, the floor is open to anyone in the room. Off Knox welcomes everyone in Galesburg and the surrounding communities.
*
22 October 2011: Faculty Reading
at 7:00 p.m. at The Space (306 E. Simmons, just around the corner from the Box)
Join us for an evening of readings by the Creative Writing faculty. Refreshments will be served.
*
24 October 2011: Writers’ Forum
at 7:00 p.m. at The Space (306 E. Simmons, just around the corner from the Box)
Readers include Simone Snow, Jules Ohman, Jamie White, Peter Thomas, Michael Martinez, Monica Prince, Maya Sharma, Elizabeth Cooley, Kira Schultz, and Meagan McAlister. Refreshments will be served.
*
18 November 2011: Caxton Club
at 4 o’clock in the Alumni Room, Old Main
Peter Orner, reading from his new novel, Love and Shame and Love
Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of two widely praised books, Esther Stories and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. Love and Shame and Love was released in November to great acclaim. He is also the editor of a two books of nonfiction, Underground America and Hope Deferred: Narrative of Zimbabwean Lives. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Granta, Best American Stories, and been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Orner has taught at the University of Montana and the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Orner now lives in San Francisco and is a faculty member at San Francisco State University.
*
WINTER 2012
13 January 2012: Off-Knox
at The Box, 7 o’clock
You'll get three minutes to beat a drum, read a poem, tell a joke, spin a yarn, conjure magic, sing a duet, belt a yodel, perform a monologue, pluck a guitar, improv some improv, a rap, a dance, a tap, a whistle--or anything else you can do for three minutes of fame. Interested? Contact Haley Beeson to get on the advance signup list. Questions? Contact Gina Franco (or x7087). After the first 10 performances, the floor is open to anyone in the room. Off Knox welcomes everyone in Galesburg and the surrounding communities.
*
20 January 2012
4 o’clock, Location tba
Catch Reception
Come get your issue, hot off the presses, of the Fall 2011 Catch, the college’s award winning literary arts journal. Stick around for munchies, readings, and musical performances.
*
23 January 2012: Writers’ Forum
at 7:00 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Readers include Sheena Leano, Maisie Maupin, Jenneke Oostman, Ivy Reid, Cameron Posey, Lauren Greve, Genevieve Crow, Erik Hane, Eve Sackett, and Adrienne Wagner. Refreshments will be served.
*
26 January 2012: POSTPONED to February
4 o’clock, The Roger Taylor Lounge, Seymour Union
Cellar Door Reading & Reception
Come get your issue, hot off the presses, of the Fall 2011 Cellar Door. Linger around before for munchies. Linger for readings, and musical performances.
*
13 February 2012: Writers’ Forum
at 7:00 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Readers include Katie Baer, Kate Barrett, Julia Trumpy, Dylan Reynolds, Dave Brankin, Sam Cavedon, Isaac Miller, Jessica Sharp, Hannah Benning, Spencer Graham, Joe Suh, Diana Schmuckal. Refreshments will be served.
*
16 February 2012: Caxton Club
at 4:00 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Neela Vaswani is author of the short story collection Where the Long Grass Bends, and a memoir, You Have Given Me a Country. She is the recipient of the American Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, the ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal, and many other honors. Her fiction and nonfiction have been widely anthologized and published in journals such as Epoch, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner. She has been a Visiting-Writer-in-Residence at more than 100 institutions, among them: Knox College, 92nd Street Y (Tribeca), the Jimenez-Porter House at the University of Maryland, Kentucky Women Writers Conference, the Whitney Museum in New York City, and IIIT Hyderabad, India. She has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, lives in New York City, and teaches at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. An education activist in India and the United States, Vaswani is founder of the Storylines Project with the New York Public Library.
*
23 & 24 February 2012: Senior Literature Symposium
at 4 o’clock in the Alumni Room, Old Main
Senior Seminar gives Literature Majors the opportunity to synthesize the skills and information acquired as an English major. The course will have a different theme each year (recent themes include “Adaptation,” “Irony,” “Noir,” “Homeless in the Waste Land,” “The Literary Vampire” and On Alfred Hitchcock). This year’s panelists will look at “The Animal Gothic.”
*
SPRING 2012
2 April 2012: Caxton Club
at 7 o’clock, The Space (306 E. Simmons)
Adam Clay, Ada Limón, & Michael Robins
Adam Clay is the author of A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. He co-edits TYPO Magazine and lives in Kentucky.
