National Poetry Month and National Library Week
Dates: Various
Times: Various
Place: Cushwa-Leighton Library
Description: The Cushwa-Leighton Library is celebrating April as National Poetry Month and National Library Week, April 10 – 16, with a series of free events to which the public is invited.
As part of the celebration of National Library Week theme of “Create Your Own Story @ The Library” two outstanding contemporary writers will speak. National Library Week is an annual celebration of the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians.
Tuesday, April 12: At 7:30 p.m., Frances Hwang, assistant professor of English at Saint Mary's College, and her students of creative writing will read their original works. Hwang teaches creative writing and English at Saint Mary’s College since 2007. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Montana. She has been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and has held fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Colgate University. Two of the stories in Transparency were selected by Joyce Carol Oates and Francine Prose to appear in two different volumes of Best New American Voices. Hwang's fiction has appeared in Tin House, Subtropics, Glimmer Train, and The New Yorker, among other magazines.
Wednesday, April 13: At 7:30 p.m., Kelcey Parker, assistant professor of English and creative writing at Indiana University South Bend, will read some of her latest stories. For Sale By Owner, Parker’s debut collection of stories about twisted domesticity, is new in 2011 from Kore Press. There are stories of a woman giving her family up for Lent; a mother finding redemption at the Chuck E. Cheese; and a bride swallowing a housefly at the altar. Her stories have been described as “gorgeous, sinister dreams that sweep us into the unsettled lives of women…straining against the bonds of expectation.”
Parker’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Redivider, Bellingham Review, Santa Monica Review, Indiana Review, Portland Review, Sycamore Review, Western Humanities Review, and Image. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati.
Thursday, April 14: At 3 p.m., join the librarians as we celebrate National Library Week with a cake reception.
The College will mark National Poetry Month with readings by two Saint Mary's College English faculty members. Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.
Thursday, April 28: At 7:30 p.m., Sister Eva Mary Hooker, C.S.C., and Professor Max Westler read from their new chapbooks