Fairfield University's MFA in Creative Writing program will once again offer a series of readings at The Chapel of Our Lady of the Assumption on Enders Island, on Long Island Sound in Mystic, Conn. The public is welcome and admission is free. A book signing follows the readings.

The schedule includes:

Sunday, Dec. 27 at 7 p.m.
Michael White , director of the MFA in Creative Writing program and author of five novels, including the latest, the historical novel, Soul Catcher , set in the period leading up to the Civil War. It received national acclaim and was a Radio Reader selection on NPR. His sixth novel, Beautiful Assassin , with be published next April by William Morrow/Harper Collins.

Eugenia Kim , whose debut novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter (Holt), was a Borders Original Voices selection, a Washington Post Critic's Pick, a Denver Post Editor's Choice, and a Publishers Weekly First Fiction Pick for Fall.

Sharon Bryan , the author of four collections of poetry including Salt Air and Objects of Affection from Wesleyan University Press. She was poet-in-residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, N. H., and awards include two NEA Fellowships in Poetry and an Artist Trust grant from the Washington State Arts Council.

Monday, Dec. 28 at 7 p.m.
Pete Duval, whose short story collection, Rear View, (Houghton Mifflin) won the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize, the Connecticut Book Award and was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He recently completed a historical novel, Election Day , set along the coast of Buzzard's Bay.

Baron Wormser, the author of seven books of poetry and the co-author of two books about teaching poetry. He directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching in Franconia, N.H. and served as poet laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2005.

Josip Novakovich, who has published a novel, April Fool's Day , three story collections ( Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Yolk , and Salvation and Other Disasters ) and two collections of narrative essays. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize collection, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He teaches in the MFA program at Penn State University.

Tuesday, Dec. 29 at 7 p.m.
Da Chen , whose highly acclaimed first memoir, "Colors of the Mountain," became the object of an intense bidding war among five top New York publishing houses, and was published in six other languages. "China's Son," the children's adaptation of Da Chen's memoir, is a Borders 2002 Original Voices Award finalist, while "Sounds of the River" the sequel to his first memoir, was published this year to rave international reviews. His next book of fiction will be published by Crown in 2010.

Paul Lisicky, the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder , both published by Graywolf Press whose work has appeared in Five Points, Ploughshares, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Short Takes, Open House, Flash Fiction, Truth in Nonfiction, and in many other anthologies and magazines. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the James Michener/Copernicus Society

Joan Connor, a full professor and former Director of Creative Writing at Ohio University. She is a recipient of a Barbara Deming Award, the John Gilgun award, a Pushcart Prize, the Ohio Writer award in fiction and nonfiction, the AWP award for her short story collection, History Lessons, and the Riverteeth Award for her collection of essays, The World Before Mirrors .

Wednesday, Dec. 30 at 7 p.m.
Lise Haines is the author of three novels, including Girl in the Arena , just released in the United States, the UK and Turkey in October; Small Acts of Sex and Electricity , a Book Sense Pick in 2006; and In My Sister's Country , a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award.

Joan Wickersham, whose memoir The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was a 2008 National Book Award finalist and named one of the year's best books by the Boston Globe, Salon, New York Magazine , the LA Times , the Washington Post , and The Week . The author of the novel, The Paper Anniversary, her short fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

Rachel Basch, whose novels, The Passion of Reverend Nash (W.W. Norton) was named one of the five best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor and Degrees of Love (W.W. Norton, Harper Paperbacks) was translated into Dutch and German and was a selection of the Hartford Courant's Book Club. Basch currently teaches in Wesleyan University's Graduate Liberal Studies Program and leads a private master class.

Saturday, January 2 at 7 p.m.
Kim Bridgford, the editor of Dogwood and Mezzo Cammin , whose books include Undone , nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps , nominated for the Poets' Prize; and In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records , winner of the Donald Justice Prize. She is currently working on a three-book poetry/photography project with visual artist Jo Yarrington, focusing on journey and sacred space. She is a professor of English at Fairfield University.

Roya Hakakian is the author of two collections of poetry in Persian, the first of which, For the Sake of Water , was nominated as poetry book of the year by Iran News in 1993. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown) was Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the Year. She has collaborated on programming for leading journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes and A&E's "Travels With Harry," and is a contributor to the Weekend Edition of NPR's All Things Considered.

Bill Patrick has had his work published or produced as creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, screenwriting, and drama. He has written three feature-length screenplays, including Rescue , commissioned by the BBC for their Season of American Thirty Minute Plays, aired world-wide on BBC 3, and Rachel's Dinner , aired nationally on ABC-TV. His novel, Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family , won the 1990 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for the best first work of fiction.

Sunday, January 3 at 7 p.m.
Sarah Manguso is the author of the memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay , the story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape , and the poetry collections Siste Viator and The Captain Lands in Paradise . She was awarded the Hodder Fellowship and the Rome Prize, and her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, the New York Times Magazine , the Paris Review, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and three volumes of the Best American Poetry series.

Lary Bloom is the author and co-author of several nonfiction books, including The Writer Within , Lary Bloom's Connecticut Notebook , and the memoirs Letters From Nuremberg (with Senator Christopher J. Dodd) and The Test of Our Times (with former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge). As one of America's leading Sunday magazine editors for 30 years, he nurtured writers such as Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, Madeleine Blais, David Hays and Susan M. Dodd. He also writes a monthly column for the New York Times and Connecticut magazine.

Lucy Ferriss is the author of 8 books, most recently the memoir, Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante, and the novel, Nerves of the Heart . Other fiction and essays have appeared most recently in the New York Times , Shenandoah , Southern Review , Narrative , and Georgia Review . Her novel, The Woman Who Bought the Sky, is forthcoming from Tor Books.

Tuesday, Jan. 5 at 7 p.m.
Nalini Jones is the author of a story collection, What You Call Winter , published in August 2007 by Knopf. She is a Stanford Calderwood Fellow of the MacDowell Colony, and has recently taught at Columbia University and the 92nd Street Y in New York. She worked for several years in music, helping produce festivals and concert series in New York, Newport, and New Orleans.

Philip Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the founder/director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing based in New York City. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Failure , winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, Living in the Past , and The Holy Worm of Praise . He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1981), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1985), as well as the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.

For more information about the Fairfield University MFA Creative Writing Program, visit www.fairfield.edu/mfa .

Posted On: 12-18-2009 10:12 AM

Volume: 42 Number: 158