CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM PUBLIC READINGS AND EVENTS Fall 2007
All events are free and open to the public; seating is limited. The Marvin Center is found at 800 21st St. NW, while Rome Hall and the Visitor Center are parts of the Academic Center complex, at 801 22nd St. NW.
SEPT. 27 RYAN G. VAN CLEAVE
8 PM Marvin Center Amphitheatre
Ryan G. Van Cleave is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Washington at The George Washington University. He has taught creative writing and literature at Clemson University, the Florida State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, as well as at prisons, community centers, and urban at-risk youth centers. The author (or co-author) of eleven books, his poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in many significant journals as well as in numerous anthologies. His most recent full-length book of poems is The Magical Breasts of Britney Spears (Red Hen Press, 2006).
OCT 4-7, 11-14 NEW WORKS FESTIVAL: SIX STUDENT PLAYS
7:30 PM Marvin Center, Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre
Program A – plays by Mark Ferguson, Julia Moss, & Evelyn Duffy – Oct. 4, 6, 12, 14
Program B – plays by Jaclyn Levy, John Shortino, & Timony Guillot – Oct. 5, 7, 11, 13
Brief student plays, written with the assistance of coursework in the Creative Writing program, receive rehearsed, partially staged readings. Please see separate fliers for additional information.
OCT. 11 H. G. CARRILLO
8 PM Marvin Center Amphitheatre
About his first novel, Loosing My Espanish (Pantheon, 2004), Wendy Gimbel wrote in The Washington Post, “[the] narrative moves backward and forward, alternating between the present and historical time. If one considers the present moment as a force field that holds together all the disparate elements in the book, a cohesive tale emerges from a seemingly disorderly series of scenes. An adroit writer, Carrillo is a master of these kaleidoscopic techniques” (2005). “Hache” Carrillo, whose MFA is from Cornell, has joined the faculty of the GW English Department this semester as an Assistant Professor.
OCT. 17 “JENNY 2” READING
5 PM Visitor Center
The “Jenny 2” series, funded by the English Department, features local Washington writers invited and introduced by members of the Creative Writing faculty. Readers to be announced.
OCT. 29 NADEEM ASLAM
8 PM Marvin Center Amphitheatre
Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan in 1966 and moved to the UK as a teenager, his family settling in Huddersfield. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Manchester, but left to become a writer. His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds (1993) won a Betty Trask Award and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), which took 11 years to write, won the 2005 Encore Award and the 2005 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. He is the first British Council USA Writer in Residence at GW, and will be visiting classes, leading a one-credit 700-series reading class, and making guest appearances around town during the month he is here.
NOV. 1 NADEEM ASLAM
in conversation with KAVITA DAIYA
5 PM Visitor Center
An intimate conversation and interview with Professor Daiya of the GW English Department, providing many opportunities for questions from the audience.
NOV. 9 LITERATURE IN A GLOBAL AGE: NADEEM ASLAM
with an English Department faculty panel
2 PM Marvin Center
Professor Gil Harris has assembled a large panel of English Department professors whose research and writing engage issues of “the global.” Intended for English majors but open to all, this panel presentation displays numerous intellectual and imaginative ways to make texts, or make sense of texts based on the experience of multiple and conflicting heritages and cultures.
NOV. 14 “JENNY 2” READING
5 PM Visitor Center
Readers to be announced.
NOV. 15 FOUR WRITERS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA’S INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM,
introduced by Christopher Merrill
8 PM Marvin Center Amphitheatre
Since 1967, over a thousand writers from more than 120 countries have attended the IWP at the University of Iowa. The project is designed for established and emerging creative writers — poets, fiction writers, dramatists, and non-fiction writers. The minimum requirement is that they have published at least one book, and that they possess sufficient proficiency in English to profit from the Iowa experience. Readers to be announced.
NOV. 27 JEFFREY HARRISON
8 PM Marvin Center Amphitheatre
About Incomplete Knowledge, Harrison’s fourth book (Four Way Books, 2006), the reviewer in Booklist wrote, “A scribbly abstract expressionist painting adorns Harrison’s new collection, but don’t judge the book by it. Harrison’s poems aren’t abstract; they are full of definite actions, clear thoughts, and real things. They aren’t expressionist, either–never histrionic or formally eccentric. Their content comes out of Harrison’s own reasonably average life, but they are never just about Harrison. He is always eager to communicate what experiences mean to him and, he hopes, to you, who could easily have had their like. Driving with a friend to see Vermeers in Washington, visiting another friend in New York who’s become unemployably strange, and walking out to appreciate the world’s abundance despite knowing next to nothing, it seems, about it are typical of the experiences Harrison shares. He also relives, in the sequence that makes up the second half of the book, a rarer occurrence: living on after–and, really, with–a suicide in the family. Like a fine playwright, Harrison brings us into his experiences so artfully that we feel their weight and their truth as ours.” Though he now lives and teaches in New England, at an earlier point in his career he taught Creative Writing on a part-time basis here at GW.
DEC. 12 “JENNY 2” READING
5 PM Visitor Center
Readers to be announced.
