Great River Review Reading

Help celebrate the 2024 winners of Great River Review's writing prizes with this online reading! The Creative Writing Program's Walter Nathan Literary Initiatives presents Pink Poetry Prize winner Jan Beatty and Walter Nathan Essay Award winner Esinam Bediako, with her essay "Slow Rupture."

This is an online only event free and open to the public. Registration required. For accessibility questions, email sutt0063@umn.edu. 

Jan Beatty's eighth book, Dragstripping, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in fall 2024. She is the winner of the Red Hen Nonfiction Award for her memoir American Bastard (2021). A chapbook, Skydog, was published by Lefty Blondie Press in 2021. Beatty's most recent collection of poetry is The Body Wars (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Beatty is at work on her ninth full-length book, a collection of essays about gender and censorship. Other books include Jackknife: New and Collected Poems (2018 Paterson Prize) and The Switching/Yard. Beatty's work has been published in the Atlantic, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, BuzzFeed, North American Review, and Best American Poetry.

Esinam Bediako earned her BA in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University and her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her recent publications include essays and poetry in Southern Humanities Review, North American Review, Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Pink Panther Magazine. Her novel, Blood on the Brain, won the 2022 Ann Petry Award and will be published by Red Hen Press in September 2024. A Ghanaian-American from Detroit, Esinam lives in Southern California with her family.