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  • Liliana Ursu

    Club Rooms 107-108, Magill Commons

    Liliana Ursu, internationally acclaimed Romanian poet, was born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1949. Ursu has published eight books of poetry in Romanian. Her first book in English,The Sky Behind the Forest(Bloodaxe Books, 1997), translated by Ursu, Adam J. Sorkin, and Tess Gallagher, became a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation and was shortlisted for Oxford’s Weidenfeld Prize.Goldsmith Market (Zephyr Press, 2004) is Liliana Ursu’s third book of poetry in Romanian, and her third book to appear in English. Lightwall will be published by Zephyr Press in 2009. Her most recent book A Path to the Sea was published in 2011

    During 1992-93 and again in 1997-98, Ursu was a Fulbright Lecturer at Penn State’s University Park campus; in spring 2000 she served as a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Louisville. In fall 2003, she was Poet-in-Residence at the Stadler Center for Poetry, Bucknell University. Ursu has worked for Romanian National Radio since 1980, producing a literary magazine of the air.

    The reading is sponsored by Global Initiatives and The Visiting Writers Series

  • Natasha Trethewey

    Natasha Trethewey is author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press); Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). Her collection Thrall is due for publication in 2012. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, Domestic Work (2000), was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry.

  • Visiting Writer: Naomi Shihab Nye

    Location: Pollak Theater

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     Naomi Shihab Nye – Poetry Reading

     Admission compliments of Monmouth University

    Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. She is the author and/or editor of more than 25 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). Other works include seven prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, and What Have You Lost? Her recent collection of poems for young adults titled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Two new books are forthcoming in winter 2012: There Is No Long Distance Now (a collection of very short stories) and Transfer (a book of poetry and prose). She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a WitterBynner Fellow (Library of Congress). Her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials: “The Language of Life with Bill Moyers” and “The United States of Poetry” and also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers.

    Click for more information on the Caravanserai events.

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  • Josh Emmons

    Josh Emmons was born in Bangkok and grew up in northern California. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he published his first novel with Scribner in 2005, “The Loss of Leon Meed,” which won a Copernicus-James Michener Award and has been translated into French, Hebrew, German and Dutch. His second book, “Prescription for a Superior Existence,” came out in 2008 from Scribner, and a Turkish translation is forthcoming. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in “The American Scholar,” “The New York Times Book Review,” “McSweeney’s Quarterly,” “Details,” “People,” “FiveChapters,” “Esquire,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” and elsewhere.

    Two of his short stories have been given honorable mention in “The Best American Non-required Reading,” and he has received several fellowships to the Yaddo Colony in Saratoga Springs, NY. Emmons has taught at Grinnell College, the University of Iowa and Loyola University, and he is now an assistant professor of creative writing at Monmouth University. He lives in Philadelphia.

    www.joshemmons.com

  • Meena Alexander

    Meena Alexander considered one of the foremost Indian poets of her generation, was born in India and raised both there and in Sudan. At eighteen she went to England to study. She has published six volumes of poetry including Illiterate Heart, which won the PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk and Quickly Changing River. She has also published three chapbooks of poetry: The Storm: A Poem in Five Parts, Night-Scene, the Garden and in 2012 Shimla. Her poems have been translated into several languages including French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Macedonian, Arabic, Malayalam and Hindi.

    She is the editor of Indian Love Poems and author of the volume of poems and short prose pieces: The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience. Her memoir Fault Lines was picked as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the year. Poetics of Dislocation appeared in 2009 in the Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press. Her prose includes two novels, Nampally Road and Manhattan Music and two academic studies on early English Romanticism, one of which is Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley.

    Her fellowships include those from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Arts Council of England as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. She has been in residence at the McDowell Colony and at Yaddo where she had the Martha Walsh Pulver Fellowship for a Poet.

  • Fall Poetry Festival

    The day will consist of readings by nationally known poets, some of whom will conduct poetry workshops for participants. The keynote readers will be Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn and Cave Canem Fellow Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

    Stephen Dunn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Different Hours. His many other books include New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994, What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009, and, most recently, Here and Now.

    Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia, The Requited Distance, and, most recently, Mule & Pear. A photographer and painter as well as a poet, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

    In addition, a dozen nationally known local poets will give brief readings: Gabe Barabas, Michael Broek, Prescott Evarts, Laura McCullough, Yesenia Montilla, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Suzanne Parker, Lauren Schmidt, Michael Paul Thomas, Michael Waters, BJ Ward, and Daniel Weeks. The festival will culminate with a reading by registered participants.

