Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Trethewey to Read from Her Work April 1 at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, the featured literary light of this year’s Sophie Kerr Weekend at Washington College, will read from her work Friday, April 1 at 4 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts.

Trethewey is author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association. Her first collection, Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), was selected by Rita Dove as the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner, recognized as the best first book by an African American poet. Her fourth book of poetry, Thrall, is scheduled for publication by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in fall 2012.

In an introduction to Domestic Work, Rita Dove wrote that Trethewey “eschews the Polaroid instant, choosing to render the unsuspecting yearnings and tremulous hopes that accompany our most private thoughts—reclaiming for us that interior life where the true self flourishes and to which we return, in solitary reverie, for strength." Other poets have described her work as “nearly flawless,” and “a rare, beautiful gift to the reader.”

A native of Gulfport, Mississippi, Trethewey often writes about family history and growing up biracial in the American South. Her parents’ interracial marriage—she an African American native of Mississippi and he a white Canadian—was illegal in 20 states at the time. They eventually divorced and Trethewey’s mother remarried, to the man who would murder her.

Trethewey, who was 18 when her stepfather killed her mother, shared with radio interviewer Terry Gross the strange coincidence that, “Ten days shy of my mother’s 41^st birthday, she was murdered. And ten days shy of my 41^st birthday, I won the Pulitzer. I was very mindful of that strange coincidence—that at this point in both of our lives, this is what we had come to.” Her reflections on her mother’s life are part of Native Guard. She later chronicled childhood memories along with her family’s efforts to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina in a 2010 book of creative non-fiction titled Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press).

Currently a professor of English and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University, Trethewey has been published in several volumes of Best American Poetry, and in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The Southern Review.

Among her many honors, Trethewey has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she will soon be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Trethewey’s reading kicks off the annual Sophie Kerr Weekend, which brings high school writers to the Washington College campus for a taste of its literary life with workshops, lectures and related arts events. The weekend also celebrates the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College’s literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

For more information, visit http://english.washcoll.edu.

Award-Winning Novels, Betsy Ross, Daniel Handler (A.K.A. Lemony Snicket) And More: Washington College 2009-2010 Literary Line-Up Announced

Chestertown, MD – From Betsy Ross to activist poetry, from James Joyce to James McBride, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) , a rich and varied literary line-up  graces Washington College’s events calendar in 2009-2010.

The College’s writing-related traditions run deep; between the annual Sophie Kerr Lecture Series and a full slate of offerings from the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the historic Chestertown campus welcomes a bounteous array of literary events with the advent of the school year.

The Sophie Kerr Lecture Series honors the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has enriched Washington College’s literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to Washington College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor”—the famed Sophie Kerr Prize—and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

The Rose O’Neill Literary House is known far and wide as the hub of Washington College’s writing community. For a quarter of a century it has served as the venue for co-curricular activities that bring together students and faculty with visiting writers, scholars, editors and other literary artists; ; the Washington Post dubbed it “the Carnegie Hall of literary readings.”

The 2009-2010 Washington College itinerary of literary events will feature:

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein-Graff Lecture:

“Demystifying the Academic Game: How Schools and Colleges Can Demystify Academic Intellectual Culture for All Students”

Litrenta Lecture Hall, Friday, September 4, 3:30 p.m.

Gerald Graff, prominent literary historian and educator, author of Professing Literature and Beyond the Culture Wars, and the president of the Modern Language Association in 2008, focuses in his recent work, Clueless in Academe, on ways that “schooling obscures the life of the mind” and argues that schools can develop better writers and thinkers among all students, not just the high-achieving few, when teachers share with students the basic rules and moves of the game of academic argumentation that they use themselves.

Putting his argument into practice, Graff co-wrote in 2006 with his wife, Cathy Birkenstein, a textbook for teaching writing, “They Say/I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. The book is widely used in schools and colleges and continues Graff’s longstanding efforts to revitalize American education. Graff and Birkenstein both teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Poetry Reading by Mark Nowak

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Tuesday, September 15, 4:30 p.m.

Mark Nowak, the new Director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, is a documentary poet, social critic, and labor activist; his writings include Shut Up Shut Down, a New York Times “Editor’s Choice.” Nowak’s recently published book on coal mining disasters in the United States and China, Coal Mountain Elementary, was hailed by Howard Zinn as a “a stunning educational tool.”

Nowak’s unique work in bringing innovative aesthetics and working-class communities into dialogue has resulted in a dynamic array of projects and publications. His poetry, similarly, has engaged central issues of work, family and community. He is one of a dozen poets to have been included in the seminal anthology American Poets in the 21^st Century: The New Poetics.

