Writers Series brings award-winning authors to GVSU

The Grand Valley State University 2014-15 Writers Series gets underway this month with a line-up of local and international writers coming to the Allendale Campus. All events are open to the public with free admission.

The Grand Valley Writers series has a long history of bringing distinguished and emerging writers to campus to read work, visit classes, and interact with students across Grand Valley’s campus. Below is a full list of scheduled events:

Lacy Johnson
Thursday, September 18, 6-7:30 p.m., Cook-DeWitt Center, Allendale Campus
Craft Talk – 4-5 p.m., Kirkhof Center, room 2215/16, Allendale Campus
Lacy Johnson is a Houston-based artist, curator, teacher, activist, and author of “The Other Side” and “Trespasses: A Memoir.” Johnson teaches interdisciplinary art at the University of Houston in Texas.

Monica McFawn Robinson
Tuesday, October 14, 6-8 p.m., Alumni House and Visitor Center , Allendale Campus
Monica McFawn Robinson holds an MFA in poetry from Western Michigan University and currently teaches in the writing department at Grand Valley. She has published fiction and poetry in Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Missouri Review, Conduit, Exquisite Corpse, among others. Her debut collection of stories, “Bright Shards of Someplace Else,” won the 2013 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Angie Cruz
Monday, November 17, 7:30-8:45 p.m., Kirkhof Center room 2215/16, Allendale Campus
Craft Talk – 3-4:15 p.m., Kirkhof Center, room 2215/16, Allendale Campus
Angie Cruz is the author of two novels, “Soledad”, which she has adapted into a screenplay, and “Let It Rain Coffee,” which was a finalist in 2007 for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has published short fiction and essays in Callaloo, The New York Times, Kweli, Phatitude and South Central Review among others. Cruz is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and the editor of the activist literary journal, Aster(ix).

Todd Kaneko and Beth Peterson
Thursday, January 22, 6-7:30 p.m., Cook-DeWitt Center , Allendale Campus
Todd Kaneko is the author of “The Dead Wrestler Elegies”. His poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Barrelhouse, The Normal School and The Collagist. Kaneko lives in Grand Rapids and teaches at in the writing department at Grand Valley.

Beth Peterson is a non-fiction writer and an assistant professor of writing at Grand Valley. Peterson has an MA from Wheaton College, an MFA from the University of Wyoming and a doctorate in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri. A wilderness guide before she began writing, Peterson is just finishing her first book of lyric essays, which are set in a disappearing glacial landscape in Norway.

Jamaal May and Tarfia Faizullah
Monday, February 16, 7:30-8:45 p.m. University Club, Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Craft Talk – 6-7 p.m., DeVos Center, room 203E , Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Jamaal May is a poet and author of “Hum,” which received the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Originally from Detroit, May mentors young writers and teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program.

Tarfia Faizullah is the Pushcart Prize winning author of “Seam.” Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Oxford American, jubilat, New England Review, and anthologized in Poems of Devotion, Excuse This Poem: 100 Poems for the Next Generation, The Book of Scented Things and Best New Poets 2014. Faizullah is the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in Poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program and co-directs the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press & Video Series with May.

Samuel Park
Thursday, March 12, 6-7:30 p.m. Cook-DeWitt Center, Allendale Campus
Craft Talk: 4-5:15 p.m., Mary Idema Pew Library Multipurpose Room, Allendale Campus
Samuel Park is the author of “This Burns My Heart,” chosen as Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, Amazon, NPR.org, and BookPage. Foreign editions include Germany, Norway, China and South Korea. He is also the author of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” adapted into a short film that he wrote and directed. His scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in the journals Shakespeare Bulletin, Theatre Journal and Black Camera. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.