SMU's annual Literary Festival features prize-winning authors
SMU's annual Literary Festival features readings by prize-winning authors, receptions and book signings.
Sponsored by SMU Dedman College's Department of English, the annual event celebrating good writing opens Wednesday evening and continues through Saturday, March 24. All events are free and open to the public.
WordSpace Student Readings is at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and features student writers from Greenhill School, Hockaday School, Booker T. Washington Arts Academy, Yavneh Academy and Texans Can Academies. It will be held in McCord Auditorium on the third floor of Dallas Hall.
All of the remaining readings will be held in in the Texana Room of SMU's DeGolyer Library. For more information and the schedule of events, visit the Festival website.
This year's featured writers include:
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Dean Bakopoulos is the author of two novels, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (2005) and My American Unhappiness (2011), both published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts award, and is currently a visiting professor of fiction at Grinnell College in Iowa.
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Shannon Cain’s debut story collection, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, is the winner of the 2011 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Eduardo Corral's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Warrior Review, Huizache, Indiana Review, The Journal, Jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Post Road, Quarterly West, Salt Hill and Witness. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference scholarship,
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Amina Gautier is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for her short story collection At-Risk (University of Georgia Press). Seventy of Gautier's stories have been published, appearing in Best African American Fiction, Callaloo, Chattahoochee Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, and Southern Review.
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Tyehimba Jess’ first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.” He received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2004-5 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
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Krys Lee is the author of recently published Drifting House. Her short stories and articles have been published or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, California Quarterly, Asia Weekly and Conde Nast, UK.
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Corey Marks, editor of American Literary Review, is author of Renunciation, a National Poetry Series selection, and The Radio Tree, a Green Rose Prize winner. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and The Virginia Quarterly Review.
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Martha Rhodes is the author of four poetry collections, At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance (winner of the Green Rose Prize), Mother Quiet, and The Beds. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
“We are beyond pleased at the level of talent in our lineup this year,” said David Haynes, head of the SMU creative writing department. “This is an incredible opportunity for our students and the extended SMU community.”
Since the 1980’s, SMU’s Literary Festival has featured notable writers that include John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, Robert Pinsky, and Jill McCorkle.