A reception will follow Nowak’s reading, affording the opportunity for the public to meet the Literary House’s new Director.

Marla Miller Lecture:

“Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend”

Litrenta Lecture Hall, Wednesday, September 16, 7:30 p.m.

Marla Miller, the 2009-10 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow, is an Associate Professor and Director of the Public History Program at the University of Massachusetts. Her book The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution  won the 2006 Costume Society of America’s Millia Davenport Publication Award. Related articles have appeared in The New England Quarterly, The William and Mary Quarterly and other publications. Miller’s primary research interest is women’s work in pre-industrial America. During her year’s residency in Chestertown, she will continue working on a forthcoming biography of that most misunderstood early American craftswoman, Betsy Ross.

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, provided by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and supported by The Rose O’Neill Literary House, offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America’s founding era and its legacy.

Fiction Reading by Mary Gordon

Sophie Kerr Room, Thursday, September 17, 4:30 p.m.

Mary Gordon is the author of several bestselling novels as well as short stories, memoirs, essays and criticism. She is known for her investigations of Catholic family life, Catholic spirituality, thwarted love, moral struggle, personal sacrifice, female identity and family pain.

Gordon is often praised for her deep insights, lyrical writing, and what Los Angeles Times critic Ellen Akins called “her delicate rendering of the drama of consciousness.” Recent books by Gordon include the biography Joan of Arc, the essay collection Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity, the novel Spending: A Utopian Divertimento, and the bestselling memoir of her secretive, tormented father, The Shadow Man. Gordon’s latest novel, Pearl, is the the story of a single mother who sets out to prevent her daughter from killing herself in a hunger strike in Dublin.

“Demystifying Book Publishing: A Publishing talk with Irina Reyn”

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Thursday, September 24, 4:30 p.m.

Author Irina Reyn, the 2009 Mary Wood Fellow at Washington College, worked in book publishing for several years. Her presentation will take the audience on a practical journey through the process of getting the written word from laptop or notebook and onto the bookstore shelves.

Reading by Irina Reyn and Washington College Students

Casey Academic Center Forum, Saturday, September 26, 1:30 p.m.

Irina Reyn’s first novel, What Happened to Anna K., a bold reimagining of Anna Karenina in modern New York, was named one of the best books of 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly, and is described by Philip Lopate as a “witty, psychologically astute and immensely pleasurable novel.”

Reyn is editor of Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State and has published widely in One Story, Post Road, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Town & Country Travel, The Forward, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, San Francisco Chronicle, The Moscow Times and in several anthologies.

Born in Moscow, Reyn currently divides her time between Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. A booksigning will follow her September 26 reading.

Initiated in 2007, the Mary Wood Fellowship is extended bi-annually to an emerging female writer. It is made possible by the continued support of author Mary Wood.

Maxine Susman Reading: “Wartime Address”

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Tuesday, September 29, 5 p.m.

 “Wartime Address” is a poem sequence based on the memoir of Jean Wetzel. It tells of her flight from Paris during World War II. Dr. Maxine Susman is Professor of English at

Caldwell College where she teaches poetry, literature and writing across the curriculum. Her poems have appeared in several dozen journals and anthologies, including Paterson Literary Review, Colere, Ekphrasis, Earth’s Daughters, The Dogwood Journal, The Chesapeake Reader, Blueline, and forthcoming in Alehouse and Poet Lore. Her two other books of poetry are Gogama (2006) and Familiar (Fall 2009). She belongs to the performance group Cool Women.

Fiction Reading by Jeff Talarigo

Sophie Kerr Room, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 p.m.

Jeff Talarigo is the author of the award winning novel The Pearl Diver, which won the 2005 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award and was named a 2005 Kiriyama Prize Notable Book. His second novel, The Ginseng Hunter, noted as one of the “Best Books of 2008” by NPR and an American Library Association’s “Notable Books for 2009,” was released in paperback in April 2009. Talarigo currently lives in Boston, where he is working on a novel about 20^th-century Gaza as seen through the eyes of a Palestinian woman.

Andrew Gibson Lecture:

“‘His Journey Westward’: Joyce’s The Dead, Irish History and Modernity”

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Monday, October 12, 4:30 p.m.

Dr. Andrew Gibson is Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Royal

Holloway, University of London, and a permanent advisory editor of the James Joyce

Quarterly. He also is a member of the editorial board of Limit(e) Beckett, the new Anglo-

French journal in Beckett scholarship. His published works include James Joyce: A Critical Life, Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative and numerous other books.

Fiction Reading by Dan Chaon

Sophie Kerr Room, Tuesday, October 13, 4:30 p.m.

