The Inspired Writer Series 2012-13
Monday, May 6, 2013 at 7 p.m.
The World Without You
Joshua Henkin
Dolan School of Business Dining Room - Fairfield University
Joshua Henkin's latest book, The World Without You, has been named an Editors' Choice Book by The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and is the winner of the 2012 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction and a Finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award. Set against the backdrop of Independence Day and the Iraq War, The World Without You is a novel about sibling rivalries and marital feuds, about volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, about the true meaning of family. Henkin is the author of the novels Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book, and Swimming Across The Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book. His short stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories, and broadcast on NPR's "Selected Shorts." He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and directs the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.
The event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 7 p.m.
Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy
John Wood
John Wood is the Founder and Board Co-Chair of Room to Read, one of the fastest-growing and award-winning charities founded during this century. A former Microsoft marketing executive, Wood left the company in 1999 to start the organization. To date, Room to Read has opened over 1,500 schools and 13,600 libraries, distributed over 11 million books including 707 self-published original local language titles, and supported over 17,000 girls to succeed in secondary school and beyond. Due to the work of Room to Read, over six million children in 10 countries across Asia and Africa benefit via the lifelong gift of education and literacy. John has emulated his hero, Andrew Carnegie, by opening over five times as many libraries. He describes his efforts thus far as "total tip of the iceberg" and aspires to reach 10 million children by 2015.
John is a member of the Advisory Board of the Clinton Global Initiative. He was the first-ever Microsoft Alumni of the Year, an award bestowed by Bill and Melinda Gates. He is a five-time winner of Fast Company Magazine's Social Capitalist Award, a three-time speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and was given a Presidential Citation by the American Library Association. The local language children's publishing program he catalyzed at Room to Read was awarded with UNESCO's Confucius Prize for Literacy in 2011. He has twice been named by Barron's magazine as one of the world's 25 Most Effective Philanthropists and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.
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Kelley Theatre, Quick Center for the Arts - Free and open to the public
Presented by the MFA in Creative Writing
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 at 7 p.m.
An Evening with Karen Osborn and Da Chen
My Last Empress
Da Chen
Intrigued by a statue of the missionary Samuel Pickens on a visit to Yale, Da Chen embarked on a journey that brought My Last Empressto life. It is a sweeping story of passion and obsession set during the Boxer Rebellion in nineteenth century China. Da Chen, a faculty member of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing program is the best-selling author of a memoir, Colors of the Mountain and its sequel Sounds of The River and a novel Brothers - all best-selling and award-winning publications. An inspiration to many, Da Chen shares his own incredible story with high schools, colleges and universities and large corporations both nationally and internationally.
"Steeped in the language and colors of an Asia long gone... Chen's... 19th-century tale of obsession explores the line between love and madness." - Publishers Weekly
Centerville
Karen Osborn
Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and the escalating Vietnam War, a town is torn apart in one violent moment. Centerville forms an engrossing meditation on the complex questions that arise in the wake of senseless violence. Karen, a faculty member of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative writing is a best-selling author and winner of a Notable Book of the Year Award from the New York Times and with stories and poetry have been published in numerous magazines including The Southern Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Wisconsin Review, Clapboard House, New England Watershed, The Seattle Review, Poet Lore, and the Mid-American Review.
"A unique novel of smalltown America that begins with an explosion so wonderfully described you won't be able to put the book down. Karen Osborn combines considerable literary gifts with a storyteller's skills to produce the unforgettable Centerville."
-Anita Shreve
School of Business dining room
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This event is free and open to the public
Presented by the MFA in Creative Writing
Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.
An Evening of Poetry with Shara McCallum
Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Shara McCallum is the author of four books of poetry: The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems, This Strange Land, a finalist for the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Song of Thieves, and The Water Between Us, winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry.
Her poems have appeared in journals in the US, the UK, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Israel, have been reprinted in textbooks and anthologies of American, African American, Caribbean, and World Literatures, and have been translated into Spanish andRomanian. Her personal essays have been published in The Antioch Review, Creative Nonfiction, Witness, and elsewhere.
Currently, Shara is Director of the Stadler Center for Poetry and Professor of English at Bucknell University.
