There’s a reason the U’s English department has been lauded with so much acclaim, and it’s quite simple: years and years of acclaimed alumni.
It’s no secret that the U fosters a first-rate creative writing program, so it should come as no surprise that the English department’s Guest Writer’s Series has attracted the voices of some of the discipline’s most accomplished.
Tonight, the Art Barn will be graced by the homegrown prose and poetry of two of the university’s finest.
Logan-born and West High School-bred author Ron Carlson’s prose has been featured in esteemed fiction collections The Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Prize Series, The Pushcary Prize Anthology and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, as well as popular publications Esquire, Gentleman’s Quarterly, The New Yorker and Harper’s.
After receiving a Master of Fine Arts in English from the U, Carlson filled teaching positions at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and the University of Arizona before accepting his current position as director of the graduate fiction program at the University of California, Irvine.
Carlson has authored eight works of fiction including Los Angeles Times Book of the Year The Hotel Eden and, most recently, the novel The Speed of Light and two collections of short stories, A Kind of Flying and At the Jim Bridger-all released in 2003.
His latest novel, Five Skies, is due out this spring through Viking Adult and Penguin Audio.
Featured poet Harmony Button graduated from Vermont’s Middlebury College with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and creative writing and chose to pursue a master’s degree here at the U. She’s currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in poetry.
Her work has graced the pages of AfterImage: A Journal of Media Studies and Cultural Criticism, Mantis: A Journal of Poetry and Criticism & Translation, as well as other smaller publications.
Her hard work has been exhibited during her tenure as a faculty member of the Phillips Exeter Academy Summer School. In 2006, she received the Clarke Short Award for excellence in teaching from the U.
Recent works from both authors will ring through the pages of the Art Barn, as read by the authors themselves. The reading begins at 7:30 p.m.