SMU Department of English announces Literary Festival lineup

English Department's annual event features authors, book signings and readings.

books

booksThe SMU Department of English will present the 2013 SMU Literary Festival on March 20-23 on the University campus. The festival includes author readings, receptions, student conferences and book signings. All events are free and open to the public.

Since the early eighties, SMU’s Literary Festival has featured notable writers that include John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, Robert Pinsky and Jill McCorkle. For 2013, the line-up in alphabetical order includes:

  • Camille Dungy, author of Smith Blue, winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison.
        
  • Vievee Francis, published in Callaloo, Margie, Crab Orchard Review and Detroit’s Metro Times, author of Blue-Tail Fly, a Callaloo Workshop participant and Cave Canem Fellow.
        
  • Alix Ohlin, author of novel Inside, Signs and Wonders, The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, with work appearing in Best American Short Stories, Best New American Voices, and on public radio’s Selected Shorts.
        
  • Matt Olzmann’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Salt Hill, Margie, and other journals. He is a Kundiman Fellow and a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project.
        
  • Alan Michael Parker has received awards and fellowships including three Pushcart Prizes, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; his novel, Whale Man, was a finalist for the 2011 ForeWord Reviews’s “Book of the Year Award” in the category of Literary Fiction.
        
  • Natalie Serber, recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, Tobias Wolff Award, and H.E. Francis Award, was short listed in Best American Short Stories.
        
  • Tatjana Soli, Winner of UK’s James, Tait Black Prize, New York Times Notable Book 2010 New York Times Bestseller, ALA 2011 Notable Book, LA Times Book Award Finalist, A Kirkus Reviews Top Debut Fiction,Bookmarks Magazine Best Literary Fiction.
        
  • Debra Spark, author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Good for the Jews, edited the best-selling anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America’s New Young Writers. The Pretty Girl, a collection of stories about art and deception.

For more information and the schedule of events, please visit www.smu.edu/litfest.