Fall 2020 Visiting Writers Series

Visiting Writers Fall 2020

George Mason University’s Creative Writing Program joins Mason’s University Libraries and Fall for the Book in announcing the Fall 2020 Visiting Writers Series, featuring two writers each in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Writers will meet for virtual afternoon workshops with students from Mason’s MFA program in creative writing and will then participate in virtual programs that same evening—open to the public and combining brief readings and conversation with hosts from Mason’s creative writing community. All evening programs will begin at 7 p.m.

 

Robin HemleyThursday, September 17: Robin Hemley (nonfiction), in conversation with Professor Tim Denevi—Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

Robin Hemley is the author of 12 books of nonfiction and fiction, and is the Founder of NonfictioNOW, the world’s leading international conference in nonfiction. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, he returned to Iowa for nine years, to direct the Nonfiction Writing Program. A Contributing Editor to The Iowa Review and on the Advisory Board of Fourth Genre, he has many years publishing experience, including five years as the Editor of The Bellingham Review, where he founded The Annie Dillard Award in Nonfiction and The Tobias Wolff Award in Fiction. His most recent book is Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood.

 

Joan KaneThursday, September 24: Joan Naviyuk Kane (poetry), in conversation with Mason MFA student Ana Pugatch and BFA alum Eli Vandegrift

Joan Naviyuk Kane has authored seven books and chapbooks of poetry and prose, most recently Another Bright Departure. Other collections include The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife; Hyperboreal; The Straits; Milk Black Carbon; A Few Lines in the Manifest; and Sublingual. Her artistic interests concern the role of lyric and story whose urgency and vitality is carried forward into the present and future by contemporary indigenous writers. Kane has received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2014 American Book Award, the 2012 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and a 2009 Whiting Award.

 

Marjan KamaliThursday, October 8: Marjan Kamali (fiction), in conversation with Professor Courtney Brkic—Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

Marjan Kamali is the author of two novels: The Stationery Shop and Together Tea. Shelf Awareness called The Stationery Shop “a powerful, heartbreaking story of star-crossed lovers and Iran’s political upheavals,” and the book became a Boston Globe bestseller, a Real Simple magazine Top Editor’s Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and one of Newsweek’s 30 Best Summer Books. Her debut novel, Together Tea, was a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an NPR WBUR Good Read, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. Her work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in two anthologies. She teaches writing at GrubStreet.

 

Dan Beachy-QuickThursday, October 22: Dan Beachy-Quick (poetry), in conversation with Professor Sally Keith —Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Variations of Dawn and Dusk. Other collections include North True South Bright; Spell; Mulberry; This Nest, Swift Passerine; Circle's Apprentice, winner of the Colorado Book Award in Poetry; and gentlessness. He is also the author of A Whaler s Dictionary, a book of interlinked meditations on Herman Melville s Moby-Dick; Wonderful Investigations, a collection of essays, meditations, and fairy tales; A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work; and most recently, Of Silence and Song, a collection of essays, fragments, and poems. He is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency and has been a winner of the Colorado Book Award, and a finalist for The William Carlos Williams Award, and the PEN/USA Literary Award in Poetry. In 2016 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.

 

Michele MoranoThursday, November 5: Michele Morano (nonfiction), in conversation with Professor Kyoko Mori

Michele Morano is the author of Grammar Lessons: Translating A Life In Spain.  Her work has been honored with fellowships and awards fro the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and others.  Her essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Essays and I'll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years Of Essays From Te Iowa Nonfiction Program.  She directs the MA in Writing and Publishing Program at DePaul University in Chicago.  Her book, Like Love, is forthcoming from the University of Ohio Press in September 2020.

 

Laura SimsThursday, November 12: Laura Sims (fiction), in conversation with Professor Courtney Brkic

Laura Sims is the author of Looker, a 2019 debut that The Wall Street Journal called “a sugarcoated poison pill of psychological terror.” An Indie Next Great Reads Pick, Looker was named a Best Novel of 2019 by Vogue, Esquire UK, CrimeReads, and The Star-Ledger, and a Best New Book by People, Entertainment Weekly, CosmoUK, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Southern Living, Popsugar, and other media outlets. Sims has also published four books of poetry, including, most recently, Staying Alive; her first poetry collection, Practice, Restraint, was the winner of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize. Sims has been the recipient of a US-Japan Creative Arts Fellowship.