MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING
VISITING WRITERS SERIES
2015-2016
EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED.
RAVI HOWARD
FICTION
Ravi Howard’s first novel, Like Trees, Walking, won the 2008 Ernest J. Gaines
Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/
PEN Award. His new novel, Driving the King, chronicles the life of singer Nat King
Cole’s childhood friend and driver as the pair negotiates pre-Civil Rights America.
Howard has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for
the Arts, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and
New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His work has appeared in Callaloo, the
Massachusetts Review, and the New York Times. It also has been featured on
NPR’s All Things Considered. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
WEDNESDAY
SEPT. 30, 2015
8:00 p.m.
BOARD ROOM
BUTLER PAVILION
(sixth floor)
ABIGAIL THOMAS
Abigail Thomas is the author of three form-shattering memoirs:
Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life; A Three-Dog Life; and, most
recently, What Comes Next and How to Like It. A national best seller,
A Three-Dog Life was named one of the best books of 2006 by the
Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. About her first memoir,
Bomb magazine wrote: “Safekeeping . . . is comprised of small,
astonishing moments which have been strung together in a wholly fresh
and gorgeous way. Many of these moments are handled in the brevity of
a paragraph, consistently humble and beautiful; a palm which has been
opened for us.” Thomas lives, writes, and paints in Woodstock, New York.
MEMOIR
WEDNESDAY
NOV. 4, 2015
8:00 p.m.
MCDOWELL FORMAL LOUNGE
MCDOWELL HALL
CLAUDIA RANKINE
Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric; Don’t Let Me Be
Lonely: An American Lyric; Plot; The End of the Alphabet; and Nothing in Nature
Is Private. She won the PEN Open Book Award and National Book Critics Circle
Award for Poetry for Citizen, the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the
poetry and criticism categories. In 2014 she was a National Book Award finalist
and received the Poets and Writers Jackson Poetry Prize. Citizen also holds the
distinction as the only poetry book to be a New York Times best seller in the
nonfiction category. Rankine coedited the anthologies The Racial Imaginary:
Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind and American Women Poets in the 21st
Century: Where Lyric Meets Language.
POETRY
THURSDAY
NOV. 12, 2015
7:00 p.m.
ABRAMSON FAMILY RECITAL HALL
KATZEN ARTS CENTER
This event is cosponsored by the Visiting Writers Series, Department of Literature, CAS Humanities
Lab, and Mary Clark, dean of academic affairs.
Our annual reading of poetry and prose by AU’s creative writing faculty features
KYLE DARGAN, author of Honest Engine; STEPHANIE GRANT, author of
Map of Ireland; DAVID KEPLINGER, author of The Most Natural Thing; RICHARD
MCCANN, author of Mother of Sorrows; DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ, author of Balm;
and RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER, author of What We’ve Lost Is Nothing.
Proceeds from this reading will benefit 826 DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills and to
helping teachers inspire their students to write. Suggested donation at the door is $5.
ANNUAL FACULTY BENEFIT READING
WEDNESDAY
JAN. 27, 2016
8:00 p.m.
826 DC
3233 14TH STREET NW
METRO: COLUMBIA HEIGHTS
(Green and Yellow Lines)
ALEXANDER CHEE
Alexander Chee received a prestigious Whiting Award for his first novel,
Edinburgh, which was described by the New York Times as “haunting”
and “incendiary” and by the Washington Post as a “lovely, nuanced, never
predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.” His much
anticipated new novel, Queen of the Night, which Junot Diaz has praised as
“the fire” and “the light,” chronicles the life of a courtesan turned opera diva
in nineteenth-century Paris. His work has appeared in the New York Times
Book Review, New Republic, Tin House, and Slate and has been featured on
NPR. Chee was the visiting writer at Amherst College from 2006 to 2010
and the Picador Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig in 2012.
He lives in New York City.
FICTION
WEDNESDAY
FEB. 10, 2016
8:00 p.m.
ABRAMSON FAMILY FOUNDERS ROOM
SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICE
(lower level)
Three CAS alumni read from their debut
collections of poetry: Baltimore resident
ABDUL ALI, MFA ’13, is the author of
Trouble Sleeping, winner of Western Michigan
University’s 2014 New Issues Poetry Prize.
JENNY MOLBERG, MFA ’09, of Warrensburg,
MO, is the author of Marvels of the Invisible,
winner of the 2014 Berkshire Prize.
CEDRIC TILLMAN, MFA ’04, from Charlotte,
NC, is the author of Lilies in the Valley, winner
of the inaugural Willow Books Emerging Poets
and Writers Award.
WEDNESDAY
MARCH 2, 2016
8:00 p.m.
MCDOWELL FORMAL LOUNGE
MCDOWELL HALL
GRADUATING MFA STUDENT READING
Experience our MFA program’s rich diversity of voices at a group reading
of poetry and prose featuring our 2015–2016 graduates.
MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING
FACULTY
KYLE DARGAN
Honest Engine, Logorrhea Dementia, Bouquet of Hungers
(2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award), The Listening
(2003 Cave Canem Poetry Prize)
MARC FISHER
Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution
that Shaped a Generation; After the Wall: Germany, the
Germans, and the Burdens of History; senior editor
at the Washington Post
DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ
Balm, Wench (2011 NAACP Image Award finalist,
2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award)
RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER
What We've Lost Is Nothing; Fugitive Denim: A Moving
Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of
Global Trade; contributor to public radio‘s
This American Life and All Things Considered
PROFESSORS EMERITI
STEPHANIE GRANT
Map of Ireland, The Passion of Alice
KERMIT MOYER
The Chester Chronicles, Tumbling
DAVID KEPLINGER
The Most Natural Thing, The Prayers of Others
(2007 Colorado Book Award), The Clearing, The Rose
Inside (1999 T. S. Eliot Prize), The World Cut Out with
Crooked Scissors: Poems of Carsten Rene Nielsen (trans.)
