Fall 2020 Visiting Writers Series
As usual, our fall literary author event series is filled with award-winning poets and fiction writers, essayists, and graphic novelists. But this year you won't have to leave your home to see them: All the readings and talks will be available on your screen. (Information about registration is forthcoming.) Check out the lineup and save the date(s)!
Wednesday, September 23: Kao Kalia Yang
The Edelstein-Keller Writer in Residence for 2020-22, Yang is the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir and The Song Poet, both Minnesota Book Award recipients, as was her children’s book, A Map into the World. She is co-editor of the collection What God is Honored Here? Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Indigenous Women and Women of Color. This fall, Yang will publish Somewhere in the Unknown World, a collective memoir about refugee lives, and The Most Beautiful Thing, another book for children. Presented by the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series and Creative Writing. 7 pm. Watch the recording.
Tuesday, September 29: Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld will give a reading and talk with Professor Julie Schumacher. Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of six novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and, in spring 2020, Rodham, which imagines what might have happened if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton. Her story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It (2018) was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Presented by the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series and Creative Writing. 7 pm. Watch the recording.
Wednesday, October 7: Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel is the bestselling author of the graphic memoirs Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which was adapted into a Broadway musical that won five Tony Awards including “Best Musical,” and Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama. For 25 years Bechdel created and self-syndicated the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, in part while living in Minnesota. Bechdel has received numerous awards, including MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and the Lambda Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Literature. Presented by the Esther Freier Lectures in Literature and English. 7:30 pm. Sorry, no recording available.
Thursday, October 15: Ada Limón
Ada Limón will give a reading and talk with Professor Ray Gonzalez. Limón is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Carrying, which won the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book, Bright Dead Things, was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her previous collections include Sharks in the Rivers, Lucky Wreck, and This Big Fake World. Presented by the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series and Creative Writing. 7 pm. Watch the recording.
Thursday, October 29: Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib will give a reading and talk with Professor Douglas Kearney. Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016), They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), New York Times best-seller Go Ahead in the Rain (University of Texas Press, 2019), and a collection of poems A Fortune For Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019). Abdurraqib has a forthcoming book that is a history of Black performance in the United States titled They Don't Dance No Mo' (Random House, 2020). Presented by the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series and Creative Writing. Register for this Zoom event. 7 pm. No recording will be available after the event.
For more information, email sutt0063@umn.edu.
