Creative Writers Reading Series Fall 2012
Thursday, September 20 - Stephen Dunn - Poetry Reception in the Larry and Kathryn Smith
Chapel Living Room Reading in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel Worship Area
Stephen Dunn is the author of sixteen books of poetry, including the most recent, Here and Now,
published in 2011 and What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009. His Different Hours was
awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. His other awards include the Academy Award in Literature from The
American Academy of Arts & Letters, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. He is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard
Stockton College, and lives in Frostburg, Maryland.
Thursday, October 11 - Jay Varner - Literary Nonfiction Reception in the Larry and Kathryn
Smith Chapel Living Room Reading in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel Worship Area
Jay Varner is the author of the memoir Nothing Left to Burn. He has worked the police and fire beat as a
journalist for his hometown newspaper, helped to found The Susquehanna Review, and served as both
nonfiction editor and managing editor of Ecotone: Reimagining Place.
Thursday, November 1 - B.F.A. faculty reading by Aimee Pogson Reading in the Larry and
Kathryn Smith Chapel Worship Area
Aimee Pogson's work has appeared in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Pank, and other journals, and has
been shortlisted for Best American Essays and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She received an MFA in
fiction from Bowling Green State University, where she received the Devine Fellowship, and she
currently teaches creative writing at Penn State Behrend.
Thursday, November 1 - B.F.A. faculty reading by George Looney Reading in the Larry and
Kathryn Smith Chapel Worship Area
George Looney's sixth collection of poetry is Monks Beginning to Waltz (Truman State University Press,
2012), and his fifth is A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness (Stephen F. Austin State University Press,
2011). He is also the author of the award-winning novella, Hymn of Ash (Elixir
Press, 2008), and four other poetry collections - Open Between Us, The Precarious Rhetoric of Angels
(White Pine Press Poetry Prize), Attendant Ghosts, and Animals Housed in the Pleasure of Flesh
(Bluestem Award). He chairs the BFA in Creative Writing program at Penn State Erie, The Behrend
College, where he edits Lake Effect and co-directs The Chautauqua Writers' Festival.
Thursday, November 8 - Eugene Cross - Fiction Reception in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel
Living Room Reading in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel Worship Area
Eugene Cross was born in Erie and received his B.A., as well as an M.F.A. in fiction, from the University
of Pittsburgh. He is the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community
Service, and in 2010 he ran a series of writing workshops for Bhutanese, Sudanese, and Nepalese
refugees living in Erie. His first collection of stories is Fires of Our Choosing, published in 2012.