School of Business dining room
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This event is free and open to the public.
Presented by the Humanities Institute of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Department of American Studies, the Department of Black Studies, the Department of Core Writing, the Department of Honors, the Department of LACS, the Department of MFA in Creative Writing, and the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Atlas Hour - An Evening of Poems
Carol Ann Davis
Selecting moments in history and works of art, the poems in Atlas Hour, embrace the works and lives of Vermeer, Mark Rothko, Fra Angelico and Gerhard Richter. Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic World says "Carol Ann Davis works her material with a jeweler's steady hand, honoring the sensuous definition of surfaces as well as the more elusive claims of desire, sorrow and the gratitude of living. When outer and inner are drawn into balance - and they are, in poem after poem - there comes a catch in the breath, the sense of a rightness apprehended."
An award-winning poet, Carol Ann Davis is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Fairfield University and a faculty member of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing.
Fairfield University Bookstore, 1499 Post Rd. Fairfield, CT
Free and open to the public
Postponed - Date to be Announced
Hemingway's Boat
Paul Hendrickson
Paul Hendrickson in Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life and Lost traces Hemingway's exultations and despair, from the pinnacle of his success to his suicide in 1961, around the one constant in his life - his beloved boat, Pilar. This non-fiction bestseller is the winner of The Heartland Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and voted best book of 2011 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, The Economist and Chicago Tribune. Paul Hendrickson is a prize-winning feature writer for The Washington Post and currently teaches non-fiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
"There's never been a biography quite like this one.... The stores are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air." - Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2011: The Top 10
Barone Campus Center Oak Room
This event is free.
Presented by the MFA in Creative Writing and the Department of English
Thursday, November 15 at 7 p.m.
Life Among Giants
Bill Roorbach
Flannery O'Connor Prize and O'Henry Prize winner, Bill Roorbach is the author of 8 books of fiction and non-fiction, a short story writer, memoirist, nature writer, journalist, blogger, critic and most recently a Food Channel judge. His newest book Life Among Giants is a novel of murder, seduction, and revenge-rich in incident, in expansiveness of character, and in lavishness of setting - it's a Gatsby-esque adventure, a larger-than-life quest for answers that reveals how sometimes the greatest mystery lies in knowing one's own heart.
Roorbach's work has been published in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, Granta, New York, and dozens of other magazines and journals.
Fairfield University Bookstore - 1499 Post Road, Fairfield
This event is free and open to the public
Sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing and the Department of English
Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
Bob Spitz
Bob Spitz, musical impresario and manager of both Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, is now a best-selling author. His books include Barefoot in Babylon, the eye-opening documentary of the Woodstock Music Festival, The Beatles, his definitive bestselling biography of the phenomenal supergroup and Dylan: A Biography. His articles have appeared in almost every major magazine, including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, Conde Nast Traveler, and O the Oprah Magazine. Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, was published on the centenary of her birth, in August 2012, to wide acclaim and brings this remarkable woman vividly to life.
"Spitz captures another side of (Julia's) complex personality: her fierce diligence in mastering the science as well as the art of cooking through detailed experimentation and her concern to translate the preparation of complex French recipes for readers in America... An engrossing biography of a woman worthy of iconic status." - Kirkus Review (starred)
Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts - Kelley Theatre - Free and open to the public
Presented by the MFA in Creative Writing and the Fairfield Public Library
2011-12 Season
Thursday, September 22 at 7 p.m.
Even Silence Has An End
Ingrid Betancourt, former senator and presidential candidate of Colombia, South America who was taken hostage and held for 6 years in the Colombian jungle. Even Silence Has An End is her chronicle of this harrowing ordeal and of her unending faith that made survival possible.
Kelley Theatre - Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts
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This event is free.
Friday, November 4 at 7 p.m.
Michael White
To celebrate the opening of the Fairfield University Bookstore in Fairfield, 2011 CT Book Award nominee, Michael White, director of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing Program, will read from his best-selling book Beautiful Assassin. Beautiful Assassin has been nominated for the 2011 CT Book Award for fiction.
Fairfield University Bookstore downtown Fairfield
This event is free.
Friday, November 18 at 6 p.m.
