5/1/98
Photographers/videographers: Festival organizers say best photo opportunities may be at two receptions following readings on May 13-14. Each reception will begin around 9:30 p.m. Authors will autograph their books at both receptions.
ATHENS, Ohio -- Thirteen is a lucky number for literary fans in Southeastern Ohio, as Ohio University will mark its 13th annual Spring Literary Festival by hosting five internationally renowned authors May 13-15 on the Athens campus.
The writers poets Kenneth Koch and Susan Ludvigson, novelists Rosellen Brown and Ron Hansen and essayist and poet Reg Saner will present readings from their works and formal lectures. All events take place in 194 Irvine Auditorium on the campus' West Green. Sponsored by the English Department's Program in Creative Writing, the festival is free and open to the public.
"Each of the writers in this group is bringing a lifetime of accomplishment and artistic integrity to the festival. Added to that, they have each expressed such warmth and enthusiasm about coming to this particular event that I predict it will be very exciting for all of us," said Festival Director Joyce Barlow Dodd, coordinator of special programs in creative writing. This festival celebrates the importance of art in our lives, and reminds us that writing and reading are extraordinarily powerful and essential human activities."
Koch's career has spanned more than 40 years in the New York literary scene as the author of more than 35 books of poetry, fiction, plays, literary criticism and poetry education. His most recent collection, One Train, was published in 1994. A faculty member at Columbia University, Koch has earned the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry, the Bobbitt Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
Brown is best known for her four novels, including Before and After, which became a 1996 film starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson. Her novel Civil Wars won the Janet Kafka Prize for best novel by an American woman in 1984, and she has been cited as one of Ms. magazine's 12 Women of the Year." The author of numerous collections on poetry, essays and stories, Brown has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The American Southwest is the backdrop for much of Saner's work, including his two books of essays, The Four-Cornered Falcon and Reaching Keet Seel. Saner, a faculty member at the University of Colorado, was the 1997 winner of the Wallace Stegner Award from the Center for the American West for sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the American West." Saner also is the author of four books of poems. His 1975 poetry book, Climbing into the Roots, won the Walt Whitman Award and So This is the Map won the National Poetry Series' Open Competition in 1981.
Hansen is the author of four novels, including Atticus, his most recent work, and Mariette in Ecstasy, which has been made into a film. He also has written a children's book, a collection of stories and two anthologies. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hansen is the Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor in the Arts and Humanities in the Department of English at Santa Clara (Calif.) University.
Ludvigson is the author of seven books of poems. Her latest work, New and Selected Poems, will be published next year. Her writing has appeared regularly in magazines and journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and Antioch Review. She has been awarded grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.