Authorfest: Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers’ Conference Features Free Reading Series June 19-27

As part of the conference that features nationally-known writers, poets, and editors, a free public reading series will take place at 1 p.m.  in the Stedman Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Complex on Third Street, between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden campus.

On Tuesday, June 19, poet Angelo Nikolopoulos, the recipient of the 2011 Discovery’s Boston Review Poetry Prize and a graduate of NYU’s Creative Writing Program, will read with novelist Alexi Zentner, the author of Touch and the forthcoming The Lobster Kings.

On Wednesday, June 20, poet Tracy K. Smith will read from her works, which includes the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winner Life on Mars, a collection of poems about her father, an engineer that worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.  Her other two volumes of poetry include The Body’s Question and Duende. She is an assistant professor of writing at Princeton University.

On Thursday, June 21, novelist Ellis Avery, the author of The Teahouse Fire, The Last Nude, and The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001, will read with poet Timothy Donnelly, the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit and The Cloud Corporation, which won the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

On Friday, June 22, Harper’s Magazine deputy editor James Marcus, author of the book Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut will read with novelist Katharine Weber, author of True Confections, Triangle, and most recently, the memoir The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family’s Legacy of Infidelities.

On Monday, June 25, Lauren Grodstein, an associate professor of English at Rutgers–Camden, author of A Friend of the Family, Reproduction is the Flaw of Love and the story collection The Best of Animals will read with Dana Spiotta, author of Lightning Field and Eat the Document, which was a National Book Award finalist.

On Tuesday, June 26, J.T. Barbarese, an associate professor of English at Rutgers–Camden, author of the books of poetry The Black Beach, which won the Vassar Miller Prize, and most recently Sweet Spot will read Elissa Schappell, author of the books Blueprints for Building Better Girls, which was chosen as one of the “Best Books of 2011” by The San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets, and Use Me, a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist.

Selected conference attendees will read their works on Wednesday, June 27.

Accepting only 15 students per year, the competitive Rutgers–Camden MFA program in creative writing requires 42 credits of coursework and completion of a thesis for this terminal degree concentrating in fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. More information about Rutgers–Camden’s MFA program in creative writing is available at mfa.camden.rutgers.edu.

For more information about the Rutgers–Camden Summer Writers’ Conference free reading series, visit summer.camden.rutgers.edu/writconf.html.

For directions to Rutgers–Camden, visit camden.rutgers.edu.