Catch Up on English Events! Watch Now
Missed an English or Creative Writing event this fall and summer? Watch the recordings when it's convenient for you!
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. This fall, Yang published Somewhere in the Unknown World, a collective memoir about refugee lives, which she read from in this Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series event. Watch the recording.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of six novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and, in 2020, Rodham, which imagines what might have happened if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton. Professor and novelist Julie Schumacher joined her in conversation for this Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series event. Watch the recording.
Ada Limón
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 previous collections include Sharks in the Rivers, Lucky Wreck, and This Big Fake World. Professor and poet Ray Gonzalez joined Limón in conversation for this Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series event. Watch the recording.
V. V. Ganeshananthan on "The Missing Are Considered Dead"
Assistant Professor Ganeshananthan, author of the novel Love Marriage, reads from and discusses her short story, about a Tamil woman whose husband has been "disappeared" during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The story has been selected for the 2021 Pushcart Prize anthology. Watch the recording.
John Watkins on "Literature & the Plague"
Professor Watkins, creator of the English course "The End of the World in Literature and History," talks about parallels between our current moment and the "plague years" of novelists such as Defoe and Camus. Watkins is the author of four books, most recently After Lavinia: A Literary History of Premodern Marriage Diplomacy. Watch the recording.
Julie Schumacher & Swati Avasthi on "Trauma & Kid Lit"
Professor Schumacher and MFA alum Avasthi, both writers of young adult fiction, address why and how hurt and sorrow are part of children's literature, with recommendations. Author of five YA novels, Schumacher most recently published the adult novels Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement. Avasthi is the author of YA novels Chasing Shadows and Split; she teaches in the Creative Writing Program of Hamline University. Watch the recording.
Nathaniel Mills on "Black American Writers & the Great Depression"
How did Black writers in the US use literature to participate in the economic and racial political activism that characterized the Great Depression? Associate Professor Mills, author of Ragged Revolutionaries: The Lumpenproletariat and African American Marxism in Depression-Era Literature, describes the activity of the cultural networks of the Communist left and the new forms of social transformation and radical imagination the period’s leftist writers generated. Watch the recording.
Ray Gonzalez & Kathryn Nuernberger on "Writing in a Time of Crisis"
Professor Gonzalez and Assistant Professor Nuernberger discuss their recent writing practice and offer new poems. Gonzalez is the author of numerous collections of poetry, fiction, and essays, most recently Feel Puma: Poems. Nuernberger this spring published her third poetry collection, Rue (BOA Editions); her second collection of essays, The Witch of Eye, arrives next February. Watch the recording.
