RopeWalk Writers Retreat

Reading Series

Each reading begins at 5 p.m. in Kleymeyer Hall in USI's Liberal Arts Center and is followed by a reception and book signing. All readings are free and open to the public. Publications by these authors are available to purchase at USI Bookstore and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

FALL 2009

	LEE MARTIN 5pm Thurs., Sept. 24^thKleymeyer Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; and Quakertown. He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones; and a short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, Story, DoubleTake, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University.

	Brett Eugene Ralph 5pm Thurs., Oct. 15^th Kleymeyer Brett Eugene Ralph spent the better part of his youth in Louisville, Kentucky, playing football and singing in punk rock bands. He is author of Black Sabbatical (Sarabande, 2007) and his work has appeared in publications such as Conduit, Mudfish, Willow Springs, and The American Poetry Review, and his poems have been anthologized in The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets and The Stiffest of the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Missouri State University, and the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies in the Himalayas of northern India. Currently, he lives in Empire, Kentucky, and teaches at Hopkinsville Community College. His country rock ensemble, Brett Eugene Ralph's Kentucky Chrome Revue, can be heard in seedy dives throughout the South.

	XX Eccentric Women 5pm Thurs., Oct. 29^thKleymeyer Six contributing authors will read from their short stories in XX Eccentric: Stories About the Eccentricities of Women, the latest anthology published by Main Street Rag. Award-winning novelists and short story authors, grant and prize winners, C. Jane Bradley, Amy Locklin, Molly McCaffrey, Nicole Louise Reid, Kathryn Shaver, and Josh Woods will share the stage for an evening of eccentricity

	Lili Wright 5pm Thurs., Nov. 12^th Kleymeyer Lili Wright worked as a newspaper reporter for ten years before she earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University. She is author of the travel memoir, Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men (Broadway, 2002). Her essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Esquire, The Chicago Tribune, Maize, Grand Tour and other publications. She teaches writing at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where she lives with her husband and two children. Her essay, “Pilgrim,” is excerpted from a work-in-progress called Mother at Sea.

	Aaron Gwyn 5pm, Thurs., Jan. 21^st Kleymeyer Aaron Gwyn was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and grew up on a farm in the central part of the state. He received his PhD in English from the University of Denver and currently teaches fiction writing at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. His short fiction has appeared in New Stories from the South, McSweeney's, Glimmer Train, Black Warrior Review, The Texas Review, Indiana Review, as well as several textbooks and anthologies. His novel, The World Beneath, was published April 2009 by W.W. Norton and Co. His story collection, Dog on the Cross, was published in 2004 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.

Spring 2010

	Eric Puchner 5pm, Thurs., Mar. 25^th Kleymeyer Eric Puchner is author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, Chicago Tribune, The Sun, The Missouri Review, and Best New American Voices. He has received a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Scribner will publish his first novel, Model Home, in 2010.

	Crystal Wilkinson 5pm, Thurs.,Apr.15^th Kleymeyer Crystal Wilkinson is the author of Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the 2002 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She is also the recipient of awards and fellowships from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the recent winner of the 2008 Denny Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage Magazine and currently teaches writing and literature in the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Morehead State University. She has also taught in the brief residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University and the MFA in Creative Writing at Indiana University--Bloomington.

	Alan Cheuse 7:30pm, Fri., Apr. 23^rd Mitchell Auditorium For over twenty-five years, Alan Cheuse has been “reading for America” every week on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He’s also been writing a number of books of his own, and teaching the art of narrative and literature at George Mason University for over twenty years. He is the author, among other books, of the novels The Grandmothers’ Club, and The Light Possessed, the short story collections Lost and Old Rivers and The Tennessee Waltz, and a memoir, Fall Out of Heaven. His latest novel, To Catch the Lightning, won the Grub Street National Prize for Fiction for 2009. His collection of travel essays A Trance After Breakfast appeared in June. With fellow novelist Nicholas Delbanco he wrote the newly published Literature: Craft & Voice, an introduction to college literary study. Since the late 1980s he has taught in the MFA program at George Mason University and at the summer conference of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

For more information, call Nicole Reid, USI assistant professor of creative writing, 812/464-1916.

Presented by the USI College of Liberal Arts, the RopeWalk Reading Series is made possible through the support of RopeWalk Writers Retreat, the Southern Indiana Review, USI Society for Arts & Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Indiana Arts Commission, and USI Student Writers’ Union.