2012 - 2013 River City Writers Series

Mary Leader

Reading and Signing, Tuesday, September 25 at 8:00 p.m. in University Center 300
Interview, Wednesday, September 26 at 10:30 a.m. in Patterson Hall 456

Formerly the Assistant Attorney General of Oklahoma, Mary Leader launched a new career as a poet and teacher. She taught at the University of Memphis and is now a professor at Purdue. Her first book, Red Signature, won the National Poetry Series; her second, The Penultimate Suitor, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Hew newest is Beyond the Fire. Her work has been featured on NPR's "Weekend Edition" and Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac."

Lee K. Abbot

Reading and Signing, Tuesday, October 30 at 8:00 p.m. in University Center 300
Interview, Wednesday, October 31 at 10:30 a.m. in Patterson 456

Author of seven volumes of short stories, including Dreams of Distant Lives, Strangers in Paradise, Love is the Crooked Thing, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, Living After Midnight, and Wet Places at Noon, Lee K. Abbott is a Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. All Things, All at Once is his latest collection.

Lee Smith

Reading and Signing in partnership with the Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities
Thursday, February 21 at 6:30 p.m. in University Center Theatre

Virginia native Lee Smith has published twelve novels and four collections of short stories, among them Fair and Tender Ladies, News of the Spirit and The Last Girls. She is a recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She taught for 19 years at North Carolina State University. In 2010, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virgnia.