MYRA SKLAREW
Over the Rooftops of Time; The Witness Trees
(Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award); Lithuania: New
and Selected Poems; The Science of Goodbyes
RICHARD MCCANN
Mother of Sorrows (2005 John C. Zacharis Book Award,
2006 ALA Stonewall Honor Book); Ghost Letters
(1994 Beatrice Hawley Award, 1994 Capricorn Poetry
Award); Nights of 1990; Things Shaped in Passing:
More “Poets for Life” Writing from the AIDS Pandemic
(ed. with Michael Klein)
ALUMNI POETRY READING
HENRY TAYLOR
Crooked Run (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award, 2006);
Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986—1996; The Flying
Change (Pulitzer Prize, 1986); An Afternoon of Pocket
Billiards; The Horse Show at Midnight
SATURDAY
MAY 7, 2016
3:30 p.m.
In 2015–2016, the Department
of Literature is offering—
in addition to its regularly
scheduled graduate workshops
in fiction, poetry, creative
nonfiction, literary journalism,
and translation—such graduatelevel courses as Modern Drama
and the Politics of Emotion;
Lessing, Morrison, and Atwood;
Apocalyptic Cinema; Global
Mobilities, Teaching Composition,
and Contemporary Latin
American Cinema.
To receive email alerts about
upcoming events, contact us at
visitingwriters@american.edu
or 202-885-2973.
POLITICS AND PROSE BOOKSTORE
5015 CONNECTICUT AVENUE NW
METRO: VAN NESS (Red Line)
BUS: L1 or L2 (from Van Ness Metro)
While serving as a Civil War nurse
in Washington, DC, Walt Whitman
lived in a boarding house at 1205
M Street NW. Although that house
no longer stands, the building
where he tended wounded soldiers
now serves as the Smithsonian
American Art Museum.
In a city long known for its authors
—including Walt Whitman,
Henry Adams, Langston
Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar,
Katherine Anne Porter, Frederick
Douglass, and Sterling Brown—
American University continues the
tradition by serving as a lively
venue for creative work by both
established and emerging writers.
For their assistance and support, the Visiting Writers Series expresses its gratitude to Mary Clark, dean of academic affairs and senior vice provost;
Peter Starr, dean, College of Arts and Sciences; Maureen Fittig, director, special events; Thomas Meal, CAS webmaster; Despina Kakoudaki, director,
Humanities Lab; Richard Sha, chair, and Mike Burgtorf, Louis Campana, Chelsea Horne, and Rebecca Rangel-Mullin, of the Department of Literature;
Joe Callahan of 826 DC; Susan Coll of Politics and Prose Bookstore; and Ali Kahn, editor, and Jel Montoya-Reed, designer, of University Publications.
Photo credits: Walt Whitman, from the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University;
Alexander Chee, by M. Sharkey; Ravi Howard, by Beri Irving; Claudia Rankine, by John Lucas; Abigail Thomas, by Jennifer Waddell
An equal opportunity, affirmative action university. UP16-140
NEW LANDS
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“ ONE DOESN
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WITHOUT CONS
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OR A VERY L
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ANDRÉ
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PREVIOUS
VISITING
POETS AND
WRITERS
Yusef Komunyakaa
Melanie Thernstrom
A. J. Verdelle
Mohsin Hamid
Naomi Shihab Nye
Charles Johnson
Claude Brown
Lucy Grealy
Jamaica Kincaid
Major Jackson
Colm Tóibín
Michael C. Harper
Azar Nafisi
Charles Baxter
Mark Doty
Edward P. Jones
Hanan al-Shaykh
Jacki Lyden
Frank Conroy
Peter Ho Davies
John Gardner
David Grossman
Richard Rodriguez
Victor Lavalle
Manil Suri
Amy Bloom
Lisa Zeidner
Jean Valentine
Tillie Olsen
Valzhyna Mort
Allen Ginsberg
Bruce Weigl
Allen Barnett
Amy Hempel
Gail Godwin
Leila Aboulela
Allan Gurganus
Grace Paley
Faye Moskowitz
Billy Collins
Nick Flynn
Mary Gaitskill
Beverly Lowry
Adam Haslett
Alison Smith
Tim O’Brien
Richard Yates
Gail Mazur
Galway Kinnell
Tony Hoagland
Jo Ann Beard
Marilyn Hacker
Paul Monette
Edward Hirsch
Terry McMillan
Richard Selzer
Dinaw Mengestu
Matthew Klam
Lee K. Abbott
Patricia Smith
Alice McDermott
Robert Haas
Rigoberto González
Michael Cunningham
Li-Young Lee
Jenny Offill
MGC ROOMS 4 AND 5
MCDOWELL FORMAL LOUNGE
BUTLER BOARD ROOM
ABRAMSON FAMILY
RECITAL HALL
ABRAMSON FAMILY
FOUNDERS ROOM
MFA in Creative Writing
Department of Literature
College of Arts and Sciences
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20016-8047
american.edu/visitingwriters
MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING
VISITING
WRITERS
SERIES
2015-2016
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