Thursday, March 14, 2002

WILMINGTON, NC – The UNCW Creative Writing Department will hold its second annual Writers’ Symposium March 18-22. Activities, which include workshops, panels, readings and manuscript conferences, bring together graduate and undergraduate students to discuss the craft. In addition, eight distinguished visiting writers will read from their works followed by book signings. The readings and panel discussions are free and open to the public. The week’s events are listed below.

Monday, March 18

3:30 p.m. Cameron Hall Auditorium

Poetry panel featuring John D’Agata, Kathy Fagan, Sarah Messer and Michael White

John D’Agata received an MFA in poetry and non-fiction from the University of Iowa. His book Halls of Fame was published last year.

Kathy Fagan teaches at Ohio State University and is the author of The Raft, winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series, and Moving and St. Rage, winner of the 1998 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize. Her book of poems, The Charm, is forthcoming from Zoo Press.

Sarah Messer is an assistant professor in UNCW’s Creative Writing Department. She is the author of Bandit Letters.

Michael White, an associate professor in UNCW’s Creative Writing Department, is the author of The Island and Palma Cathedral.

8 p.m. Cameron Hall Auditorium

Readings by Kathy Fagan and Thisbe Nissen

Thisbe Nissen had her first novel The Good People of New York selected by Booklist as one of the top 10 debut novels of 2001. A second novel, Osprey Island, is forthcoming from Knopf, and The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook (with Erin Ergenbright) is forthcoming from HarperCollins.

Tuesday, March 19

3:30 p.m. Cameron Hall Auditorium

Fiction panel featuring Ben Anastas, Thisbee Nissen, Wendy Brenner and Philip Gerard

Ben Anastas won GQ’s Frederick Exley Fiction Prize for the short story Ice Fishing. He is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance.

Wendy Brenner is an assistant professor in UNCW’s Creative Writing Department and the author of the short story collection Phone Calls from the Dead.

Philip Gerard, professor of creative writing at UNCW, is the author of several fiction and non-fiction works including Hatteras Light and Creative Non-fiction.

8 p.m. Cameron Hall Auditorium

Readings by Ben Anastas and John D’Agata

Wednesday, March 20

3:30 p.m. Cameron Hall Auditorium

Creative non-fiction panel featuring John D’Agata, Jan DeBlieu, Philip Furia and Denise Gess



Jan DeBlieu has written for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, Orion and Oxford American. She is the author of three books Hatteras Journal, Meant to be Wild and Wind which won the John Burrows Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing. She lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Philip Furia is director of UNCW’s Film Studies Program and a professor of creative writing. He is the author of Irving Berlin: A Life in Song and Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist.

Denise Gess is the author of the novels Good Deeds and Red Whiskey Blues.

8 p.m. Kenan Auditorium

Readings by Allan Gurganus and Clyde Edgerton

Allan Gurganus is the author of the novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and The Practical Heart, a collection of four novellas. He is at work on his next novel The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church. As a visiting writer, Gurganus is teaching a graduate fiction workshop in UNCW’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. He also taught at Stanford, Duke, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Sarah Lawrence College.

Clyde Edgerton is a member of the UNCW Creative Writing Department where he teaches both graduate and undergraduate fiction workshops. He is the author of the novels Raney, Killer Diller and Walking Across Egypt.

Thursday, March 21

8 p.m. King Hall Auditorium

Readings by Jan DeBlieu and Jack Myers

Jack Myers, a professor at Southern Methodist University, has published seven volumes of poetry, most recently The Glowing River: New and Selected Poems, and five works about the craft of poetry including The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. Widely anthologized, his work has appeared in Esquire, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review. He has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Friday, March 22

3:30 p.m. King Hall Auditorium

Publishing panel featuring Michael Taeckens from Algonquin Books, Reynolds Smith from Duke University Press, David Perry from UNC Press and moderator Stanley Colbert from UNCW

8 p.m. Kenan Auditorium

Reading by keynote speaker Gallway Kinnell

Gallway Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 for Selected Poems. Winner of a number of major fellowships, including those from the MacArthur and Guggenheim foundations, and the Medal of Merit from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Kinnell has lectured and read extensively in the United States and abroad. “There’s not a specific thing I’m aiming for, but there is something that’s almost unspeakable and poems are efforts to speak it bit by bit, like a burden that has to be laid down piece by piece, that can’t be just thrown off,” said Kinnell.

For more information, contact the Creative Writing Department at 910/962-7063.