Archive for Author Signings
Elizabethtown College To Host Veteran Artists, Rising Stars
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Poet Earl S. Braggs, thriller author Pam Chillemi-Yeager, teen novelist Cayla Kluver and fiction writers and friends Craig S. Renfroe and Derek Nikitas visit Bowers Writers House this month. Admission to the March events is free; seating is first-come first-served. It is suggested to arrive at least a half hour early.
Earl S. Braggs, the Herman H. Battle Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and author of six collections of poetry discusses contemporary poetics and his personal perspectives on poetry reading and writing at a workshop and craft talk at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 22, and presents and reads from his own poetry at 8 p.m.
The professor poet is the recipient of the Anhinga Poetry Prize and the Jack Kerouac Literary Prize; a chapter from his yet-to-be published novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac, won the James Jones First Novel Contest. At UTC, Braggs teaches creative writing, poetry and African-American and Russian literature. Teaching awards include the UTNAA Outstanding Teacher Award and two Student Government Association Outstanding Professor awards.
Braggs’ latest book, Younger Than Neil, has been called “Whitmanesque.”
At 5 p.m. Saturday, March 24, Bowers Writers House hosts its first alumni-student reading with Pam Chillemi-Yeager, Elizabethtown College class of 1977 graduate, and current E-town student Cayla Kluver, who presently is on leave from her studies as she tours the country to promote her Legacy trilogy.
Chillemi-Yeager’s debut novel Deadly Tattoo: The First Day of Christmas was released in 2008, and her second novel, Dark Revenge: The Second Day of Christmas, which continues the story of retired homicide detective Mick Christmas, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award. Chillemi-Yeager resides in South Carolina with her family.
Kluver, a Wisconsin native, self-published her first novel when she was 15. Since then she has written a young adult trilogy, which is published by Harlequin Teen and is sold in more than 16 countries. Kluver plans to return to Elizabethtown College at the conclusion of her tour.
At 4 p.m. Thursday, March 29, authors and friends, Derek Nikitas and S. Craig Renfroe, present a joint workshop/craft talk about their experiences in the publishing world and their personal strategies for creation and revision. At 8 p.m. they’ll hold a reading and book signing.
Nikitas is the author of two literary thriller novels published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. Pyres, was an Edgar Award nominee, and The Long Division, was a Washington Post “Best Books of 2009″ selection. His short fiction has appeared in The Ontario Review, Chelsea, New South and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Nikitas is a faculty member in the MFA program at Eastern Kentucky University. Currently, Nikitas is working on a semi-historical horror/fantasy novel about W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley and H.P. Lovecraft.
Renfroe, assistant professor at Queens University of Charlotte, is the author of You Should Get That Looked At, a short story collection from Main Street Rag Publishing Co. His writing was in final running for the Novello Literary Award and the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Renfroe’s story “Stick” was a Million Writers Award Notable Story. His work has appeared online on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Cemetery Dance, Night Train, Hobart and 3:AM Magazine.
Chet Williamson Gives A Public Reading
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Author Chet Williamson, along with German-Irish author Hugo Hamilton and poets Yvette Neisser Moreno and Maria Teresa Ogliastri, visit Bowers Writers House at Elizabethtown College during March for public readings and workshop. All events take place at Bowers Writers House, just off campus at 840 College Hill Lane.
Chet Williamson, a Lancaster County author, gives a public reading at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 14. Williamson has published 25 books and more than 100 short stories in Esquire, Playboy, The New Yorker and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His work has been adapted for film and TV and also has been published worldwide. He won the International Horror Guild Award and was shortlisted multiple times for the World Fantasy Award and the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award.
Williamson also is a playwright and a member of Actors’ Equity Association. He often acts in Lancaster area theaters. His experience with acting encouraged him to record multiple audiobooks, and he has recorded the work of Michael Moorcock, Zoe Winters, Tom Piccirilli and his own work.
At 8 p.m., Monday, March 12, Hugo Hamilton gives a public presentation of his work. Hamilton is the German-Irish author of best-selling novel “The Speckled People,” a memoir of growing up in ’50s/’60s Dublin with a fervent Irish nationalist father and a German mother who came to Ireland in the aftermath of World War II. His presentation is sponsored by Bowers Writers House, the English Department and the Department of Modern Languages.
“The Speckled People” is hailed around the globe. It won the Berto Prize in Italy and appeared on the notable books list in The New York Times.
Hamilton is the acclaimed author of two memoirs, seven novels and one collection of short stories, all of which reflect on the increasingly compelling issues of cultural divisions, belonging and identity. His latest novel “Hand in the Fire” was published April 2010.
At 4 p.m., Monday, March 19, Yvette Niesser Moreno and Maria Teresa Ogliastri present a workshop/craft talk focusing on their own poetical processes and what it means to them to be authors and translators. At 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 20, the poets give a public reading of their work, which includes a discussion of their work and a joint book-signing.
Neisser Moreno is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the International Poetry Review, Palestine-Israel Journal, Potomac Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She has translated two books of poetry from Spanish-most recently “South Pole/Polo Sur,” by María Teresa Ogliastri (co-translated with Patricia Fisher), which is forthcoming. She currently is seeking a publisher for her first book of original poetry, “Grip.” Neisser Moreno is a freelance writer/editor and teaches writing at the University of Maryland University College and at Brookside Gardens.
María Teresa Ogliastri is a Venezuelan writer living in Caracas. She has authored multiple collections of poetry: “Del diario de la Señora Mao” (From the Diary of Madame Mao, 2011), “Polo Sur” (South Pole, 2008) and “Nosotros los Inmortales” (We, the Immortals, 1997). She has been featured at poetry festivals throughout Latin America, and her work has appeared in several anthologies of Venezuelan poetry. Ogliastri has worked as publications coordinator of the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art and the cultural foundation Fundarte.
Bowers Writers House at Elizabethtown College was created with a generous gift by Kenneth L. ’59 and Rosalie E. ’58 Bowers to support a culture of creative curiosity and foster a new sense of excitement and enthusiasm for intellectual diversity. The Bowers Writers House is an interdisciplinary venue for presentation, performance, expression and study. The programs-from dramatic readings to interactive panels to musical performances-offer a dynamic variety of enjoyable and informative experiences.
