Visiting Writers
The Visiting Writer Series at Reed College is sponsored by the Department of English. The intent is to bring interesting and diverse writers of prose and poetry to Reed to enhance our courses with readings and discussions.
The Department maintains a mailing list to which interested people can subscribe, to receive details of the upcoming Readings. The mailings are either electronic or paper. You can subscribe by emailing the Department office at vswr@reed.edu or calling the Department at 503-777-7753.
In 2009-2010, nine writers will be on campus to provide Readings that are free and open to the public. In addition to the Readings by both the fiction writers and the poets, the four poets will be on campus for short residencies, in order to meet with students and to give craft talks or colloquia as well as to read in the larger series. The readings and colloquia are free and open to the public. The workshops are limited to ten Reed Students. Sign up sheets (first come, first serve) will be posted at CC233 two weeks before each workshop.
2009-10 Schedule
View a list of former visiting writers.
Dorianne Laux
Poetry Colloquium (Free and open to the public)
Tuesday, Sept 22, 6:10 PM
- 7:00 PM
GCC D
"The Marriage of Music and Meaning"
Poetry Workshop (Reed College students only)
Wednesday, Sept 23, 6:00 PM
- 9:00 PM
Vollum CC 309
Workshops will be limited to 10 students. Sign up sheets (first-come, first-serve) will be posted Sept. 9th, two weeks before the workshop, on the door of Vollum 233. Give poems — no more than one per workshop participant — in advance to Lisa Steinman, Vollum 233. Workshop description: "We’ll be looking first at the poem as whole, as an attempt to say something compelling and full of meaning. We’ll then move on from intention to embodiment — where does the poem achieve its goals? where does it lose sight of itself?"
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Sept 24, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Dorianne Laux’s fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Dorianne Laux is also the author of Awake (1990), What We Carry (1994), Smoke (2000), and Superman: The Chapbook (2008). In 2009 Red Dragonfly Press will release a second chapbook, Dark Charms. Co-author of The Poet's Companion (W. W. Norton), Dorianne is the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The NEA, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Best of the Net, and many other volumes. She has been teaching poetry in private and public venues since 1990 and since 2004 at Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA Program. In the summers she teaches at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She and her husband, poet Joseph Millar, recently moved to Raleigh where she is on the faculty at North Carolina State University.
Marc Acito
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Oct 1, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Marc Acito is the author of two comic novels, How I Paid for College and Attack of the Theater People. He is a winner of the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and has had his work translated into five languages he cannot read. Marc is now a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Together he and C.S. Whitcomb co-wrote Holidazed, a twisted Christmas comedy that will be revived this fall at Artists Repertory Theatre. His charming website is MarcAcito.com. Or just Facebook him.
Matthew Dickman
Michael Dickman
Poetry Colloquium (Free and open to the public)
Tuesday, Oct 27, 6:10 PM
- 7:00 PM
Vollum CC Lounge
“Thinking in Images”; Everyone should come with paper and a pen or pencil!Poetry Workshop (Reed College students only)
Wednesday, Oct 28, 6:00 PM
- 9:00 PM
Vollum CC 309
Workshops are limited to 10 students. Workshop description: “A generative workshop using the image colloquium as a jumping off point. We will write and discuss image-driven poems — and explore what makes some of our images ‘work’ and others not.” Poems are not required in advance. During their residency the Dickman's will also hold open office hours in Vollum 131 for Reed students. If you want to meet with Matthew or Michael to talk about your non-workshop poems, they will be available at the following times/dates:
Open Office Hours, Vollum 131 - Oct 27-29
Tuesday, October 27
2:40-4:30: Matthew Dickman Office Hours
Wednesday, October 28
3:30-5:30: Michael Dickman Office Hours
Thursday, October 29
1:30-3:30: Matthew Dickman Office Hours3:30-5:30: Michael Dickman Office Hours
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Oct 29, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Matthew Dickman’s first book, All-American Poem, won the 2008 APR/Honnickman First Book Prize, chosen by Tony Hoagland and published by Copper Canyon Press. His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker and Tin House. He has received fellowships for his work from the Michener Center for Writers, the Vermont Studio Centers, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Matthew has been profiled in Poets & Writers and The New Yorker, with his twin brother, poet Michael Dickman. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Michael Dickman’s first collection is The End of the West (2009) from Copper Canyon Press. Dickman was born and raised in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. He has received fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas; the Fine Arts Work Center; and the Vermont Studio Center. He won the 2008 Narrative Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, Narrative Magazine and other journals. He has been profiled in Poets & Writers and The New Yorker with his twin brother, poet Matthew Dickman.
