Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt
Visiting Writers Program: Spring 2008
Thursday, February 28, 7 p.m., Buttrick 102, poet and novelist Judson Mitcham, reading from his work. Mitcham, the only two-time winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction, isvisiting associate professor in fiction at Emory University. He is the author of a new collection of poetry, A Little Salvation, published by the University of Georgia Press. His novels The Sweet Everlasting and Sabbath Creek both won the Townsend Prize for Fiction for outstanding novel or short story collection by a Georgia writer. The Townsend Prize is sponsored by Georgia Perimeter College, the Chattahoochee Review and the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum in Atlanta.
Spring Literary Symposium:
Beyond Our Beginnings—Women Writers from Working and Lower Class Backgrounds
Dorothy Allison, Joy Castro, Karen Sayler-McElmurray, Heather Sellers, and Minton Sparks
Tuesday, March 25 4:00 Panel—All Presenters BJJC*
5:00 Reception RPWC*
6:00 Reading—Allison & Sellers AFC*
Wednesday, March 26 6:00 Reading—Castro & McElmurray AFC*
Thursday, March 27 6:00 Reading/Performance—Sparks AFC*
*BJJC: Bishop Joseph Johnson Center
RPWC: Robert Penn Warren Center
AFC: All Faith Center (Divinity School)
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. The first member of her family to graduate from high school, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit Scholarship and in 1979, studied anthropology at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of the chapbook, The Women Who Hate Me (1983); the novels, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Cavedweller (1998); and the short story collection, Trash (2002), which included the prize-winning short story, "Compassion," selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003.
Joy Castro studied literature at Trinity University and Texas A&M University. She is the author of the memoir, The Truth Book (Arcade 2005). She teaches at the University of Nebraska and in the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in anthologies and in journals such as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, and Puerto del Sol.
Karen Salyer McElmurray’s short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in The Kenyon Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. Her books are Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven (a novel), which won the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing in 2001, and Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother's Journey (a memoir of the relinquishment of her son to state-supported adoption in Kentucky in 1973), a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book and the recipient of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2003. Her most recent work, a novel entitled "The Motel of the Stars," will be published in 2008 by Sarabande Books.
Heather Sellers is the author of Georgia Under Water (Sarabande 2001), a book of linked stories which won a place in the Barnes and Noble New Discovery Writers Award in Summer 2001. Her first children’s book, Spike and Cubby’s Ice Cream Island Adventure!, illustrated by Amy Young, was published by Henry Holt in October 2004. A poetry collection, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses, was published in November, 2002 from Ahsahta Press (Idaho). Her textbook for introductory creative writing students, The Passionate Beginner, is just released by Bedford/St. Martins. She is the author of two memoirs on the writing life, Page after Page: how to start writing and keep writing no matter what! (Writer’s Digest, 2004) and Chapter After Chapter. Currently, she is completing a memoir about her experiences with prosopagnosia, or “face blindness.”
Minton Sparks is a spoken word poet whose performances are captured on her CD’s Middlin’ Sisters, This Dress, and Sin Sick, and on the DVD Open Casket. She has also published a collection of her poetry, Desperate Ransom: Setting Her Family Free. This Dress won the 2004 “Spoken Word Record of the Year” from Just Plain Folk Music Awards. Sin Sick won the New York Book Festival’s Spoken Word 1st Prize. In wide demand as a performer, she has appeared with John Prine and collaborated with Waylon Jennings and been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and on the BBC. She makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee.
