About the Event:
Join us for a special event featuring five prominent American writers and poets who will read from their works and discuss the importance of creative writing and literature. This will be a unique opportunity for AUA’s creative writing students and all those interested in literature, creativity, and culture.
The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Creative Writing (CCW), CHSS, the US Embassy, and ARI Literature Foundation.
About the Speakers:
Natashia Deón is a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, GRACE (Counterpoint Press), which was awarded the 2017 First Novel Prize by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus (BCALA), was named Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, a Book Riot Favorite Book of 2016, The Root Best Book of 2016, and an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, Rattling Wall and other places. A practicing attorney, law professor, and creator of the popular L.A.-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit, Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert.
Lisa Schlesinger is recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwrights Residency Award, winner of the BBC International Playwriting Award. Her plays include Celestial Bodies Trilogy, Rock Ends Ahead, The Bones of Danny Winston, and Twenty-One Positions with Naomi Wallace and Abed Fattah AbuSrour. She has received commissions from the Guthrie Theatre, the BBC, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and fellowships from the NEA, CEC Artslink International, the Sloan Foundation, the Iowa Arts Council. Produced nationally and internationally, her work is published in American Theatre Magazine, Performing Arts Journal, Broadway Plays, NoPassport, Playwrights Canada Press, the New York Times and elsewhere. Lisa is currently working on The Iphigenia Project, a multi-year multidisciplinary collaboration with filmmaker Irina Patkanian, director Marion Schoevaert and composer Kinan Azmeh in response to the global refugee crisis. She teaches playwriting at the Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop.
Michael Collier has published six collections of poetry, including The Ledge, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has published a collection of essays, Make Us Wave Back; a translation of Medea; and has edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. His many honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. For a decade he served as poetry editor for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Director Emeritus of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, currently, he teaches at the University of Maryland, where he directs the Creative Writing Program.
Cate Dicharry received her BA in Political Science from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, and her MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside’s low-residency program. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Nervous Breakdown, Role/Reboot and other publications. Her debut novel was published by Unnamed Press in April 2015. Cate taught English at Dalian Nationalities University in Dalian China, and worked at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History before taking on her current role as coordinator of the International Writing Program’s Between the Lines program for young writers.
Christopher Merrill has published six books of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and books of translations; and six works of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars and Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, chronicling his travels in Asia and the Middle East in the wake of the war on terror. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. A member of the National Council on the Humanities and the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, he directs the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
Language: English
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Cate Dicharry
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Chris Merrill
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Lisa Schlesinger
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Michael Collier
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Natashia Deon
