Free readings and workshops open to the public
CAMDEN – Hearing an accomplished author read right in front of you can be inspiring. To have that same author review your own writing can be life-changing. This fall at Rutgers–Camden aspiring writers are welcome to submit their writing to a roster of leading authors, who will also be offering free readings on Campus.Thanks to a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rutgers–Camden master of fine arts (MFA) program will host the special series, which is free and open to the public. The readings will take place at 7 p.m. in the Stedman Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Building on Third Street, between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden Campus. A Q&A session and reception will follow each reading. For inquiries on the 3:30 to 5 p.m. workshops, email mfa@camden.rutgers.edu. Space for the workshops is limited.
For more information, call (856) 225-6021; for directions to Rutgers–Camden, visit camden.rutgers.edu. Learn more about the Rutgers–Camden MFA program at mfa.camden.rutgers.edu.
Wednesday, Sept. 22
Poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Anne Marie Macari will read; Macari will lead the workshop.
Whiting award-winner Thomas Sayers Ellis is the author of the poetry collection The Maverick Room, which won the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award, along the chapbook the Genuine Negro Hero and the chaplet Song On. Two forthcoming works include the poetry collection Skin, Inc. and Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets.
Anne Marie Macari’s books of poetry include Gloryland, Ivory Cradle, which was chosen by Robert Creeley for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and most recently She Heads Into The Wilderness. Her poems have also been published widely including The Iowa Review, The American Poetry Review, Triquarterly, and Five Points Magazine, which awarded Macari the James Dickey Prize in 2005.
Friday, Oct. 22
Novelist and playwright John Biguenet will read and lead the workshop.
An O. Henry Award winner for his short fiction, Biguenet is the author of The Torturer’s Apprentice: Stories and Oyster, a novel. He has published stories in such magazines as Esquire, Playboy, and Story and is a guest columnist for the New York Times. The author of three plays, Wundmale, The Vulgar Soul, and Rising Water, which won the National New Play Network Commission Award, Biguenet is the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Wednesday, Nov. 10
Authors Sam Lipsyte and Meg Wolitzer will read; Wolitzer will lead the workshop.
Lipsyte is the author of Venus Drive, The Subject of Steve, Home Land, a New York Times Notable Book of 2004 and winner of the Believer Book Award, and most recently, The Ask. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, Lipsyte has published writing in Tin House, NOON, The Quarterly, Esquire, and GQ.
Meg Wolitzer's novels include The Wife, The Position, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Uncoupling, which will be published by Riverhead this April. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize; she teaches at Barnard College.
Media Contact: Cathy K. Donovan
(856) 225-6627
E-mail: catkarm@camden.rutgers.edu