Writers' Festival
March 25-26, 2010
A Creative Tradition
Agnes Scott College is known for fostering the creative spirit through the written word, and for almost 35 years the Writers’ Festival has brought renowned novelists, poets, playwrights and essayists to the campus. In the past, distinguished literary figures such as:
Julia Alvarez
Margaret Atwood
Eavan Boland
Peter Carey
James Dickey
Chitra Divakaruni
Rita Dove
Carolyn Forché
Jamaica Kincaid
Li-Young Lee
Gloria Naylor
Anita Desai
Quiara Alegria Hudes
|
Marsha Norman ’69X, H’05
Joyce Carol Oates
Tim O’Brien
Tillie Olsen
Bapsi Sidhwa
Jane Smiley
John Updike
Robert Penn Warren
Richard Wilbur
Joy Williams
Junot Diaz
Memye Curtis Tucker
and many others |
have shared their work and writing experiences with Agnes Scott and the larger Atlanta community.
Scott Russell Sanders
Reading Thursday, March 25, 8 p.m.
Winter Theatre, Dana Fine Arts Building
Scott Russell Sanders studied physics and English at Brown University and, as a Marshall Scholar, completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of Cambridge. In 1971 he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he taught until 2009, retiring as Distinguished Professor of English.
Among his more than twenty books are novels, collections of stories, works of personal nonfiction, and storybooks for children. His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path. His recent book, A Private History of Awe, is a coming-of-age memoir, love story, and spiritual testament, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. A Conservationist Manifesto, his vision of a shift to a sustainable society, was published in 2009.
Paul Guest
Reading Thursday, March 25, 4 p.m.
Julia Thompson Smith Chapel
Paul Guest was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and raised in Georgia. He received a B.A. in Humanities from the University of Tennessee and an M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University. His poems have appeared in Slate, The Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, Pleiades, Quarterly West, Third Coast, and elsewhere. His book The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World was winner of the 2002 New Issues Prize. He is also the recipient of a 2007 Whiting Writers’ Award, and his second book, Notes for My Body Double, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. In 2008, he published My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge. He teaches at the University of West Georgia.
Sarah Scoles
Reading Friday, March 26, 10 a.m.
Winter Theatre, Dana Fine Arts Building
Sarah Scoles ‘07 recently graduated from Cornell University's MFA program, where she completed a collection of short stories featuring female narrators who are intelligent, neurotic, and scientific, and who feel some kind of disconnect between their brains and the world around them. She currently teaches Writing at Cornell University and later plans to observe and chronicle the lives of astronomers at remote radio telescopes. Her work has appeared in *DIAGRAM*, *SNReview*, *Sotto Voce* and “Fringe.”
Each year student writers from Georgia colleges and universities submit their fiction, poetry, personal essays and one-act plays to the Writers’ Festival contest. Agnes Scott publishes the finalists’ works in the festival magazine and the visiting writers award prizes for the best work in each category. All finalists attend a workshop with one of the visiting writers.
The readings of the finalists from Agnes Scott will be held Wednesday, March 24, at 10:00am in the Luchsinger Lounge, Alston Campus Center. Sponsored by the Center for Speaking and Writing and the English Department.
Fiction:
Justine Schwartz, "The Dog Catcher"
Michelle Haddad, "Mercy"
Nonfiction:
Joanna Carver, "The Passerby"
Kayla Miller, "Cut"
Rachel Burger, "Chicken Shit and Candy"
Poetry:
Kristen Fox, “Used Vehicle for Sale,” “I’m Sorry She Only Lived One Saturday Afternoon”
One-Act Play:
Alfreda Henry, "'Possum"
For more information