Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff is the author of the novels The Barracks Thief and Old School, the memoirs This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army, and the short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, and The Night in Question. His most recent collection of short stories, Our Story Begins, won The Story Prize for 2008. Other honors include the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award - both for excellence in the short story - the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.  He has also been the editor of Best American Short Stories, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, and A Doctor's Visit: The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and other magazines and literary journals.

Born in 1970, Kevin Young is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation, one who finds meaning and inspiration in African American music, particularly the blues, and in the bittersweet history of Black America. Lucille Clifton says of Young, “[His] gift of storytelling and understanding of the music inherent in the oral tradition of language re-creates for us an inner history which is compelling and authentic and American."  His newest book is Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels (Knopf, 2011). His previous collection was Dear Darkness (Knopf, 2008). For the Confederate Dead, was published in January 2007. His earlier collection, Black Maria: Poems Produced and Directed by Kevin Young is a "film noir in verse," a playful homage to the language and imagery of Hollywood detective films. The title, Black Maria, is vintage street slang for "police van" and "hearse," as well as the name of Thomas Edison's first film studio. Young was a 1993 National Poetry Series winner for Most Way Home, a volume of meditations on racism, slavery, poverty, and the meaning of "home" in the collective memory of African Americans.He is currently a professor of poetry at Emory University.

MFA Katherine Soniat Reading Series

Vievee Francis is the author of two poetry collections Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006) and Horse in the Dark (forthcoming, Northwestern University Press, 2011). Her work is also forthcoming or has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Indiana Review, Best American Poetry 2010, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, among others.  In 2009 she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan where she was the 2009/2010 Poet in Residence for the Alice Lloyd Hall Scholar’s Program. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an Associate Editor for Callaloo and the Visiting Artist/Scholar at the College for Creative Studies.

John Dufresne has won the Yankee Magazine award for fiction, the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction award. His novel Louisiana Power & Light was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1994. He is also the author of two short story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad, and the novels, Love Warps the Mind a Little, also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1997, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and most recently, Requiem, Mass. His books on writing, The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? are used in many university writing programs. He’s a professor at Florida International University in Miami

Rivka Galchen

Friday, March 16, 7 PM, VBI 145

(Virginia Bioinfomatics Institute, Duck Pond Drive and Washington Street)

MFA Katherine Soniat Reading Series

Author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances, winner of the William J. Saroyan International Prize for Fiction, Rivka Galchen's stories and essays have appeared in publications including Harper's, The Believer, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and she was recently named to The New Yorker's list of 20 Writers Under 40.

Susan B. A. Somers-Willett

Friday, April 13, 7 PM,VBI 145

(Virginia Bioinfomatics Institute, Duck Pond Drive and Washington Street)

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is the author of two books of poetry: Quiver, which received the 2010 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award, and Roam, winner of the Crab Orchard Award Series in 2006. She has also published a book of criticism, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America. Her writing has been featured by The Iowa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, and The New Yorker as well as on the Public Radio International program Studio 360 and BBC Radio. Somers-Willett’s honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and a Gracie Award and fellowships from the Millay Colony and the Mellon Foundation. She is an Assistant Professor of creative writing and poetics at Montclair State University in New Jersey.