The Creative Writing Program of Cornell’s English Department launches its Spring 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series with poet Julie Sheehan on Thursday, February 1, 4:30pm, at the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. Sheehan is the author of three poetry collections: Bar Book: Poems & Otherwise; Orient Point; and Thaw. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker and Best American Poetry. She is the Zalaznick Distinguished Visiting Writer of the Department of English for Spring 2018.
The series continues with the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading on February 8, featuring Cornell faculty members J. Robert Lennon, professor of English, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, associate professor of English. Lennon is the author of eight novels, including Mailman, Familiar, and Broken River, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand and See You in Paradise. Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval, a 2009 National Book Award finalist, and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is currently at work on her third poetry collection, The Coal Tar Colors.
Third in the series is writer Julie Schumacher on March 15. Schumacher is the author of nine books, including the national bestseller Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Most recently, she is the author of Doodling for Academics – a Coloring and Activity Book, and of the forthcoming novel The Shakespeare Requirement.
The series concludes on April 26 with TRANS*forming Literature: a reading & conversation with Ryka Aoki, Helen Boyd, & Ely Shipley. Aoki is a two-time Lambda Award finalist, author of the poetry collection Seasonal Velocities and the novel He Mele a Hilo. Boyd is the author of My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married, books chronicling contemporary crossdressing culture, relational gender, and her own marriage to a trans woman. Shipley is the author of Boy with Flowers, winner of the Barrow Street Press book prize, the Thom Gunn Award, and a Lambda Award finalist. His latest work, Some Animal, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. This event takes place at the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall.
All events are free and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, events take place on Thursdays at 4:30pm at Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium on the ground floor of Klarman Hall. Books by the authors are available for purchase at the readings, and book-signing and a free, catered reception follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.
For more information, visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick, email creativewriting@cornell.edu, or call 607-255-7847.
