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Names & Dates

 

Michael Martone

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Michael Martone is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. Before that, he taught at Syracuse University, Iowa State University, and Harvard University.

He lives with the poet Theresa Pappas and their two sons Sam and Nick. Martone was born and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana; he studied at Butler University in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English. He is also a graduate of The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University.

Martone is the author of several books of short fiction including Michael Martone: Fictions, Seeing Eye, Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle, Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List, Safety Patrol, and Alive and Dead in Indiana He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest. His book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998. His latest book, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, complicates notions of form and genre.


Jessica Abel

Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Graphic Novelist & Cartoonist

Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel is the author of a textbook, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, about making comics, written in collaboration with her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden; and the graphic novel La Perdida (Pantheon Books). She’s also the co-writer of the graphic novel Life Sucks. Previously, she published Soundtrack and Mirror, Window (Fantagraphics Books), two collections that gather stories and drawings from her comic book Artbabe, which she published between 1992 and 1999. She collaborated with Ira Glass on “Radio: An Illustrated Guide”, a non-fiction comic about how the radio show “This American Life” is made.

Abel won both the Harvey and Lulu awards for “Best New Talent” in 1997; La Perdida won the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award. She teaches at New York’s School of Visual Arts, and Madden and Abel are also series editors for The Best American Comics. They live in Brooklyn with their daughter.


Jennifer Perrine

Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Poet

Jennifer Perrine’s first collection of poems, The Body Is No Machine, was published by New Issues in 2007 and won the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bellingham Review, Atlanta Review, Connecticut Review, Georgetown Review, Third Coast, The Ledge, The Patterson Literary Review, The Pinch, The Cream City Review, Third Coast, River Styx and others.

Her poem, “When the Dazzle Isn’t Gradual,” won the 2010 Bellingham Review 49th Parallel Poetry Award. Perrine teaches at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she organizes the Writers & Critics Series and teaches courses in creative writing and gender studies.


Ruth Reichl

*Art of Fact Award*

Wednesday. May 4, 2011 - 7:30 pm, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester
Memorist
Food Critic

Ruth Reichl was the Editor in Chief of Gourmet magazine and the author of three bestselling memoirs, Comfort Me with Apples, Tender at the Bone and Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise. For those who have read her books, we know Reichl’s mother as “the notorious almost-food-poisoner” and “the Queen of Mold,” and in many ways Reichl shaped her life to be in direct contrast to her mother’s.

After her mother’s death, Reichl finds her personal journal, which sends her on a clear-eyed, openhearted investigation of her mother’s life, and the life of a woman she realizes she never really knew. Her latest memoir addresses these issues: On Not Becoming My Mother. Reichl also co-produced PBS’s Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, and hosted PBS’s Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth.

No tickets or reservations are required for Ruth Reichl Art of Fact event on Wednesday, May 4th at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. and doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Please plan to arrive early for best seating.

There will be books for sale on site, as well as a book signing and reception following Ruth Reichl’s presentation.


For further information

Writers Forum
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Brockport, NY 14420

Phone: (585) 395-5713

Email: James Whorton/Anne Panning