Ada Limón is originally from Sonoma, California. With a Masters of Fine Arts from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, she has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, New York Foundation for the Arts, and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. Her first book, Lucky Wreck, was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Her second book, This Big Fake World, was the winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize, her third book of poems, Sharks in the Rivers, is out now from Milkweed Editions. She is currently working on a book of essays, a novel, and a new collection of poems.
Michael Robins is the author of Ladies & Gentlemen (Saturnalia Books, 2011), the chapbook Circus (Flying Guillotine Press, 2009), and The Next Settlement (UNT Press, 2007), which received the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Antioch Review, Bateau, Colorado Review, Conduit, Jet Fuel Review, The Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, Route 9 and elsewhere. His short essays and book reviews have appeared in journals such as MAKE, Poets for Living Waters, Redactions, and in the anthology The Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). Born in Portland, Oregon, Robins holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In 2007, he received a Finalist Award from the Illinois Arts Council, and in 2011, a Presidential Grant from Columbia College Chicago. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago, and currently lives in the Irving Park neighborhood of the Windy City.
*
18 April — 21 April 2012
Carl Sandburg Days Festival for the Mind
The Sandburg Days Festival for the Mind is held each spring in April. Members of the Galesburg community have joined together since 1996 for a celebration of the life and legacy of Galesburg native, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Lincoln biographer--Carl Sandburg. Events are held in various locations all over Galesburg throughout the festival. Read all about this annual homage to Carl Sandburg and the legacy of his work here.
*
19 April 2012: Caxton Club
at 4:00 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Will Boast ’01
Davenport Fiction Judge
Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. His story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His fiction and essays have appeared in Best New American Voices, Narrative, Salon, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, and The New York Times, among other publications. From 2008 - 2010, he was a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University; he’s currently a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He’s currently working on both a novel and a memoir. An excerpt from the latter is forthcoming in The Atlantic. Boast will all be serving as this year’s Davenport Fiction judge.
*
20 April 2012: Caxton Club
at 4:00 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Allison Joseph
Allison Joseph is the author of six poetry collections, most recently, My Father's Kites: Poems (Steel Toe Books, 2010). She grew up in Toronto and the Bronx. She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from Indiana University with an M.F.A. She teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and is Director of the Young Writers Workshop at SIUC, which she founded in 1999: a four-day summer program for high school students. Many of SIUC's creative writing faculty and graduate students are involved with the workshop, and the student participants come from several states.[ In 1995, she was one of the founding editors of Crab Orchard Review as the magazine's poetry editor and has also worked as editor-in-chief since August 2001. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois.
*
23 April 2012: Writers’ Forum
at 6:30 p.m. in the Alumni Room
Readers include Chris Baltz, Genevieve Crow, Mark Farrell, Zoë Foote, Annie Pittman, Dan Kahn, Ben Lee, Krista Anne Nordgren, Miya Pleines, Dakota Scott, Julia Shenkar and Kati Stunkard. Refreshments will be served.
*
2 May 2012: Off-Knox & Cellar Door Release Party
at Mcgillacuddy's Bar on Cherry St. , 7 o’clock
You'll get three minutes to beat a drum, read a poem, tell a joke, spin a yarn, conjure magic, sing a duet, belt a yodel, perform a monologue, pluck a guitar, improv some improv, a rap, a dance, a tap, a whistle--or anything else you can do for three minutes of fame. Interested? Contact Haley Beeson to get on the advance signup list. Questions? Contact Gina Franco (or x7087). After the first 10 performances, the floor is open to anyone in the room. Off Knox welcomes everyone in Galesburg and the surrounding communities.
&
Stick around to get your issue, hot off the presses, of the Spring 2012 Cellar Door, which is always a surprising treat.
*
4 May 2012: Caxton Club
at 4 o’clock in the Alumni Room
Eugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from The University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers” and his story “Harvesters” a “Top Five Story of 2009-2010”), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago. His collection of short stories, Fires of our Choosing, was released in February by Dzanc Books.
