Ishion Hutchinson
Wednesday, March 28, 5:30pm, Squires, 345
Ishion Hutchinson received his MFA in Poetry from New York University. His work has appeared in the LA Review, Callaloo, Caribbean Review of Books, Poetry International and the chapbook, Bryan’s Bay. He has almost finished his PhD at Utah. Far District is his first full-length collection, recently noted as one of four “significant new books of poetry” by poet Carol Muske-Dukes in her blog at The Huffington Post. Born on August 22, 1983 in Jamaica, Hutchinson won the Academy of American Poets' Larry Levis Prize and the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry.
Paul Shepherd
Tuesday, April 17th, 4 pm, VBI 145
(Virginia Bioinfomatics Institute, Duck Pond Drive and Washington Street)
Paul Shepherd is former Writer in Residence and Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University, where he earned a PhD with distinction. He attended the University of Virginia, UNC-Chapel Hill, and UNC-Greensboro. His work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Fiction, Omni, Prairie Schooner, William and Mary Review, Folio, Pacific Review, US Catholic, St. Anthony Messenger, Portland Review, the Quarterly, Beloit Fiction, Maryland Review, and elsewhere. He has served as Senior Editor of International Quarterly, and as faculty advisor to award-winning college newspapers and literary magazines.
His novel More Like Not Running Away won the Mary McCarthy Award and was finalist for the Associated Writing Programs, the Bakeless, the Gardner, and twice for the James Jones prizes.
Keorapetse Kgositsile
Monday, March 12, 7:00pm, VBI 145
(Virginia Bioinfomatics Institute, Duck Pond Drive and Washington Street)
Born in 1938, Keorapetse ‘Willie’ Kgositsile left South Africa in 1961 as one of the first young ANC members instructed to do so by the leadership of the liberation movement. He was a founding member of the ANC Department of Education as well as that of Arts and Culture. The recipient of many poetry awards, he has also studied and taught Literature and Creative Writing at a number of universities in the United States and in Africa.
Willie Kgositsile’s poetry ranges from the unambiguously political and public to the lyric and confessional. In addition to his unique poetic voice, he is also a gifted teacher. Among his publications is an excellent book on teaching the craft of poetry – not the ‘what’ but the ‘how’. He is Poet Laureate of South Africa.
Merle Collins
Wednesday, March 21, 5:00pm, GLC -Room F
Merle Collins was born in 1950 in Aruba to Grenadian parents, she was taken to Grenada shortly after her birth. Her primary education was in St Georges. She graduated from the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where she took a degree in English and in Spanish. After graduating in 1972, she returned to Grenada, where she taught History and Spanish for the next two years. She has also taught in St Lucia. In 1980 she was awarded a Masters Georgetown University in Latin American Studies.
She was deeply involved in the Grenadian revolution and served as a coordinator for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983. Her first collection of poetry Because the Dawn Breaks was published by Karia Press in 1985. At this time she was a member of African Dawn, a performance group combining poetry, mime and African music. In 1987, she published her first novel Angel, which follows the lives of both Angel and the Grenadian people as they struggle for independence. This was followed by a collection of short stories, Rain Darling in 1990, and a second collection of poetry, Rotten Pomerack in 1992. Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995. Her most recent book, a collection of short stories titled The Ladies are Upstairs was published in 2011.
She is currently Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland.