English Events
Upcoming Events
IMC 68: Florence Dore with Mark Spencer - Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 7:00pm
Join us as we kick off the English Department's Spring Series on Sound with an intimate, living-room concert featuring Florence Dore, accompanied by Mark Spencer of Son Volt. Dore is a Nashville-born, Chapel Hill-based musical artist whose most recent record, Highways and Rocketships, recorded with R.E.M. producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, won Best Americana Album of 2022 at Lonesome Highway Magazine. The road from her first record Perfect City (2001) to Highways and Rocketships was long but anything but straight—Dore spent that time getting tenure as a literature professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, riding around on Steve Earle’s tour bus to catch up with her drumming husband Will Rigby, writing a couple of books, putting on a conference at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, taking a seat on the board of the Bob Dylan Institute at the University of Tulsa, and raising a daughter.
Please note: this event is free and open to the public, but seats are extremely limited.
For details and to reserve a seat, please email USA English professor Justin St. Clair.
Florence Dore - Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on Sound, our opening-week symposium, "Music and Memory," will feature Florence Dore. Professor of English at UNC-Chapel Hill, Dore is the author of Novel Sounds: Southern Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll (Columbia University Press, 2018) and The Ink in the Grooves: Conversations on Literature and Rock 'n' Roll (Cornell University Press, 2022). An award-winning songwriter and touring musician, she recently launched Ink in the Grooves Live, a traveling public humanities program that found her traversing the South performing in rock venues and giving talks on vernacular music and civic belonging. With contributions from panelist Mark Spencer of Son Volt, Dore will deliver a keynote titled "Anonymity in Cultural Memory: 'The House Carpenter,' William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and the American Marketplace of Ideas."
Please note: this free event will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium. The symposium
is made possible by a generous grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance, and through
the support of the College of Arts & Sciences, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing,
and the Independent Music Collective.
Laura Vrana - Tuesday, January 28, 2025 - 4:00pm
Associate Professor of English Laura Vrana will speak about her newly published book, Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition (Ohio State University Press, 2024), which surveys how developments in American literary institutions since 1980 have shaped—and been shaped by—Black women poets. Join us for refreshments and conversation about poets from Rita Dove and Maya Angelou to Amanda Gorman.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Archaeology Museum with a book signing
and reception to follow.
Daniel Wallace - Tuesday, February 4, 2025 - 5:30pm
The J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels, including Big Fish (1998) and Extraordinary Adventures (2017). Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Big Fish was released to great acclaim in 2003, and the film served as the basis for a subsequent Broadway musical. Wallace's stories and novels have been translated into many languages, and his illustrations have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Garden & Gun, and other venues. His most recent book, a memoir titled This Isn't Going to End Well, was published by Algonquin books in April 2023.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with
a book signing and reception to follow.
IMC Book Fair - Wednesday, February 19, 2025 - 9am to 4pm
Weather permitting, the Independent Music Collective (IMC) will be holding the ONLY book fair of the semester in the HUMB courtyard from 9am to 4pm on Wednesday, February 19th. Come browse a wide selection of used books (on all topics) and music in a variety of formats. Proceeds fund the IMC Concert Series!
Jennifer Croft - Thursday, April 10, 2025 - 5:30pm
Associate Professor of English at the University of Tulsa, Jennifer Croft won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 International Booker Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. She is also the translator of Federico Falco's A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula's August, Pedro Mairal's The Woman from Uruguay, and Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob (a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). In 2023, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with
a book signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Kelly Kurt Brown.
Past Events
Yuri Herrera - Wednesday, November 13, 2024 - 5:30pm
Born in Actopan, Mexico, Yuri Herrera is the author of three novels, including Signs Preceding the End of the World, which The New York Times called "Short, suspenseful . . . outlandish and heartbreaking," as well as the collection Ten Planets, which was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. This fall Graywolf Press will publish Season of the Swamp, Herrera’s major new novel set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, where a young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp, and, years later, becomes the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas. Herrera teaches at Tulane University.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with
a book signing and reception to follow.
Hamner Lecture - Wednesday, October 23, 2024 - 4pm
Pulitzer Prize winner and USA Journalist in Residence Cynthia Tucker will deliver the 22nd Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English. Her talk, titled "The Post-Truth Era: Alternative Facts, Conspiracies and Fake News," will be held in the USA Student Center Terrace Room with a reception to follow.
Major and Didi Jackson - Thursday, October 3, 2024 - 5:30pm
Join us for two powerhouse poets in one evening! Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems. He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets,
John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study, Major Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair
in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
Didi Jackson is the author of the poetry collections My Infinity (2024) and Moon Jar (2020). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bomb, The New Yorker, and Oxford American among other journals and magazines. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with
a book signing and reception to follow.
Annie Hartnett - Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 6:00pm
Acclaimed novelist Annie Hartnett is the author of Rabbit Cake (Tin House Books, 2017) and Unlikely Animals (Ballantine/Random House, 2022). Unlikely Animals was listed as one of the best books of 2022 by the Washington Post and BookRiot, and was long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Rabbit Cake was listed as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2017, was a finalist for the New England Book Award, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Hartnett has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She is co-host of the writing and parenting podcast Good Moms on Paper and is also an amateur cartoonist. In addition to her reading, she will also offer a free, hour-long writing class open to the general public.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with a book signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Molly Haley.
Jo Hsu - Wednesday, March 20, 2024 - 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on the Body, Jo Hsu (they/them) will deliver a lecture titled "Storytelling as/for Relationality." An assistant professor of Rhetoric & Writing at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics (2022), Hsu works at the intersections of disability, racial, and trans justice. Their work spans disciplinary and literary journals, major news media outlets, and public health advocacy campaigns and is driven by the question: what stories must we tell to remake worlds conducive to one another's thriving?
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room and is
co-sponsored by Gender Studies and the DEI Committee.
No-No Boy - Thursday, March 14, 2024 - 6:00pm
Hailed by NPR Music as "one of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear," No-No Boy is a collection of songs, films and stories from Julian Saporiti's doctoral research on Asian-American and transpacific history focusing on sound, music, immigration, refugees, and everyday life. On Thursday, March 14, Saporiti will bring this critically acclaimed multimedia project to the University of South Alabama's Student Center Ballroom for a free, public performance as part of a nationwide tour in support of the new No-No Boy album, Empire Electric (Smithsonian Folkways). There will be a catered reception and merchandise available for purchase at this event.
Please note: This free event will be held in the Student Center Ballroom and is co-sponsored
by the Departments of English, History, International Studies, Modern and Classical
Languages and Literature, and the Center for the Study of War and Memory. For more
information, contact Assistant Professor Caleb Johnson at calebjohnson@southalabama.edu. PHOTO: Emilia Saporiti.
Marlene Villalobos Hennessy - Wednesday, February 14, 2024 - 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on the Body, medieval scholar Marlene Villalobos Hennessy will deliver a lecture titled "Books That Bleed: Medieval Manuscripts and Book Metaphors." Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY, Hennessy has published numerous essays on late medieval British manuscripts and religious culture. She is currently completing a catalogue with Kathleen L. Scott, Book Ownership by Merchants and Artisans in Britain, c. 1300-1600. Her ongoing research project is a monograph titled Blood Writing: Manuscripts and Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium.
Percival Everett - Tuesday, January 30, 2024 - 6:00pm
Award-winning author Percival Everett has published more than thirty books, including Dr. No, The Trees, Telephone, So Much Blue, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and Erasure. Everett has won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, the Dos Passos Prize, the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, The 2010 Believer Book Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, a Creative Capital Award, BS the Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Reviewers often cite his satirical brilliance and genre-defying work that expands our culture’s ways of thinking. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Everett is currently Distinguished Professor of English at University of Southern California.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Ballroom with a book signing and reception to follow.
Scott Diffrient - Tuesday, January 23, 2024 - 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on the Body, film scholar Scott Diffrient will deliver a lecture titled "Bodies and Horror Films." A professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University, Diffrient is the co-editor of Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls (2010) and East Asian Film Remakes (2023), as well as the author of M*A*S*H (2008), Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema (2014), Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters: Bad Behavior on American Television (2022), and Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film (2023).
Please note: this free event will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium and is co-sponsored
by the USA Horror Club and the Department of Communication.
21th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture - Thursday, October 5, 2023 - 4:00pm
USA Composition Director Patrick Shaw will deliver the 21th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English. The lecture, titled "Plato, Karl Popper, and the Persistence of Cold War Rhetoric," will examine how Karl Popper’s Cold War critique of Plato’s work reflects Plato’s reputation in rhetoric today.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room.
Ben Raines - Tuesday, September 26, 2023 - 5:00pm
The University of South Alabama is proud to welcome our new Environmental Fellow/Writer-in-Residence, Ben Raines. He is an accomplished filmmaker and writer who recently published The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning (Simon & Schuster, 2023). Raines also wrote and directed The Underwater Forest, an award-winning film about the exploration of a 70,000-year-old cypress forest found off the Alabama coast as well as wrote and produced the documentary America’s Amazon. Come meet Raines as we kick off his tenure at South!
Please note: this free event will be held in the McQueen Alumni Center with a book signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Susan Raines.
Nick Tabor - Wednesday, September 20, 2023 - 4:00pm
Journalist Nick Tabor will discuss his book, "We Have Not Had One White Friend": The Forgotten 1980s Battle for Africatown. In the 1970s and 80s, the Africatown neighborhood was threatened by decay, disinvestment, and several unwanted development projects, including the construction of what is now the Africatown Bridge. Activists from the neighborhood mounted an impressive campaign to reverse these trends. For the most part, their project was tragically unsuccessful—but it laid groundwork for the efforts that are happening now. Nick Tabor is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New Republic, The Washington Post, Oxford American, and The Paris Review. This event is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Departments of Communication and English.
Please note: this free event will be held on Zoom with a watch party in the USA Archaeology Museum. Refreshments will be served.
Ashley M. Jones - Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 5:30pm
Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones will share from her powerful books Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017), dark // thing (Pleiades Press, 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press, 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Featured on Good Morning America, ABC News, and the BBC, Jones lives in Birmingham where she teaches in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Ballroom with a book signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Amarr Croskey.
Jane Gallop - Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:30pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on Experimentation, renowned literary scholar and feminist Jane Gallop will deliver a lecture titled "Anecdotal Theory and Autotheory: Experiments in Academic Writing." Gallop is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Prior to joining the faculty at Milwaukee, she was Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Humanities at Rice University, where she founded the Women's Studies program. Having written on a wide range of topics such as psychoanalysis, French feminism, the Marquis de Sade, pedagogy, sexual harassment, photography, queer theory, and close reading, Gallop is the author of over a hundred articles and ten books including Thinking Through the Body (1987), Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (1997), Anecdotal Theory (2002), Living with His Camera (2003), and Sexuality, Disability, and Aging: Queer Temporalities of the Phallus (2019).
Please note: this free event, co-sponsored by the English Department and Gender Studies, will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium with a book signing and reception to follow.
Neema Avashia - Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 6:00pm
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Neema Avashia was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in the Boston Public Schools since 2003, and was named a City of Boston Educator of the Year in 2013. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, was published by West Virginia University Press in March. It has been called "A timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience" by Ms. Magazine and "A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions," by Scalawag.
Please note: this free event will be held online.
Steve Tomasula - Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series, celebrated experimental novelist Steve Tomasula will read from his most recent release, Ascension (University of Alabama Press, 2022). Incorporating narrative forms of all kinds—from comic books, travelogues, journalism or code to Hong Kong action movies or science reports—Tomasula’s writing has been called a "reinvention of the novel," combining an "attention to society in the tradition of Orwell, attention to language in the tradition of Beckett, and the humor of a Coover or Pynchon." His writing often crosses visual, as well as written genres, drawing on science and the arts to take up themes of how we represent what we think we know, and how these representations shape our lives. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and teaches in the creative writing program at Notre Dame.
Please note: this free event, co-sponsored by the English Department and the Stokes
Center for Creative Writing, will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium with a book
signing and reception to follow.
Michael Leong - Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on Experimentation, poet and scholar Michael Leong will deliver a lecture titled "Lyric | Experimentation." Robert P. Hubbard Assistant Professor of Poetry at Kenyon College, Leong is the author of the poetry books e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009), Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012), Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017), and Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, 2018). He is also the author of the critical study, Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2020). His co-translation, with Ignacio Infante, of Vicente Huidobro's long poem Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven was published by co•im•press in 2020. He is currently working on a long poem titled "Disorientations" and a critical book tentatively titled Post-Craft: Essays on Pedagogy, Poetics, and Experimental Literature.
Please note: this free event, co-sponsored by the English Department and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literature, will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with a reception to follow.
Dionne Irving - Thursday, February 9, 2023 at 4:00pm
Acclaimed fiction writer Dionne Irving will read from her latest short story collection, Islands, which explores colonialism, immigration, sexual discrimination, and class in the lives of Jamaican women who emigrate to London, Panama, France, Jamaica, and Florida. Her other work includes the novel Quint, based on a real-life Canadian family of quintuplets who became celebrities in the 1940s, and the essays such as "Treading Water" and "Do You Like to Hurt?" which were Notable essays in Best American Essay 2017 and 2019. Irving will lead a creative writing class and provide a public reading.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room with
a book signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Myriam Nicodemus.
Paige Sweet - Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 4:00pm
As part of the English Department's Spring Series on Experimentation, psychoanalyst and literary scholar Paige Sweet will deliver a lecture titled "Writing as Passion and Dispersion: Thinking with Poppies and Recollection." Sweet received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota and subsequently spent three years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Her articles on literature and art are laced with queer, feminist, psychoanalytic, and race theory, and have appeared in journals such as Parallax, ARIEL, The New Inquiry, and darkmatter. Sweet holds faculty positions at the Bard Prison Initiative and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and she is Chair of the Sexuality and Gender Initiative at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Please note: this free event, sponsored by the English Department, will be held in HUMB 160 with a reception to follow.
Emily St. John Mandel - Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 6:00pm
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility. Her previous novels include Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, winner of the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max. Other books include The Glass Hotel, which was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020 and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives in New York City. Mandel will lead a fiction writing class and provide a public reading during her time at the University of South Alabama.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Ballroom with a book
signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: JiaHao Peng.
Deborah Velders - Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 4:00pm
Mobile Museum of Art Director, Deborah Velders, will present a lecture, "William Blake: Artist of Revolution and Reinvention." William
Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his
life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual
art of the Romantic Age. Location: Marx Library Auditorium.
20th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture - Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 5:00pm
New creative-writing faculty member Caleb Johnson, author of the novel Treeborne, will deliver the 20th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English. In his lecture, titled "Telling Fact from Fiction: Using Autobiography and Research in the Novel," Professor Johnson will discuss the relationship between fiction and memoir and read a selection from his novel-in-progress. Location: Marx Library Auditorium.
Roger Reeves - Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 5:00pm
In March of 2022, Norton published Roger Reeves’s latest poetry collection, Best Barbarian. This breathtaking collection balances deep precision with a wide-ranging free association that tackles racism, immigration, climate change, love, and loss amid the backdrop of literary and musical touchstones such as Beowulf and the jazz musician Alice Coltrane. While a Suzanne Young Murray Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study this past year, his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic. In addition to a private master class, Reeves will discuss his poetics with Stokes Center director Charlotte Pence and read some of his poetry in a public talk.
Please note: this free event will be held in the Student Center Terrace Room. PHOTO:
Ana Schwartz.
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South Alabama Alum, Catharsis of PowerLines Poetry, will perform and host an open mic night for first-year and transfer students at the University of South Alabama. If you like to express yourself or want to freestyle your feelings, this is the event for you! Come out and enjoy a night of spoken word with your fellow Jags. Hosted by the English department and the Stokes Center for Creative Writing. Pizza will be provided. Please note: this event will be held in Room 211 in the Student Center. |
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The fourth and final event in the English Department's Spring 2022 Ecology Series features poet Sarah Giragosian, whose lecture is titled "Ecopoetics in the Anthropocene." Giragosian is the author of the poetry collections Queer Fish, a winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize (Dream Horse Press, 2017), and The Death Spiral (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). The Death Spiral grounds us in the Anthropocene, a time of mass extinction and climate change, yet refuses to adhere to that "fact." These eco-poems raise questions about the nature of human and animal appetites and the increasing levels of consumption that threaten the environment, while also exploring queer forms of intimacy and resilience in the Anthropocene. Giragosian teaches at the University at Albany-SUNY. Please note: This will be a virtual event. |
Sarah Giragosian - Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 7:00pm|
Celebrate National Poetry Month by enjoying an evening of poetry. Chelsea Rathburn, Poet Laureate of Georgia, is the author of three books of poetry, including the New York Times New & Noteworthy collection Still Life with Mother and Knife, published in 2019 by Louisiana State University Press. James Davis May, recipient of Poetry Society of America's Cecil Hemley Award, serves as Writer-in-Residence at Mercer University. His first poetry collection, Unquiet Things, was published by LSU Press in 2016 and a finalist for the Poets' Prize. In addition to the public reading, their visit includes guest lectures in two courses and private consultations with currently enrolled poetry students. Please note: This public event will be held the USA Faculty Club. A book signing and reception with refreshments to follow. |
Chelsea Rathburn and James Davis May - Thursday, April 7, 2022 at 5:00pm|
The third event in the English Department's Spring 2022 Ecology Series features Mobile Baykeeper Cade Kistler with "Protecting Mobile Bay: Our Story." As Program Director, Kistler leads the organization's effort to stop pollution, advocate for cleaner water, and protect Mobile Bay. The Mobile Bay Watershed encompasses 65% of the land area for the state of Alabama, including parts of Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. The Mobile Baykeeper exists to advocate for the Mobile Bay Watershed Coastal Alabama, protecting clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. Please note: This event is open to the public and will be held in the USA Archeology Museum. |
Cade Kistler - Wednesday, March 30, 2022 at 4:00pm|
An African American educator in South Carolina, Myra Davis-Branic is the author of Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina. Her family began their journey in America as slaves on the plantation of the great-great-great grandfather of Frye Gaillard. Frye is the author of the recently re-released Lessons from the Big House: One Family’s Passage Through the History of the South, a family memoir he wrote in 1994. Join us as Myra and Frye talk about their books, their families, and what is revealed about their racial history. Please note: This event will be held at the Archaeology Museum. |
Frye Gaillard and Myra Davis-Branic - Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 3:30pm|
Please join us for the launch of Cynthia Tucker and Frye Gaillard's new book, The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance (NewSouth, 2022). Please note: This event is open to the public and will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium. |
Cynthia Tucker and Frye Gaillard - Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 4:00pm|
The Southern Writers' Workshop is a regional author series curated by U.S.A. Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard. This year's writer is Joseph Bathanti. Bathanti, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, is author of seventeen books. Bathanti is McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He served as the 2016 Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence in Asheville, NC, and is the co-founder of the Medical Center's Creative Writing Program. Bathanti will lead participants in a free, one-hour class on writing at 12:30 pm. Coffee with refreshments will follow. Bathanti will then read from his work at 2:00 pm as part of the Southern Writers' Workshop. Please note: These back-to-back events will be held in the USA Faculty Club. |
Joseph Bathanti - Tuesday, March 8, 2022, 12:30pm and 2:00pm|
Bridgett M. Davis is author of the memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, and named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine. She is also the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow and Shifting Through Neutral, shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Award, and writer/director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts. A major advocate for promoting and nurturing literary talent by people of color, Davis is co-founder and curator for Words@Weeksville, a monthly reading series held at Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn. While at the university, she will lead a creative writing class and provide a public reading. Please note: The event will be held via Zoom. PHOTO: Nina Subin. |
Bridgett M. Davis - Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 6:00pm|
Please join the Department of English for a celebration of Black voices. Hear short chats about how instructors lift up Black literature and culture in our courses of all types. Topics include the 2022 documentary film about Africatown, Descendant (written and co-produced by Dr. Kern Jackson); the research interests of faculty and students exploring literature, music, and art; and Black literature and culture in English classrooms. Get the good times rolling as you mingle with faculty and students over Mardi Gras themed goodies! Everyone is welcome! Please note: This event is open to the public and will be held in the USA Archeology Museum. |
Celebrating Black Voices - Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 3:30pm|
The second event in the English Department's Spring 2022 Ecology Series features Scott Slovic, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho. Slovic served as founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and from 1995 to 2020 he was editor-in-chief of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. The author or editor of thirty books, his forthcoming volumes include Nature and Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press) and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Medical-Environmental Humanities (Bloomsbury Academic). He currently co-edits the book series Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment and Routledge Environmental Humanities. His blogs, reviews, and interviews regularly appear on the website arithmeticofcompassion.org. Please note: This event is open to the public and will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium. |
Scott Slovic - Wednesday, February 2, 2022 at 4:00pm|
Please join us for the annual African American Studies Program Keynote Address, featuring David A. Padgett: "Creating a 'Beloved Community' for Africatown with Technology-Based Service Learning." David A. Padgett is an Associate Professor of Geography, and Director of the Geographic Information Sciences Laboratory at Tennessee State University. Dr. Padgett is an EthicalGEO Fellow with the American Geographical Society in support of his project "Democratizing Geospatial Technology: A Model for Providing Technical Assistance in Community Based Participatory Mapping to Environmental Justice Stakeholder Communities." This lecture is part of the English Department's Spring 2022 Ecology Series. Please note: This public event can be attended via Zoom or in-person (HUMB 170). |
David A. Padgett - Monday, January 17, 2022 at 5:00pm|
Fiction writer Brandon Hobson, 2018 finalist for the National Book Award, will be reading from his novel Where the Dead Sit Talking. He is the author, most recently, of the novel The Removed, praised by the L.A. Times as "a striking new benchmark for fiction about Native Americans." Hobson is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University. This event is free and open to the public and will be held in the USA Student Center Amphitheater. A book signing and reception with refreshments will follow. In case of rain, the event will be relocated to the USA Student Center Terrace Room. Sponsored by the Stokes Center for Creative Writing and the USA Department of English. PHOTO: Kay Lynn Hobson. |
Brandon Hobson - Wednesday, November 3, 2021 at 4:00pm|
Join us for an interview of Kern Jackson, Director of the African American Studies Program and Faculty Member in English, conducted by Writer in Residence, Frye Gaillard. Dr. Jackson, the 2021 Hamner honoree, specializes in African American and Southeastern United States folklore and oral narrative. This event is free and open to the public and will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium. A reception will follow. Hosted by the USA Department of English and the USA English Graduate Program. |
Kern Jackson - Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 4:00pm|
Join us for Charlotte Pence's first in-person reading from her new book, Code. Dr. Pence's new book of poems, Code, received the 2020 Book of the Year award from Alabama Poetry Society and was a finalist for Foreword Reviews Indie Poetry Book of 2020. Code details not only the life cycle of birth and death, but also the means of this cycle: DNA itself. A graduate of Emerson College (MFA) and the University of Tennessee (PhD), she is now the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama. This event is free and open to the public and will be held in the USA Student Center Terrace Room. A reception will follow. Hosted by the Stokes Center for Creative Writing and the USA Department of English. |
Charlotte Pence - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 at 4:00pm|
Join Justin St. Clair, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Alabama, as he moderates "Inherent Vice: A Conversation with J. M. Tyree." Nonfiction Editor at New England Review and Contributing Editor to Film Quarterly, Tyree has placed his work in a host of enviable venues, including Brick, Lapham's Quarterly, Sight & Sound, The Believer, and McSweeney's. His most recent book, The Counterforce: Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, arrived this spring from Fiction Advocate. This event will be held over Zoom. PHOTO: Ben Walters. |
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In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing is offering a free writing class for Covid-19 healthcare workers. This interactive writing class will offer prompts, poems, and writing time during the afternoon session. This workshop is intended to inspire healing through poetry. The class is over Zoom on Saturday, April 24 from 2:00-3:30 CST. |
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As part of the English Department's Race and Identity Lecture Series, Dr. Mudiwa Pettus, Assistant Professor of English Composition and Rhetoric at Medgar Evers College,
CUNY, will present "Against Compromise: What Black Rhetorical Education in the Age
of Booker T. Washington Teaches Us About Our Current Moment." This event will be held
over Zoom. |
Dr. Mudiwa Pettus - Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 4:30pm|
Join poet Eduardo Corral, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, as he shares strategies on how to reimagine
your revision process. His debut collection of poetry, Slow Lightning (2012), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, making him the first Latino recipient of
the award. His second collection is Guillotine (2020). Praised for his seamless blending of English and Spanish, tender treatment
of history, and careful exploration of sexuality, Corral has received numerous honors
and awards, including the Discovery/The Nation Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M.J.
Wood Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment
for the Arts. PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Valentine |
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As part of the English Department's Race and Identity Lecture Series, Rev. Joseph Brown, SJ, Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Southern Illinois University
at Carbondale, will present "Race and Identity in Literature and Culture." This event
will be held over Zoom. |
Rev. Joseph Brown - Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 4:30pm|
Traci Brimhall is the author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon, 2020); Saudade (Copper Canyon, 2017), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, and Best American Poetry. A 2013 NEA Fellow, she’s currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University. |
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As part of the English Department's Race and Identity Lecture Series, Dr. Channette Romero, Associate Professor of English at the University of Georgia specializing in Native
and Multiethnic literature and film, will lead "Buckled Hats and HipHop Tricksters:
A Conversation on Political Humor in Indigenous Animation." This event will be held
over Zoom. |
Dr. Channette Romero - Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 4:30pm|
Lauren Groff is the author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of stories, and Arcadia, a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award. Her third novel, Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kirkus Award. Her work has appeared in journals including the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Tin House, One Story, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN / O. Henry Prize Stories, and five editions of the Best American Short Stories. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband, two sons, and dog. |
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Frye Gaillard, USA Writer in Residence, will read from his new book, Live As If... A Teacher's Love Story, reflecting on the life and work of his wife, Nancy Gaillard, who died of leukemia in 2018. Partly a memoir of a vibrant marriage, Live As If... also recounts the story of Nancy's work as a public school teacher, principal, and assistant professor at South Alabama, as well as her final journey with leukemia. "If love had a voice and could tell us its story," says best-selling author Patti Callahan Henry, winner of the Harper Lee Award, "it would be this one by Frye Gaillard. As Gaillard recounts the extraordinary life of his wife, Nancy, he . . . offers us a peek into a life so well-lived, a life so full of courage and generosity, that it changes us just by reading about her." |
Frye Gaillard - Thursday, January 28, 2021, 4:00pm|
As the first installment in the English Department's Race and Identity Lecture Series,
USA Journalist in Residence Cynthia Tucker and Writer in Residence Frye Gaillard will present "Reflections on Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: A New Perspective on Race in America." This event will be held over Zoom. |
Cynthia Tucker and Frye Gaillard - Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 4:30pm|
On Tuesday, November 10, poet Patricia Smith, National Book Award Finalist and four-time individual National Poetry Slam champion, will talk about her transition as a slam poet to the literary scene. Patricia Smith is the award-winning author of eight critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including most recently Incendiary Art (2017), winner of numerous national awards and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), and Blood Dazzler (2008), which focused on Hurricane Katrina. Her other works include the poetry collections Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, and Life According to Motown; a children’s book; and the history Africans in America, a companion to the PBS series. Her verse has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House, and Best American Poetry, among other venues. |
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Are you looking to make over your book? Join talented author David James Poissant for his craft talk "Buying the Flowers Yourself: Beginning, Building, and Revising Your First Novel"! He will discuss what elements the first chapter of a literary novel should have. David James Poissant is the author of the novel Lake Life (Simon & Schuster, 2020),
a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, Publishers Weekly Summer Read, and a Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2020. His story collection The Heaven of Animals was a winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a Florida Book Award, a finalist for
the L.A. Times Book Prize, and was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. His stories and
essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and in numerous textbooks and anthologies including New Stories from the South, Best New American Voices, and Best American Experimental Writing. His books are currently in print in six languages. He teaches in the MFA Program
in Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando with
his wife and daughters. |
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The 18th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will be given by Dr. Laura Vrana, Assistant Professor of English at USA. Her presentation, "#publishingpaidwho? Black Women's Poetry, Ethics, and Citizen(ship) in Minneapolis, 2020" will take place on Thursday, October 8 at 4 p.m. via Zoom. This event is open to the public. |
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We're thrilled to announce the third installment of the Annual Songwriter Keynote --- Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers live at the University of South Alabama on Monday, March 2, 2020! This special event will feature a musical performance by Patterson Hood, a short presentation
on roots music by Peter Cooper from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and
a roundtable discussion that will include critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Will
Johnson. All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of IMC Volume One. For more information, please visit rootsonrecord.org. |
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On Thursday, February 13, join Patti Callahan, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis, as she leads participants in a free, one-hour class on writing historical fiction
at 3:30pm. Coffee with refreshments will follow. Callahan will then read from her
work at 5pm as part of the Southern Writers’ Workshop, a new feature to our series
in 2020. |
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Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and a National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Danticat focuses on national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics. While at the university, she will lead a creative writing class for currently enrolled students and discuss her latest novel published in August of 2019. Co-sponsors include the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Dwell Mobile, and Phi Kappa Phi. PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Savarese Photography |
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Jill McCorkle has published six novels and four collections of short stories, five of which have been named New York Times notable books. Her work is anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize. She is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars and frequently teaches in the Sewanee Writers Program. Her new novel Hieroglyphics will be published in spring 2020. In addition to the public reading, McCorkle will lead a workshop for currently enrolled fiction students. |
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Thursday, October 3, 2019 - 4:00PM The English Department presents a public lecture by John G. Peters, University Distinguished
Research Professor at the University of North Texas. His talk, "Silence, Space, and
Nothingness in Joseph Conrad’s African Fiction: 'Heart of Darkness' and 'An Outpost
of Progress,'" will be held on Thursday, October 3 at 4 p.m. in the USA Archaeology
Museum. A reception will follow. |
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Monday, September 23, 2019 - 4:00PM The 17th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will
be given by Dr. Patrick Cesarini, Associate Professor of English at USA. His presentation, "Reconstructing Mobile's
Civil War Literature" will take place on Monday, September 23 at 4 p.m. in the USA
Student Center Terrace Room. A reception will follow. This event is open to the
public. |
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Thursday, September 19, 2019 - 5:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents writer and performer Danez Smith at 5pm in the John Counts Room of the Mitchell Center. The event is free and open
to the public. A book signing and reception with refreshments will follow. PHOTO: Hieu Minh Nguyen |
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Friday, September 6, 2019 - 2:00PM Join the USA Libraries for a roundtable featuring three distinguished writers in dialogue
on the new Palaemon Press Limited collection at the Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. Professor Emerita and former Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannan Walker, University of South Alabama Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard, and Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing Charlotte Pence will discuss features of the collection and its place in the Southern literary tradition.
