New Writing Series Spring 2018

Brian Evenson -- Wednesday, April 11, 2018 -- Geisel Library, Seuss Room at 4:30 pm

	Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses and the novella The Warren. He has also recently published Windeye and Immobility, both of which were finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the ALA-RUSA award. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann's Tongue. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish, Japanese, Persian, Slovenian, Swesidah and Turkish. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.

Lily Hoang & Meliza Bañales -- Wednesday, April 25, 2018 -- Geisel Library, Seuss Room at 4:30 pm

Lily Hoang is the author of five books, including A Bestiary (PEN USA Award finalist and winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Nonfiction Contest) and Changing (recipient of a PEN Open Books Award). She teaches in the MFA program at UC San Diego.

Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego is an award-winning author, performer, filmmaker, educator, and cultural critic. Originally from Los Angeles, she was a fixture in the spoken-word and slam communities in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1996-2010 where she was Grand Slam Champion in 2002 and the winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize in 2003. She has toured with Sister Spit & Body Heat, gained national recognition for her appearances on NPR, and her short film with J Aguilar entitled "Getting Off" won the Jury Award at TG Fest: The Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival in 2011. Her writing has been anthologized for over two decades, most notably in Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing-Up Working-Class, Baby Remember My Name: New Queer Girl Writing, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken-Word Revolution, The Encyclopedia Britannica of Activism & Social Change, and Jot@: A Queer Latinx Anthology and she is the author of three books: Say It With Your Whole Mouth: Poems (Monkey Press, 2003), 51 Poems About Nothing At All: Chapbook, Poems (Ladybox Books, 2016), and a novel Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific (Ladybox Books, 2015) which was a 2016 Lambda Literary Finalist for Best LGBT Debut Fiction and named one of the top ten books with a POC protagonist by Bustle Magazine and Buzzfeed in 2016. She has also lived and built as a Feminista for over twenty years, with much of her scholarship & activism centering around trauma, healing, ending sexual abuse, and the culture of survivorship. She has spent the last twenty years serving in survivor advocacy & awareness as well as promoting the use of writing and collective discourse & re-imagining to cope with stress and heal from abuse. She received her MFA & MA from San Francisco State University in 2003 and is currently a Lecturer/Adjunct Professor of Literature at UC San Diego, working on a fourth book-- a work of non-fiction entitled Adventure Awaits You in Hell: A Survivor's Manifesto. She lives in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Layli Long Soldier -- Wednesday, May 9, 2018 -- Geisel Library, Seuss Room at 4:30 pm
	Layli Long Soldier is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She has served as a contributing editor of Drunken Boat. Her poems have appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader and The Kenyon Review Online. She is the recipient of the 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, a 2015 Lannan Literary Fellowship and a 2016 Whiting Award. Her newest collection of poems “WHEREAS” will be published by Graywolf Press this spring. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

MFA Readings- 1st Year Students- Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - Literature Building Room 155 (de Certeau) at 4:30 pm

MFA Readings- Graduating Students- Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - Literature Building Room 155 (de Certeau) at 4:30 pm

The New Writing Series is brought to you by the Literature Department and the Division of Arts and Humanities

The New Writing Series thanks the Department of Visual Arts for providing us with the SME Presentation Space

For more information contact Professor Brandon Som.