Born and raised in Nebraska, Dan Chaon is the author of the short-story collections Fitting Ends and Other Stories and Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was listed as one of the ten best books of 2001 by the American Library Association, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Las Vegas Mercury, and Entertainment Weekly and was also cited by Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as one of the Notable Books of the year.

Chaon’s stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize annual anthologies, as well as such noteworthy literary journals as TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Crazyhorse, Gettysburg Review, MSS, Story, Helicon, Mid-American Review and elsewhere. His first novel, You Remind Me of Me, was released in 2004 and praised by Publishers Weekly for its “elegant prose, haunting plot and knockout literary excellence.”

Chaon’s latest novel, Await Your Reply, has recently been published by Ballantine Books. A book that weaves in elements of the supernatural, it was hailed by the New York Times as “a strange, stunning new novel…. Mr. Chaon succeeds in both creating suspense and making it pay off, but Await Your Reply also does something even better. …Mr. Chaon manages to bridge the gap between literary and pulp fiction with a clever, insinuating book equally satisfying to fans of either genre.”

Chaon currently teaches creative writing at Oberlin College, where he holds the position of Houck Associate Professor in the Humanities.

“Song Yet Sung: A Reading by James McBride”

Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, Thursday, October 29, 4:30 p.m.

Best-selling author and musician James McBride has written for the Washington Post, People, the Boston Globe, Essence, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times. He is the author of The Color of Water and Miracle at St. Anna. In his new book, Song Yet Sung, McBride follows a group of slaves as they escape to freedom through the swamps of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Song Yet Sung was chosen by the Maryland Humanities Council to represent the One Maryland One Book program for 2009, and was chosen by Washington College for its First-Year Book program. The First-Year Book program gives new students a common experience over the summer and introduces them to Washington College’s tradition of bringing great writers to campus.

Poetry reading with Taije Silverman

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Wednesday, November 11, 4:30 p.m.

Taije Silverman’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Five Points, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner and other journals. The recipient of the 2005–2007 Emory University Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she is now Assistant Visiting Professor at Ursinus College, outside of Philadelphia.

Silverman’s first collection of poems, Houses Are Fields, was published by LSU Press in 2009, and selected as the debut book in the Sea Cliff Series. Thrice nominated for the Pushchart Prize, she has received the Anais Nin Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Fiction reading by Debra Spark

Sophie Kerr Room, Thursday, November 12, 4:30 p.m.

Debra Spark is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint and The Ghost of Bridgetown and editor of the anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America’s New Young Writers. Her thoughts on the craft of writing have been collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing. Her short fiction, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in Esquire, Ploughshares, Epoch, Agni, Gingko Tree Review, narrativemagazine.com, The New York Times, New England Travel and Life, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other places. She has been the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize and the John Zacharis/Ploughshares Award for Best First Book.

Spark currently teaches at Colby College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her latest novel, Good for the Jews, is being published this fall by University of Michigan Press.

Poetry reading by Leslie Harrison

Rose O’Neill Literary House, Thursday, November 19, 4:30 p.m.

Leslie Harrison’s Displacement was the 2008 Katherine Nason Bakeless winner in poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. It was published by Mariner Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in July of 2009. She has poems and prose published in Poetry, Southwest Review, The New Republic, Barn Owl Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She holds graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Irvine where she completed her MFA in 2006. She has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

David Orvis Lecture: “Shakespeare’s Queer Marriages”

Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library, Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 4:30 p.m.

David L. Orvis, a 2002 graduate of Washington College, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Arizona. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Faculty Affiliate in Women’s Studies at Appalachian State University. He is working on his first book, tentatively titled Performing Queer Marriage on the Early Modern Stage, as well as co-editing a collection of essays on Psalms in the Early Modern World.

Fiction Reading by Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket

Decker Theatre, Friday, March 26, 2010, 4 p.m.

The jewel in the crown of the Sophie Kerr Series each year is Sophie Kerr Weekend, and the keynote event of Sophie Kerr Weekend 2010 will be a much-anticipated reading by bestselling author Daniel Handler. His intricate and witty writing style has won him millions of fans both young and old. He is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the pen name Lemony Snicket, he has written the wildly popular children’s books known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than 53 million copies and were the basis of a film starring Jim Carrey.

Handler also has worked intermittently in film and music, most recently in collaboration with composer Nathaniel Stookey on a piece commissioned and recorded by the San Francisco Symphony. The prolific author’s current projects include a fourth novel for adults, a picture book in collaboration with Maira Kalman, and the script for the long-awaited second Lemony Snicket movie.

Eric Mallin Lecture:

“‘In spite of my own nature’: King Lear and the Perverse”

Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library, Monday, April 12, 2010, 4:30 p.m.

