Readings
The Candid Yak
The Candid Yak is a reading series that is organized by the students enrolled in the George Mason University Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Its intent is to showcase the best and brightest creative work of the GMU community. For a current semester schedule, please see the Candid Yak website.
Fall for the Book Festival 2007
Sunday, September 23th -- Friday, September 28th
For information on the Fall for the Book Festival, please click on the following link: Festival Information
Visiting Writers Series
The vitality of our visiting writer's program is evidenced by bringing over 100 nationally and internationally known writers on our campus since the program began in 1980. These events sponsored by the Creative Writing program, the English Department, the campus bookstore and on occasion other campus departments or organizations.
The Visiting Writers Program brings from eight to a dozen fiction and nonfiction writers and poets to the campus each year. Many writers come to George Mason for short-term residencies, ranging from a few days to a week or more. Often as part of their visit, writers give public readings and lectures. Past visiting writers include
W.S. Merwin, Yehuda Amichai, Charles Simic, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer, Richard Howard, Adrienne Rich, Sherman Alexie, Alan Shapiro, Robert Bausch, Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie,
Olga Broumas, George Garrett, Robert Hass, Stanley Kunitz, Jill McCorkle, Thomas Mallon, Joyce Carole Oates, and John Updike.
Visiting Writers Readings, Spring 2008
Fiction
Jennifer Egan- Tuesday , Feb. 19, Grand Tier III, Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m. Reception at 6:30 p.m., same venue.
Jennifer Egan is the author of three novels, The Invisible Circus; Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award; and the bestselling The Keep; and a short story collection, Emerald City. She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and Ploughshares, among others, and her journalism appears frequently in the New York Times Magazine.
Liam Callanan – Monday, Mar. 17, Research I, Room 163, 7:30 p.m. Reception at 6:30 p.m., same venue.
Liam Callanan is the author of The Cloud Atlas (2004) and All Saints (2007). He teaches and coordinates the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He has regularly contributed to , and has written for Esquire.com, Slate, the New York Times Book Review, the Times’ op-ed page, the Washington Post Magazine, Forbes FYI, Good Housekeeping, Parents and a number of other publications in locations ranging from Canada to Brazil. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including the Writers’ Chronicle, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Caketrain, Failbetter and Phoebe.
Poetry
Linda Gregerson – Thursday, Feb. 7, Grand Tier III, Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m. Reception at 6:30pm, same venue
Linda Gregerson is a poet, recent Guggenheim Fellow, and a member of faculty at the University of Michigan. Her books of poetry include Magnetic North (2007), Waterborne (2002), The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep (1996), and Fire in the Conservatory (1982). She is also the author of literary criticism, including Negative Capability: Contemporary American Poetry (2001) and The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic (1995). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry as well as in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications. Among her many awards and honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award.
Peter Gizzi – Thursday, April 10th, 7:30 p.m., Sub II, Room 1 & 2. Reception at 6:30, same venue
Peter Gizzi is an award winning poet whose books include The Outernationale, Some Values of Landscape and Weather, Artificial Heart, and Periplum and other poems 1987-92. He has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios, and artist books. His work has been translated into numerous languages. His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets (1994) and fellowships in poetry from the Rex Foundation (1993), Howard Foundation (1998), The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (1999), and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005). He works at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Nonfiction
Blanche McCrary Boyd – Wednesday, Feb. 6th, Grand Tier III, Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m. Reception at 6:30, same venue.
Blanche McCrary Boyd is the author of four novels, most recently Terminal Velocity (1997), which Publishers Weekly described as "a rollicking, kaleidoscopic trip through the drug-tinged lesbianfeminist counter-culture of the 1970s." Her other novels include Nerves (1973), Mourning the Death of Magic (1977), and The Revolution of Little Girls (1992), which won the Ferro Grumley Foundation's award for the best work of fiction written in 1991. It was also nominated for the Lambda Award, for Quality Paperback Books' New Voices Award, and for the first Southern Book Award for Fiction. Boyd also has published The Redneck Way of Knowledge (1982), a collection of essays, autobiography, and journalism. The reviewer for The Nation called it "impressive. . .superb. . .the best kind of social criticism." Boyd has been a staff writer at the Village Voice and a contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
Mark Levine – Wednesday, Mar. 26, Research I, Room 163, 7:30 p.m. Reception at 6:30, same venue
Mark Levine is the author of F5: Devestation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the Twentieth Century. He is an award-winning magazine writer who has contributed to The New Yorker, Outside, and Men’s Journal among others and whose work has been included in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Sports Writing, and The Best American Poetry. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine and he teaches poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is also the author of three books of poetry.
Additional Events
Luis Alberto Urrea Reading - April 9, 2008, Concert Hall, 7:30pm, All are welcome!
2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Luis Alberto Urrea, will speak at George Mason University.
Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. The critically acclaimed author of 11 books, Urrea is an award-winning poet and essayist. The Devil's Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. A national best-seller, The Devil's Highway was also named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Kansas City Star and many other publications. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Area Readings
Events at Washington, DC Area Bookstores & Libraries
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