This event will be held in the Marx Library Auditorium. All are welcome. |
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Thursday, September 5, 2019 - 4:30PM The USA Honors College in partnership with The Book Club and Sigma Tau Delta English
Honor Society present a celebration of Toni Morrison's life on Thursday, September
5 at 4:30 p.m. Join English faculty and students, including Dr. Laura Vrana, Dr. Kern Jackson, Dr. Christopher Raczkowski, Ms. Mary Murphy, Mrs. Deborah Ferguson, Mr. James Craig, and Ms. Mocha Hunter, for a group reading in Seaman's Bethel. Refreshments will be served. |
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Thursday, April 18, 2019 - 5:00PM Diana Khoi Nguyen’s debut collection of poetry, Ghost Of, won Omnidawn’s Open Contest in 2018 and is a finalist for the National Book Award,
a rare honor for a first book. This reading will be held in the USA Student Center
Terrace Room, with a book signing and reception to follow. |
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Thursday, March 7, 2019 - 7:30PM We're thrilled to announce our Annual Songwriter Keynote --- ASK 2019 will feature
Josh Ritter, live at Laidlaw on Thursday, March 7th. The two-act event will feature a musical
performance, a reading, and an interactive Q&A. Please note: this free event will
be held in the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center (Mainstage Theatre). Doors open at 7:00
p.m. and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. ASK 2019 is co-sponsored by the Independent
Music Collective, USA Department of Theatre and Dance, the USA Department of English,
and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. PHOTO: Laura Wilson. |
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Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - 5:00PM Jamie Quatro is the author of two books of fiction, Fire Sermon and I Want to Show You More. This reading will be held in the USA Student Center Terrace Room, with a book
signing and reception to follow. PHOTO: Stephen Alvarez. |
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Monday, October 29, 2018 - 7:00PM With the support of the Alabama Humanities Foundation and the Native American Student Association, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents Stephen Graham Jones at the Student Center Outdoor Amphitheater. The author of sixteen novels, six story collections, and a comic book, Jones is a genre-bending writer who spans the worlds of experimental fiction, horror, crime, and more. The event begins at 7pm, with a book signing and reception to follow. |
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Friday/Saturday, October 19/20, 2018 The English Department will host the conference "Chaucer: Sound and Vision" on October 19 and 20 at the USA Faculty Club. Michael Kuczynski of Tulane University will be the plenary speaker. |
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Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - 4:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing and the Center for War and Memory present Frye Gaillard reading from his new book, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence
Lost on Tuesday, October 2 at 4pm in the USA Faculty Club. |
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Thursday, September 13, 2018 - 7:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing is proud to present Roxane Gay, one of America’s most beloved writers and cultural critics. Her New York Times best-selling books include Bad Feminist, Hunger, An Untamed State, and Difficult Women. This event will be held in the USA Student Center Ballroom, with a reception and book signing to follow. Co-sponsors include Jaguar Productions, the English Department, AAUW at South Alabama, Phi Kappa Phi , Gender Studies, and the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice. |
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Thursday, August 30, 2018 - 4:00PM The 16th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will be given by Dr. Becky McLaughlin, Associate Professor of English at USA. Her presentation, "Trac(k)ing Chaucer's Cut With Jacques the Knife: 'Wild' Analysis and the Symptomatic Storyteller," will take place on Thursday, August 30 at 4 p.m. in the Marx Library Auditorium. A reception will follow. |
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Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - 7:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing is proud to co-sponsor a lecture by journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert. Her most recent book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, won the 2015 nonfiction Pulitzer and is first on the Guardian’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books ever. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7pm in the Student Center Ballroom. |
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Thursday, March 22, 2018 - 5:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents poet Jamaal May, who will read from his work in the Terrace Room of the Student Center at 5pm. A
reception will follow. |
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Monday, February 26, 2018 - 7:30PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing and the Independent Music Collective present
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats at USA's Dramatic Arts Mainstage Theatre in the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center.
The two-act event will feature a musical performance, a reading, and a short interview
conducted by the Stokes Center's new writer-in-residence Adam Prince. Doors open at
7 pm and the show will begin at 7:30 pm. |
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Thursday, February 8, 2018 - 5:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents award-winning writer (and native Mobilian)
Michael Knight, who will read from his latest collection, Eveningland, in the Terrace Room of the Student Center at 5pm. A reception will follow. |
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Thursday, November 30, 2017 - 11:00AM Dr. Charlotte Pence’s fall poetry class will be reading with Catharsis to celebrate the end of the semester. This event will be held in the Room 205 in
the Student Center. |
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Thursday, November 16, 2017 - 7:00PM Please join us at 7pm on Thursday, November 16 in the Student Center Ballroom. Charlotte Pence, Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing, will conduct a Q&A with Yaa Gyasi, the award-winning author of USA's 2016/17 Common Read selection Homegoing. A reception will follow the presentation. |
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Monday, October 30, 2017 - 4:00PM Please help us welcome Stokes Visiting Writer Adam Prince. He will be reading from his work in the Terrace Room at the USA Student Center
on Monday, October 30 at 4pm. Light refreshments will be provided. |
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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 6:30PM Please help us welcome Nathan Poole, our new Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. He will be reading from his work at the Faculty Club on Thursday, October 19 at 6:30pm. A reception will follow. |
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Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - 7:00PM Professor Emerita Sue Brannan Walker will celebrate the launch of her new poetry book titled Let Us Imagine Her Name (Clemson University Press, 2017). This event, co-sponsored by the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, will be held at the Faculty Club. A reception will follow. |
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Thursday, September 14, 2017 - 7:00PM The 15th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will be given by Charlotte Pence, Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at USA. Her presentation, "Many Small Fires: A Poetry Reading," will take place on Thursday, September 14 at 7 p.m. at the Faculty Club with a reception following. |
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Monday, February 20, 2017 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Molly Brodak at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open to the public.
