Tuesday, October 19, 2010

National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson will be the keynote speaker for the Fall 2010 Writers Week Symposium, sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Johnson—who has written numerous novels, plays, poetry collections, short stories and essays—will read from his work and answer questions at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2 in Kenan Auditorium.

Writers Week, Nov. 1-5, brings together visiting writers of local and national interest, publishing professionals, UNC Wilmington students and members of the public with an interest in literature. The symposium includes workshops, panels, readings and manuscript conferences.

This fall's Writers Week will also celebrate the fifth anniversary of Ecotone, the semiannual journal of writing about place produced by the UNCW creative writing department. Said editor Ben George: "We interpret the term 'ecotone'—a transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities—in a metaphorical way: as a place of danger or opportunity, a testing ground. One of our primary goals is to bridge the gap between science and culture, to break out of the pen of the purely literary and wander freely among the disciplines."

Since 2006, Ecotone has been the only publication in the country to have its work reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Best American Essays, Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2008 Salman Rushdie identified Ecotone as one of the literary magazines on which "the health of the American short story depends."

This year's Writers Week roster consists of numerous Ecotone contributors, including Denis Johnson, Katie Fallon, Rivka Galchen, Charlotte Matthews, Ron Rash and Jon Pineda. It also features former Ecotone editors Jay Varner, Kimi Faxon Hemingway and Heather Wilson, as well as Peter Steinberg of The Steinberg Agency and Chuck Adams of Algonquin Books. Biographies of these guests and a detailed Writers Week schedule are available on the Department of Creative Writing website, www.uncw.edu/writers/news_calendar.html.

All events are free and open to the public. Receptions sponsored by the department and book signings sponsored by Pomegranate Books will follow readings. For further information on UNCW's programs and events in creative writing, please contact the Department of Creative Writing at 910.962.7063.