    Admission to the readings is free and open to the public.

    The workshops, also free, will be open to registrants only. To register, e-mail Dr. Michael Waters no later than Wednesday, November 7, at mgwaters@monmouth.edu.

    Please see the schedule below for reading and workshop times. This event is co-sponsored by the Long Branch Arts Council, the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University, the Department of English at Monmouth University, and The Monmouth Review.

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    9-10 a.m.
    Sign-in for registrants in Bey Hall (refreshments).
    The Monmouth Review     distributed to participants.

    10-11 a.m.: Reading:
    Laura McCullough / BCC
    Michael Broek / BCC
    Suzanne Parker / BCC
    Gabe Barabas / NJ Repertory Company
    Lauren Schmidt / MU
    BJ Ward / Warren CC

    11 a.m. -12 p.m.: Workshops

    12-1 p.m.: Lunch for registrants

    1-2 p.m.: Reading:

    Michael Paul Thomas / MU
    Prescott Evarts Jr. / MU
    Mihaela Moscaliuc / MU
    Dan Weeks / MU
    Yesenia Montilla / NYC
    Michael Waters / MU

    2-3 p.m.: Workshops

    3-4 p.m.: Reading:

    Rachel Eliza Griffiths
    Stephen Dunn

    4-5 p.m.: Participants’ reading

  • Mary Gaitskill

    Awarding-winning author Mary Gaitskill is best known for delivering powerful stories of dislocation, longing, and desire with prose that “glides lightly over unsoundable depths” [Village Voice]. She is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and Veronica, which was nominated for the 2005 National Book Award, National Critic’s Circle Award, and L.A. Times Book Award. She is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner in 1998. Bad Behavior, now a classic, made critical waves when it was first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and established her as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Her newest collection of stories is titled Don’t Cry (2009):Written with her distinctive, uncanny combination of bluntness and high lyricism, Don’t Cry takes its place among artworks of great moral seriousness.” [Bomb Magazine]

    Mary Gaitskill was born in 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1981 Gaitskill graduated from the University of Michigan, where she won an award for her collection of short fiction The Woman Who Knew Judo and Other Stories.

  • Visiting Arts Lecture: Jen Davis

    Location: Wilson Auditorium

    Jen Davis is a New York based photographer. For the past 11 years she has been working on a series of Self-Portraits dealing with issues regarding beauty, identity, and body image. An accomplished photographer, she received her MFA from Yale University and has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

    Lecture funded by the Gender Studies Program

  • Natalie Diaz

    Native American poet Natalie Diaz will be in residence at Monmouth University on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18th, 2014.

    On Thursday, 17th, at 11:00 a.m., she will speak about the language revitalization program at Fort Mojave, her home reservation, where she works with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language. At 3:00 p.m. she will conduct a poetry workshop with students and community members. At 4:30 p.m. she will read her poems.

    On Friday, 18th, Natalie Diaz will participate in the afternoon launch of The Monmouth Review, the student-edited literary and arts journal, outside Wilson Hall.

    Natalie Diaz grew up in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community.

    Her poems have appeared in The North American Review, The Southeast Review, Prairie Schooner, Spillway, Best New Poets 2007, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012.

    Her book will be available for purchase and signing at the poetry reading.

    This residency is co-sponsored by the West Branch Arts Council and the Department of English.

  • Visiting Writer: Melissa Febos

    Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, WHIP SMART (St. Martin’s Press 2010), whose “electrifying prose and unremitting honesty” Kirkus Reviews said, “expertly captures grace within depravity.” Among other places, she has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Anderson Cooper Live, CNN, The Atlantic and Tin House online, Guernica, and New York magazine.  Her writing has been published and anthologized widely, in venues including Glamour, Kenyon Review, Post Road, Hunger Mountain, Salon, Dissent, The Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, Bitch Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, The Rumpus, The Beauty Anthology, The Moment Anthology, and Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York.  For seven years, she has co-curated and hosted the popular Mixer Reading and Music Series in Manhattan, and is the recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught writing at Purchase College, The New School, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, Utica College, and the Institute of American Indian Arts, among other places, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction at Monmouth University. Selected by Lia Purpura as the winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Contest, she is the recipient of a 2013 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Artist Grant, a 2012 Bread Loaf Nonfiction Fellowship, a 2014 Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowship, and MacDowell Colony fellowships in 2010, 2011, and 2014. The daughter of a sea captain and a psychotherapist, she was raised on Cape Cod, and lives in Brooklyn.

    Free and Open to the Public