Susan Briante was born in Newark, N.J., after the riots.  She is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Utopia Minus.  She also publishes essays on industrial ruins, abandoned buildings and cultural memory.  The poems in her first book, Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press, Boise State University, March 2007) reference field notes as well as love letters as they trace her experiences living in Mexico City from 1992-1998 and reading the Latin American avant-garde.  About Utopia Minus, the poet Jean Valentine writes, "What a wildly intelligent, learned poet Briante is, in this biography-autobiography of the American body and soul around 2010, witnessed (and lived) with such bite, understanding, and sorrow."

Free and open to the public.

Winner of The Story Prize, the country's most prestigious award for a collection of short fiction, Anthony Doerr is the author of four books, including the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, the novel About Grace, and the story collection The Shell Collector.  His most recent book, Memory Wall, a second volume of stories, was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Boston Gobe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Amazon.com.  Doerr's short fiction has won three O.Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.  He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, two Ohioana Book Awards, and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.  He teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Free and open to the public.

In partnership with Literary Arts, Inc., of Portland, the Hallie Ford Chair and English Department will host a reading by three finalists for this year's Oregon Book Award.  The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually for the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers working in various genres, including fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and young adult literature.  Finalists have just been announced, and we'll soon find out which of them will be visiting.  Read more about the Oregon Book Awards here:  http://www.literary-arts.org/awards/.

Free and open to the public.

This two-evening program will celebrate the written word with a combination of dramatic readings of plays and readings of poetry and prose by students in the Department of Theatre's Atypical Performance class and the English Department's brand new Senior Seminar in Creative Writing.

Free and open to the public.