Author
POETRY CONTEST: Unity & Democracy
Feb. 9, 2022—Vanderbilt students are invited to express how they feel about unity and democracy through a new poetry contest. The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy is holding the contest in partnership with the Department of English and Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program. The theme is “what unity through American democracy means to...
(4/7/2022) Aimee Bender, fiction reading: 7 PM, Virtual
Jan. 8, 2022— Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of...
(3/31/2022) Mark Jarman (faculty), poetry reading & Lorraine López (faculty), fiction reading: 7 PM, Buttrick Hall 101
Jan. 7, 2022—Mark Jarman was born in 1952 in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. He earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1976. Jarman is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Heronry (2017), Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems (2011), Epistles (2007), The Black...
(3/17/2022) Rebecca Bernard, fiction reading & Cara Dees, poetry reading: 7 PM, Buttrick Hall 101
Jan. 6, 2022—Rebecca Bernard’s debut collection of stories won the 2021 Non/Fiction prize from The Journal and is forthcoming from Ohio State’s Mad Creek Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Juked, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Fiction from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Vanderbilt University. Her work received notable...
(2/24/2022) Margaret Renkl (visiting faculty), nonfiction reading: 7 PM, Face Masks Required, Buttrick 101
Jan. 5, 2022—Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, which was published in July 2019. Her next book, Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South, was published in September 2021. Renkl is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays...
(2/17/2022) Lisa Russ Spaar, poetry reading: 7 PM, Face Masks Required, Buttrick 101
Jan. 4, 2022—Lisa Russ Spaar is the author/editor of over twelve books of poetry and criticism, including, most recently, More Truly and More Strange: 100 Contemporary American Self-Portrait Poems (2020) and Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (November 2021). Her debut novel, Paradise Close, will appear in April 2022. Her honors include a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, and...
(2/10/2022) Brandon Taylor, fiction reading: 7 PM, Face Masks Required, Buttrick 101
Jan. 4, 2022—Brandon Taylor is the author of the novel Real Life, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, as well as The National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the 2021 Young Lions Fiction Award. His work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed Reader,...
(2/3/2022) Kate Daniels, nonfiction: 7 PM, VIrtual Reading
Jan. 2, 2022—Please register for this virtual reading here. Kate Daniels is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Walk in Victoria’s Secret, and In the Months of My Son’s Recovery. She taught at Vanderbilt for 25 years, helping to found the MFA program, and serving as director of creative writing. She is now the Edwin...
(1/27/2022) Shane McRae, poetry reading: 7 PM, Virtual Reading
Jan. 1, 2022—Shane McCrae grew up in Texas and California. The first in his family to graduate from college, McCrae earned a BA at Linfield College, an MA at the University of Iowa, an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a JD at Harvard Law School. McCrae is the author of Sometimes I Never Suffered, In...
(11/11/2021) Tommy Orange, fiction (pre-recorded virtual reading): 7 PM
Nov. 8, 2021—Tommy Orange is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California. His first book, There, There, won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the American Book Award. He is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and he...