Thieves of Baghdad
Matthew Bogdanos
Colonel Matthew Bogdanos led the US task force to investigate the pillaging of the Iraq Museum in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures was written as a result of this investigation.
Colonel Bogdanos' visit to campus is presented by The Bellarmine Museum of Art. Admission: $15 includes a signed copy of Thieves of Baghdad. Tickets are available through the Quick Center Box Office at (203) 254-4010 or online at fairfield.edu/quick. For more information on this event please visit www.fairfield.edu/museum.
Wednesday, November 30 at 7:30 p.m.
A reading and discussion with two faculty members from Fairfield's MFA in Creative Writing program.
Rachel Basch, author of The Passion of Reverend Nash and Degrees of Love and Pete Nelson, author of I Thought You Were Dead
Fairfield University Bookstore - Post Road, Fairfield
This event is free.
Wednesday, December 7 at 7 p.m.
An Evening of Inspired Voices
Students and alumni of Fairfield University's MFA in Creative Writing Program will read from their original works. Their writing, some already published or soon to be published and some still a work in progress, highlights their talents and creativity in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Come and meet the students and learn more about the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Fairfield University Bookstore downtown Fairfield. This event is free.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Jayne Anne Phillips
The 2009 National Book Award finalist for Lark and Termite and the author of MotherKind, Shelter, Machine Dreams will read from her latest work. Meet the author at the book-signing that will follow her reading.
Our Lady of The Assumption Chapel - St. Edmund's Enders Island, Mystic, CT
This event is free.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Karol Nielsen
Black Elephants: A Memoir
Karol Nielsen has written an engrossing memoir of travel, adventure, love, war and dreams. A trekking trip to Peru leads to a love affair that takes the author to Israel and the horrors of the first Gulf War. Poets & Writers selected Black Elephants as a New and Noteworthy Book and excerpts were selected as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. Karol also writes poetry and she teaches memoir writing at New York University.
Fairfield University Bookstore
Presented by the Department of English and the MFA in Creative Writing
This event is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Dreams of Joy
Lisa See
The long awaited sequel to Shanghai Girls is finally here. The Los Angeles Times calls it "One of those hard-to-put down-until-four in-the-morning books ... With each new novel, Lisa See gets better and better."
Barone Campus Center Oak Room
Community Partner: Fairfield Public Library
This event is free - please reserve your seats by calling (203) 254-4110
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Baron Wormser
Baron Wormser, Poet Laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2005, is an award-winning author of nine books of poetry as well as a memoir and a collection of short stories. His latest book of poetry, Impenitent Notes, was published last year. Baron directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching in Franconia, New Hampshire and he is also a faculty member of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing.
Fairfield University Dolan School of Business Dining Room
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Presented by the MFA in Creative Writing
This event is free and open to the public.
Monday, June 4, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Amanda Hodgkinson
22 Britannia Road
Likened to Sophie's Choice and Sarah's Key, Amanda Hodgkinson's New York Times bestselling debut novel is a heartbreaking novel about wartime secrets and one family's struggle to create a home in the aftermath of the Second World War. Hodgkinson is on her debut American tour for the launch of 22 Britannia Road, shortlisted for the Italian Cariparma Award which is dedicated to first European novels in translation. Hodgkinson currently lives in the South of France with her husband and 2 daughters.
"Luminous prose ... Hodgkinson's portrait of the primal bond between mother and child leaves an indelible impression." - New York Times Books Review
Barone Campus Center Oak Room
Free and open to the public
Please phone us at (203) 254-4110 to reserve seats
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Sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing and Fairfield Public Library
Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 7 p.m.
An Evening with Joan Didion
Joan Didion, an American icon of the written word, will be promoting her latest book Blue Nights. This memoir, lovingly detailed, reflects on the life of her daughter, Quintana Roo, the role of motherhood and the aging process. Philosophically heartwrenching, Didion seamlessly weaves these universal questions within the metaphor 'blue nights" alluding to those lumious hours following the summer solstice, described by Didion as "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning".
$10 admission
Barone Campus Center Oak Room
Please phone us at (203) 254-4110 to reserve seats
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Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, The MFA in Creative writing and The Fairfield Public Library
Sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing program.