CLA Reading Series

The Center for the Literary Arts sponsors an annual Distingushed Writers Reading Series, a program through which internationally known writers deliver readings and lectures that are generally followed by a book signing. Included in this series is the John William Proctor Distinguished Author Reading, an annual event made possible by the family of John William Proctor who established an endowment in his memory. All events are free and open to the public.

Past Visitors
John Updike, Joan Didion, Peter Carey, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Oliver Sacks, Mark Strand, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Levine, Terry Tempest Williams, Charles Simic, Charles Wright, and Elaine Pagels.

September 24, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Hall Auditorium

Wole Soyinka
John William Proctor Distinguished Author

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, many critics consider Wole Soyinka to be Africa’s finest writer. As a playwright, poet, and novelist his vision comes to us through a stunning corpus that chronicles Africa’s political turmoil and its struggle to reconcile tradition with modernization. The author of more than seventeen plays, Soyinka has also published several collections of poems, three novels, two memoirs, and several works of literary criticism. He has held positions at Yale, Cornell, Cambridge, Harvard and Emory University, among others. He is visiting MU as the John William Proctor Distinguished Author.

September 26, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | A.P. Green Chapel, Memorial Union

Joshua Kryah
CLA Reading Series

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Joshya Kryah received a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, and Verse, among others. He is the poetry editor for Witness. His first book is Glean.

November 8, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Union

Phillip Lopate
CLA Reading Series

Phillip Lopate is the author of three essay collections: Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body; two novels, Confessions of Summer and The Rug Merchant; two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round; as well as a memoir of his experiences working with the creative arts with children, Being With Children. He currently holds the Adams Chair at Hofstra University, where he is Professor of English.

November 29, 2007 | 7:30 p.m. | A.P. Green Chapel, Memorial Union

Raza Ali Hasan
CLA Reading Series

Raza Ali Hasan was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and grew up in Indonesia and Islamabad, Pakistan. His poems have appeared in Agni, Tampa Review, Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol and Poetry International. He has a B.A. in Computer Science and an M.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University. He is the author of one collection of poetry, Grieving Shias.
Photo Credit: Laura Winkiel

February 20, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center

Terrance Hayes
CLA Reading Series

Terrance Hayes is the author of Wind in a Box, Hip Logic, and Muscular Music. He has been the recipient of a number of honors, including a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, a National Poetry Series Award, and an NEA Fellowship. Currently he teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.

March 20, 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Reynolds Alumni Center

Major Jackson
CLA Reading Series

Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry Hoops (W.W.Norton: 2006) and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia: 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Callaloo, Post Road, Triquarterly, The New Yorker, among other literary journals and anthologies. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Vermont and a faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Image Credit: Marion Ettlinger