ATHENS, Ohio -- Ohio University's Program in Creative Writing will host a benefit reading by four critically acclaimed writers on Ohio University's faculty Thursday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Irvine Auditorium. A book signing and reception will follow the reading. Tickets are $5 and may be purchased at the door the evening of the event.
Writers Harvest has been an annual event since 1992. All proceeds from the $5 admission donation will go to the Southeastern Ohio Food Bank's Second Harvest, a food distribution program serving Athens, Hocking, Perry, Vinton, Jackson, Gallia, Meigs, Morgan and Washington counties.
The Second Harvest of Southeastern Ohio Food Bank participates in vital programs to feed the hungry. According to Marilyn Sloan, Food Bank coordinator, they have distributed 6 million pounds of food so far this year, up from 4.5 million last year.
This year's program features fiction writers Bill Black, Michael David Brown and Zakes Mda, and poet J. Allyn Rosser.
Black's recent publications include "I and the Village" in New Letters, "Wildcats" in Ontario Review and "Phoebe Snow Rides the Lackawanna" in Other Voices. Black is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the position of Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in 1999 and 2000 and Scholar in Residence at the Pennsylvania State Archives in 1995. Black received grants from the Pennsylvania Museum and Historical Commission in 1996, and from the President's Council at the University of Alabama in 1995. He is a visiting assistant professor in the university's Creative Writing Program.
Brown's publications include the novel Under Heat that also is a feature film of the same title, "Caribou" in Quarter After Eight, "Breakfast" in Chicago Review and "Herself Regained" a novel excerpt in Westminster Review. His one-act play "Upshot," was produced by the Ohio University School of Theater in spring 1992. Brown is an instructor in the university's Department of English.
Mda's publications include two critically acclaimed novels, "The Heart of Redness," for which he earned the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2001, and "Ways of Dying," for which he was awarded The Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose in 1997. Mda is also the author of a number of plays, including "Love Letters" in Let Us Play and "The Nun's Romantic Stor," in Four Plays. His poems have been published in anthologies such as The Heart in Exile, Soho Square and Summer Fires. He has published scholarly articles in Matatu, Theater, Current Writing and Contemporary Theater Review. Mda, a full-time writer, painter and filmmaker, is from Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a visiting professor in the university's Creative Writing Program.
Rosser has published more than one hundred poems in journals including Georgia Review, Poetry, Paris Review, Denver Quarterly and The Ohio Review. Her collection of poems, "Bright Moves," selected in 1990 by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic, won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. Rosser is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize, Morse Poetry Prize, the Peter I. B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry Magazine. She has received fellowships from Breadloaf, Yaddo, New Jersey State Council for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, University of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts. Rosser's most recent collection of poems is "Misery Prefigured," which earned her the Crab Orchard Award in 2000. Rosser is an assistant professor of creative writing.
For more information, contact the Special Programs Office at (740) 593-4181.