Brodak is the author of A Little Middle of the Night, winner of the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize, along with three chapbooks of poetry and Bandit: a Daughter's Memoir (Grove Atlantic). |
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Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - 4:00PM The English Department and the Stokes Center for Creative Writing present Dr. Nick
Sturm, Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. His lecture, "Poetry and
the Living Archive," will take place on Tuesday, February 7 at 4 p.m. in the Marx
Library Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. |
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Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - 5:00PM The 14th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will
feature Dr. Cris Hollingsworth, Associate Professor of English. His lecture, "Countdown
and Aftermath: Edgar Allan Poe and Anxiety in the Age of Rockets" will take place
on Wednesday, November 16 at 5 p.m. in the Marx Library Auditorium. The event is free
and open to the public. |
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Thursday, November 10, 2016 - 4:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents Poetry Salon with Frye Gaillard and
Julie Suk at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open to the public. |
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Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Nathaniel Mackey at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open to the
public. An esteemed poet and scholar of 20th century poetics, Mackey has been awarded
the National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and The Bollingen Prize, among other
awards. His most recent book of poetry, Blue Fasa, was published by New Directions in 2015. |
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Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Rebecca Morgan Frank at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open
to the public. Currently the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University,
Frank is the author of two collections of poetry, The Spokes of Venus (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016) and Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon, 2012). |
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Monday, April 11, 2016 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Ada Limón, Michael Robins, and Adam Clay at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event
is free and open to the public. |
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Thursday, April 7, 2016 - 4:30PM The English Department's annual Student Recognition Ceremony will be held at 4:30 PM on Thursday, April 7, 2016 at the Faculty Club. Carolyn Haines will deliver the address. |
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Monday, March 21, 2016 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Major Jackson at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open to the
public. A prizewinning poet, Jackson is the author of Leaving Saturn (Georgia, 2002), Hoops (Norton, 2006), Holding Company (Norton, 2010), and Roll Deep (Norton, 2015). |
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Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - 4:00PM As part of the Visiting Writers Series, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents
Kirstin Valdez Quade at 4pm in the Archaeology Museum. The event is free and open
to the public. The author of Night at the Fiestas (Norton, 2015), Quade's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative, Guernica, The Southern Review, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. |
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Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - 4:00PM The 13th Annual Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture for the Graduate Program in English will
feature Mira Rosenthal, Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at USA.
Her lecture, "Tracing the Lyric: A Reading from Recent Poems and Translations," will
take place on Wednesday, November 11 at 4 p.m. in the Archaeology Museum with a reception
following. |
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Thursday, September 3, 2015 - 9:00AM to 4:00PM The Center for the Study of War and Memory is hosting an interdisciplinary symposium
in Seaman's Bethel Hall titled "Remembering America's War in Vietnam, 1965-2015."
Andrew Wiest, Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, will
deliver the keynote address. Other speakers include Frye Gaillard, Steven Trout, and
Elizabeth Rivenbark. |
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Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - 7:00PM As part of the symposium "Remembering America's War in Vietnam, 1965-2015," the Center for the Study of War and Memory will be screening the Errol Morris film
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) in the Marx Library Auditorium. A panel discussion and Q&A with Vietnam veterans
will follow. |
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Monday, April 6, 2015 The Center for the Study of War and Memory is hosting a symposium in the Bethel Hall
titled "The Civil War in History and Memory, 1895-2015." Benjamin Cloyd, author of
Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory, will be the keynote speaker. Other speakers include Frye Gaillard, Mel McKiven,
Elizabeth Rivenbark, and Carol Ellis. |
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Thursday, April 2, 2015 - 4:00PM The English Department's annual Student Recognition Ceremony will be held at 4:00
PM on Thursday, April 2, 2015. Actor Laura Cayouette (English MA, '88) will deliver
the banquet's keynote address. |
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Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - 4:00PM USA Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard will deliver the twelfth Eugenie L. Hamner Lecture
for the Graduate Program in English on Wednesday, November 5, 2014. Prof. Gaillard’s
talk, "Journey to the Wilderness," will be held at 4pm in the Marx Library Auditorium.
The event is free and open to the public. |
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Thursday, October 30, 2014 - 4:00PM / 7:00PM Award-winning Nashville songwriter Anne E. DeChant will visit USA on Thursday, Oct. 30, appearing at two events sponsored by the Common Read and Gender Studies programs.
At 4 p.m., DeChant will join USA Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard at the Marx Library Auditorium
for a discussion of "Story-Telling Through Song." The discussion will followed by
a 7 p.m. acoustic concert at Satori Coffee House. Both events are free. |
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Thursday, September 4, 2014 - 2:00PM Please join Dr. John H. Morrow, Jr. (University of Georgia) and USA faculty members Susan McCready, Dan Rogers, and Steven Trout for a panel discussion in the Marx Library Auditorium. "The First World War: 100 Years After"
will explore the impact of WWI on 20th-century history. USA Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard will moderate. Everyone is welcome. |
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Wednesday, September 3, 2014 - 7:00PM Dr. John H. Morrow, Jr. (University of Georgia) will discuss his latest book, The Harlem Rattlers and the First World War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the
African American Quest for Equality (2014). A signing will follow the presentation. The event will be held at the Marx Library Auditorium. Everyone is welcome. |
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Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - 6:30PM Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard hosts an evening of readings and song featuring author and syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson and acclaimed Nashville songwriters Davis Raines and Pamela Jackson. This free event begins at 6:30 at the West Regional Branch of the Mobile Public Library. |
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Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 1:30PM Professor Hong Pan, the Chair of the Foreign Languages Department at Fuzhou University Zhicheng College, will give a presentation on the Victorian novelist Rider Haggard. This event will be held in the Arts and Sciences Dean's Conference Room (HUMB 122). |
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Monday, April 14, 2014 - 7:00PM The Stokes Center for Creative Writing presents a reading by Bill Tremblay, award-winning author, poet, and founder of the Colorado Review. The event will be held at the University of South Alabama Faculty Club, and will begin at 7pm. Everyone is welcome. |
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In decades past, the English department sponsored an impressive roster of writers as speakers at USA, including Charles Bernstein, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer, Jeanie Thompson, Sandra Gilbert, Jack Coulehan, Margaret Drabble, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Jack Gilbert, Andre Dubus, Vivian Shipley, Richard Moore, Virginia Spencer Carr, Wade Hall, W. D. Snodgrass, Diane Wakowski, Mike Shugrue, Tom Franklin, Brewster Milton Robertson, Robert Morgan, and Eugene Walter.