Gail Tsukiyama
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Nov 5, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese
mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She is the
first author to receive the Asia Pacific Leadership Award from the
Center of the Pacific Rim and the Ricci Institute. A resident of the
San Francisco Bay Area, she has taught widely; she has also been a
freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and Ms Magazine. She is the author of six novels published by St. Martin’s Press, including Women of the Silk, The Samurai’s Garden, Night of Many Dreams, The Language of Threads, Dreaming Water and her latest novel, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms. She is currently working on a new novel.
Ross Gay
Poetry Colloquium (Free and open to the public)
Tuesday, Feb 9, 6:10 PM
- 7:00 PM
GCC D
"Syntax, some questions about; or, Questions about some syntax; or, Some questions about syntax"Poetry Workshop (Reed College students only)
Wednesday, Feb 10, 6:00 PM
- 9:00 PM
Vollum CC 228
Workshops will be limited to 10 students. Sign up sheets (first-come,
first-serve) will be posted Jan. 27th, two weeks before the workshop,
on the door of Vollum 233. Give poems—no more than two per workshop
participant—in advance to Lisa Steinman, Vollum 233. Workshop
description: “Bring a few poems that are far enough along to get
substantial and useful feedback. The workshop will encourage (even
demand) substantial student participation, so that the gathering
becomes, finally, a exploration of aesthetics—personal, cultural, and
so on.”Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Feb 11, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Ross Gay's book, Against Which, was a finalist for Foreword Magazine's poetry book of the year. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry,
among other journals. He is also the co-author of a number of artist's
books, made in collaboration with the painter Kimberly Thomas. Ross is
a Cave Canem fellow and editor with the chapbook press Q Avenue. He is
an assistant professor of poetry at Indiana University in Bloomington,
and also teaches in Drew University's low-residency M.F.A. program in
poetry.
Jon Raymond
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Friday, Feb 19, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Jon Raymond is the author of The Half-Life, A Novel, and Livability,
a collection of short stories named as a Barnes & Noble Discover
Great New Writers pick for Spring 2009. Two of the stories in Livability
were turned into films by director Kelly Reichardt — “Old Joy,” winner
of the Rotterdam Film Festival, and “Wendy and Lucy,” named to over
sixty Best Films of 2008 critics' lists. He is an editor at Plazm magazine and his writing has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, Tin House, and The Village Voice, among other publications.
Joanne Greenberg
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Feb 25, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Joanne Greenberg’s most recent publication is Miri, Who Charms (2009), a novel that delineates female friendship from the teen years through motherhood and careers, against the unlikely backgrounds of Orthodox Judaism and spelunking. An internationally known, prize-winning writer, Greenberg is the author of fourteen novels and four collections of short stories. Her second novel, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964), is a classic, poignant representation of recovery from schizophrenia which was translated into numerous other languages, made into a movie, and re-issued in 2009 with a new afterword by the author. Her novel, In This Sign (1970), broke new ground in the representation of the deaf.
This event is cosponsored.
David Shields
Reading (Free and open to the public)
Thursday, Mar 4, 6:30 PM
Psychology Building Auditorium 105
Audacious, sharp-eyed, hilarious, and self-deprecating all at once, David Shields is one of the strongest voices in contemporary American nonfiction and fiction. His nonfiction books include The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead; Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity; and Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography. His three novels include Dead Languages, Heroes, and Handbook for Drowning: A Novel in Stories. His next book of nonfiction, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, is forthcoming in Spring 2010 from Knopf. Shields lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor in the English Department at the University of Washington.
This event is cosponsored by Reed Arts Week.
Alice Fulton
Poetry Colloquium (Free and open to the public)
Wednesday, Mar 24, 12:00 PM
- 1:00 PM
GCC D
"Losing Your Voice and Finding the Poem"This week I'm asking you to become collectors, connoisseurs, of language. I'd like you to read whatever you're reading (for other classes, etc.) on two levels: read in the usual way, for sense, meaning, interpretation, and also read in a writerly way, looking for materials—words, phrases, terms, syntax, rhetoric—that you can recontextualize in your poems. In addition to collecting language from books, you can collect it from speech or electronic media. Listen for jargon; use your own knowledge of any specialized dictions (the terminology of painting, dance, medicine, etc.) Please write your findings in a notebook that you can draw upon for future poems. Your notebook eventually will become your own eccentric dictionary, a book composed of words you find interesting, attractive and potentially useful. Please bring it to the talk. The goal is to add different linguistic textures to your work and make the surface of your poems more concrete and specific. Read with an eye for freshness; for words that will become new when placed in another context, the context you'll create in your poem.