Monday, January 28, 2008
Graham is first featured reader in spring 2008 RopeWalk Reading Series
 Matthew Graham, associate professor of English, will read his poetry at the first RopeWalk Reading of the spring 2008 semester Thursday, February 7.Graham is the author of three books of poetry, A World Without End (2007), 1946 (1991), and New World Architecture (1985). He has received a number of awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is USI’s director of Creative Writing, co-directs the RopeWalk Writers Retreat, and serves as poetry editor for the University’s literary magazine, Southern Indiana Review. There will be two RopeWalk Readings during April, which is National Poetry Month. On Tuesday, April 8, USI welcomes Benjamin Percy. Percy teaches creative writing, composition, and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He is the author of the short story collections Refresh, Refresh (2007) and The Language of Elk (2006). Percy is the recipient of the 2007 Plimpton Prize, awarded annually by the editors of The Paris Review. He also received the Pushcart Prize Fellowship and the John Gardner Fellowship in Fiction from the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in 2007. The Sundance Institute accepted a screenplay based on his story Refresh, Refresh for its 2007 June Directors and Screenwriters Labs. His essay “Wal-Mart and the Apocalypse and Me” appeared in the 20th anniversary issue of the Green Mountains Review. He writes book reviews for Esquire and The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and his Master of Fine Arts degree with a teaching fellowship from Southern Illinois University. Two Louisville poets, Nickole Brown and Dr. Lynnell Edwards, take the RopeWalk podium on Thursday, April 24. Brown’s debut collection of poetry, Sister, was published by Red Hen Press in 2007. A poet and fiction writer, she has given a number of readings, including events in the early ‘90s with Garrison Keillor at New York's Waldorf Astoria and with Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg at New York University. She serves as the program coordinator for Union Institute and University’s summer writing residency in Slovenia and is the publicity consultant for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Arts Council. Her work has been featured in The Writer’s Chronicle, Poets & Writers, Another Chicago Magazine, Diagram Magazine, 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Post Road, PP/FF, Florida Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, and Mammoth Books’ Sudden Stories anthology. Her chapbook mud was published in 1996 by WhiteFields Press. She also co-edited the anthology Air Fare: Stories, Poems, and Essays on Flight (2004). She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Vermont College. She studied English Literature at Oxford University as an English Speaking Union Scholar, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson in 1997. Brown is director of marketing and development for Sarabande Books, a Louisville-based nonprofit literary press. Edwards is the author of two collections of poetry, both from Red Hen Press: The Highwayman's Wife (2007) and The Farmer's Daughter (2003). Her work has appeared in Poets Against the War; Raising Our Voices: Oregon Poets Against the War; and numerous literary journals including: Poems & Plays, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, and Dos Passos Review. She is a regular reviewer for The Georgia Review, Pleiades, and Rain Taxi. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she teaches at the University of Louisville. She received her doctorate and Master of Arts degree in English at the University of Louisville and her undergraduate degree at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is the recipient of a 2007 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She also taught English at Bellarmine University in Louisville and for 10 years was a professor of English at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, where she served as faculty advisor for the literary journal, The Promethean. All of the readings in the RopeWalk Reading Series begin at 5 p.m. in Kleymeyer Hall in the Liberal Center. |
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