The MFA Reading Series will present visits from four accomplished writers this semester. The readings are free and open to the public.
For more information, send an email to scottanderson4@boisestate.edu.
Peter Gizzi, Friday, Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m. The Cabin Literary Center, 801 S. Capitol Blvd.
Educated at New York University, Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, poet Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, including Threshold Songs (2011), The Outernationale (2007), and Artificial Heart (1998). Influenced by Ezra Pound, the Beats and John Ashbery, Gizzi uses both narrative and lyrical gestures to engage and question distance and light in his search for the unmapped.
Gizzi has won the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets as well as fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Rex Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at Brown University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Brenda Coultas, Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m. The Cabin Literary Center, 801 S. Capitol Blvd
Brenda Coultas is the author of four poetry collections, including The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014), The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House Press, 2008) and A Handmade Museum (Coffee House Press, 2003).
Her honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She teaches at Touro College and lives in New York City.
Smith Henderson, Thursday, April 2, 7:30 p.m. Location TBA
Smith Henderson is the recipient of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writer Award in fiction, and was the Phillip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University the same year. His short story, “Number Stations,” won a Pushcart Prize and a finalist honors for the University of Texas Keene Prize, where he was a Michener Center for Writing Fellow. He currently works at the Wieden + Kennedy advertising agency, where he contributed to the Emmy-nominated “Halftime In America” Super Bowl commercial.
An accomplished screenwriter, he co-wrote “Dance With The One,” a 2010 South By Southwest Narrative Prize finalist. His fiction has been anthologized and published in American Short Fiction, One Story, New Orleans Review, Makeout Creek and Witness. Born and raised in Montana, he now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Anne Beattie, Thursday, April 24th, 7:30 p.m. Location TBA
Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections, in John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and in Jennifer Egan’s The Best American Short Stories 2014. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She was the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia (emerita).
She is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
BY: SHERRY SQUIRES PUBLISHED 1:18 PM / FEBRUARY 2, 2015