*
7 May 2012: Caxton Club
6 o’clock, Alumni Room, Old Main
Joseph Lennon ’90, Tim Lord ’98, & Yvonne Murphy ’89
Davenport Poetry and Playwriting Judges
Joseph Lennon is the Director of Irish Studies at Villanova University, where he is associate professor in the English Department. He also lectures at the Notre Dame Irish Seminar in Dublin in June and previously taught at Manhattan College in New York for a decade. His book of poems Fell Hunger (Salmon Poetry/Dufour Editions 2011) was published last summer. He has also published poetry, essays, and articles in periodicals such as Poetry Ireland, New Hibernia Review, TLS, Denver Quarterly, and The Recorder. His book Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (2004, 2008) won the Donald J. Murphy First Book Prize, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
Yvonne Murphy is an Associate Professor of The Arts at SUNY Empire State College in Syracuse, New York. She received an M.A. from New York University, a Ph.D. from The University of Houston and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University. Her collection of poems, Aviaries, won the 2010 Carolina Wren Press Poetry award, and was published in 2011. Her poems have been published widely in U.S. and Canadian anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Black Warrior Review, The Portland Review, EPOCH, Stone Canoe, Redivider, Painted Bride Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, Literal Latte and Gulf Coast, among many others. She lives in Cazenovia, New York, with her husband and daughter.
Professors Lennon & Murphy will announce the Davenport Poetry Awards following their readings.
.
A native of the prairies and suburbs of the Midwest, Tim J. Lord is a playwright & mountaineer recently returned to California via Los Angeles where he works as a tutor for kids from low-income families and is an artistic associate at the Veterans Center for the Performing Arts (VCPA) whose mission is to help veterans reintegrate to civilian life through theater. Recently, his 10-minute play “Department of the Interior” premiered as part of Chalk Rep’s Flash Festival, and Peloponnesus received a reading at the VCPA who are planning to produce it in 2012. In January 2009, “We declare you a terrorist…” received a reading at the Public Theater. It then went on to be developed at the New Harmony Project and received its world premiere as part of the 2009 Summer Play Festival in New York. Other plays have been developed and produced at The Public Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Summer Play Festival, The Lark, The New Harmony Project, Chalk Rep, Rude Mechanicals, and the Kennedy Center’s University Playwrights Workshop. These titles include his 5-act monster Fault & Fold, Down in the face of God, The View from Mt. Langley, The Secret History of Caleb Caan, Santa Ana Winds, 11 Hills of San Francisco, Better Homes & Homelands, and G-Men!. Tim studied with Paula Vogel while a resident of Providence, RI, and is a graduate of the MFA Playwriting Program at the University of California, San Diego.
*
11 May 2012: Caxton Club
4 o’clock, Alumni Room
B.J. Hollars ’07
B.J. Hollars is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He is the author of Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America (U of Alabama P, 2011) and the editor of You Must Be This Tall To Ride (Writer's Digest Books, 2009), Monsters: A Collection of Literary Sightings (Pressgang, 2012) and Blurring the Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction (U of Nebraska P, 2012). His work is published or forthcoming in North American Review, American Short Fiction, Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, Fugue, Faultline, The Southeast Review, DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, and Hobart, among others.
*
18 May 2012
4 o’clock, Location tba
Catch Reception
Come get your issue, hot off the presses, of the spring 2012 Catch, the college’s award winning literary arts journal. Stick around for munchies, readings, and musical performances.
*
22 May 2012: Caxton Club
at 4 o’clock, Alumni Room
H. G. Carrillo is the author of Loosing My Espanish, a novel, published by Pantheon Books and in paperback by Anchor Books. His short stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, Slice and other journals and publications. Carrillo lives in Washington, DC, where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at The George Washington University. He is currently at work on a novel.
*
25 May 2012: Caxton Club
at 4 o’clock, Alumni Room
Reeve Parker
With undergraduate degrees from Princeton and Oxford and a doctorate from Harvard, Reeve Parker joined the Department of English at Cornell University in 1967 and is now Professor Emeritus. The chief focus of his research and writing—and much of his teaching—has been in English Romantic poetry and drama, with strong related interests in French Enlightenment and Revolutionary history and literature, especially theatre, and intertextual dynamics. After an earlier book on Coleridge’s meditative poetry, his Romantic Tragedies: The Dark Employments of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley has just been published by Cambridge University Press and focuses on plays by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley. Other interests of Professor Parker include 19th and 20th century American fiction, with esssy projects in Henry James and Flannery O’Connor. Professor Parker will also serve as this year’s judge for the Howard Wilson Prize in Literary Criticism.
