"Writers on the Road" Series Comes to Memphis Nov. 13

For release: November 5, 2009
For press information, contact Sara Hoover, 901-678-3541

The University of Memphis Creative Writing Club will bring four writers to Memphis as part of the Writers on the Road Series on Friday, Nov. 13. Graduate students from the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will read from their fiction and poetry at 6 p.m. at Burke’s Book Store, 936 S. Cooper. The event is free and open to the public.  Information about the readers follows:

A.K. Thompson is a fiction writer who lives in a cabin on a pond in Makanda, Ill. She writes a column called “Dirt Church” for the southern Illinois outdoor Web site siloutdoors.com. Thompson also teaches English at SIU and holds an internship at the Crab Orchard Review, SIU’s literary magazine. She earned a bachelor’s degree from SIU and a master’s degree from the now-defunct New College of California in San Francisco.

James Scoles’ most recent story, “The Electricity of Crime.” is featured in the current issue of Canada’s Prairie Fire magazine. He recently returned from a writing fellowship at the National University of Ireland in Galway, where he worked on a novel based on his family history and a game of cards. His fiction and nonfiction have been nominated for National and Western Magazine Awards, as well as The Journey Prize (Canada), and twice for the Pushcart Prize.

Mark Jay Brewin Jr. is a second-year graduate candidate in the MFA program at SIU. His poems have been published in numerous journals, including Corradi Summer Journal and New Delta Review, and are due to be published soon in Packingtown Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Southern Poetry Review. They have also placed as finalists in the Guy Owen Poetry Prize and the New Letters Literary Award Contest, and have been featured on saxifragepress.com.

Katie Zapoluch studied English, classical studies, and American studies at Kalamazoo College and earned an MA in English language and literature from Central Michigan University. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at SIU. Her work has appeared in Kalamazoo College's literary magazine The Cauldron, for which she served as poetry editor, as well as CMU’s graduate literary magazine, Temenos. She also won a sestina (a type of poetry with a very constrictive verse form, dating from the 12th century) contest in Trellis magazine.

Founded by Southern Illinois University Carbondale, the mission of the Writers on the Road Series is to generate interest in literary writing through public readings and to cultivate relationships among students who are the next generation of writers and editors. Additionally, the series hopes to support the professional development of graduate creative writing students by providing opportunities for them to practice giving public readings in a variety of venues. For more information about the series, visit http://gwf.rso.siuc.edu.

As part of the reading exchange, U of M creative writing students read from their work in Carbondale last semester. For more information, contact Sara Hoover at 901-678-3541 or email smhoover@memphis.edu.