Visiting Writers Series Features Current Grisham Writer-in-Residence
Tue, 10/28/2014 - 09:46am
The Department of English in the College of Arts and Letters at The University of Southern Mississippi will host the Visiting Writers Series, a lecture series that brings internationally acclaimed authors of fiction and poetry to Southern Miss and the community. The readings are free and open to the public and will be held on the Hattiesburg campus in the Liberal Arts Building, room 108.
The Visiting Writers Series serves students by exposing them to different aesthetics and styles so they realize how vital this is to learning the art. The first reading in the series will be held Wednesday, Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. when Mary Miller will provide a fiction reading.
Miller was a part of the Center of Writers at Southern Miss and currently serves as the John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her collection of stories, Big World, was published in 2009. The Last Days of California, her first novel, was just published.
“Miller seemed like a fitting writer, in part because she's connected to the Center for Writers, but also, since she just released her first novel, it's helpful for the graduate students to see someone who is not too far removed from where they are,” said Andrew Milward, assistant professor and editor-in-chief of the Mississippi Review.
The second reading in the Visiting Writers Series is set for Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m. when guest writer Caki Wilkinson will provide a poetry reading.
Wilkinson, assistant professor of English at Rhodes College, is the author of the poetry collections Circles Where the Head Should Be, which won the 2010 Vassar Miller Prize, and The Wynona Stone Poems, which won the 2013 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award.
“Prior to the readings, the authors give advice and look over graduate students' work. Any visiting writer that comes through is a wonderful chance for graduate students to work with them,” Milward said. “It's always helpful to get a new voice.”
For more than 30 years, the Center for Writers in the Department of English has brought in established authors of poetry and fiction to the Southern Miss community for public readings, workshops and individual conferences with the Center of Writers graduate students. The series will continue into the spring 2015 semester.
For more information about any of these readings or future ones, contact the Department of English at 601.266.5757 or visit http://artsandlettersnow.usm.edu.