Eric S. Mallin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written Inscribing the Time: Shakespeare and the End of Elizabethan England and Godless Shakespeare, as well as numerous articles and reviews. His lecture on King Lear is part of a book in progress called Perverse: The Hidden History of the Normal.

Michael Drout Lecture:

“Whole Worlds Out of Single Words: Tolkien and Language”

Litrenta Lecture Hall, Thursday, April 15, 2010, 4:30 p.m.

The Prentice Professor and Chair of the English Department at Wheaton College, Michael Drout is a specialist in Anglo-Saxon Literature and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. He is the editor of Beowulf and the Critics, a collection of Tolkien’s scholarly work, as well as the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia and the scholarly journal Tolkien Studies. Drout is also the author of How Tradition Works, a study of 10^th-century Anglo-Saxon poetics, and he has lately dedicated himself to producing oral performances of the entire Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus in podcast form.

Washington College/PEN World Voices Fellow in International Letters

Spring 2010, date TBA

Each spring, an international writer visits Washington College for a residency and series of lectures on his or her work before heading to the PEN American Center’s

World Voices Festival in New York City. Past Fellows include French graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert and Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah.

XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics

Spring 2010 Readings, dates TBA

Nearly 15 years ago, new Literary House Director Mark Nowak created XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, a journal that brought together writers in social documentary from a variety of fields—anthropology, poetry, performance studies, theater and history. XCP has since published writings from emerging young writers in these and other fields as well as established scholars and artists such as Lila Abu-Lughod, Amiri Baraka, Kamau Brathwaite, and Adrienne Rich. In addition to bringing XCP to Washington College, Nowak will inaugurate a series of readings in spring 2010 by regular contributors to the journal. Please check the Rose O’Neill Literary House website for complete details on these events.

Throughout the fall and spring, the Rose O’Neill Literary House will host periodic community meetings; for more information on these and all other Literary House events, call 410/778-7899 or visit lithouse.washcoll.edu.

Admission to all Sophie Kerr Lecture Series events is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410/778-7879.

Poet Mark Nowak To Head Washington College's Rose O'Neill Literary House

Mark Nowak, a genre-blending poet whose work combines language, drama and photography in innovative ways, has been appointed Director of Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House.

Nowak comes to Washington College from St. Catherine University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was Associate Professor of Humanities and taught for 17 years.

Nowak is the author of three books of poetry, including Shut Up Shut Down (with an afterword by Amiri Baraka). Shut Up Shut Down was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” and a finalist for Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award.

Poet Adrienne Rich has hailed Nowak as “a poet of remarkable gifts,” who “is generating a new poetics of class.”

Described as a “documentary poet” due to his work’s journalistic approaches toward real-world issues, Nowak is most recently the author of Coal Mountain Elementary, a work that relates the mining disaster of Sago, West Virginia, to a variety of mining accidents in China. Howard Zinn characterized this book as a work that “manages, in photos and in words, to portray an entire culture, the culture of the miner and his family, and it is a stunning educational tool.”

Nowak’s work has been widely anthologized. He is one of a dozen poets to be included in American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics, and his work appears in An Anthology of New (American) Poets, Poets of the Great Plains, and America Loomed Before Us: Contemporary Poetry from the Other USA.

He is the founder and editor of XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, a journal that was launched in 1997. Nowak will be relocatinng the journal with him to Washington College, where student interns will have the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of academic periodical publishing by working with XCP.

Nowak’s teaching experience at St. Catherine University has been supplemented by his work teaching poetry and writing in alternative environments including the Twin Cities Ford Assembly Plant, the United Steelworkers of America, Stillwater Prison, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, and in public school outreach programs in Bowling Green, Minneapolis and Chicago.

“As incoming director of the Literary House, I’m eager to meet everyone in the Washington College community,” Nowak said. “And whatever your relationship to the word--be it as an aspiring graphic novelist, a spoken-word artist, a history student or historian trying to revise your next essay, or someone who just wants to spend a half hour ‘talking books’ – I hope you’ll make the Rose O’Neill Literary House your destination.”

Since 1968, Washington College has awarded the Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest literary prize in the world exclusively for undergraduates. In its 39 years the Prize has ranged in value from $9,000 to as high as $65,000. The Kerr endowment has also brought a parade of distinguished writers to the Chestertown, Maryland, campus, including Toni Morrison, Edward Albee, James Dickey, John Barth and Joyce Carol Oates. The Rose O’Neill Literary House is the co-curricular center of literary activity at Washington College, as well as the home of the Writers Union, a large and thriving club of student writers.

“We’re quite excited that Mark is taking the helm of the Rose O’Neill Literary House program,” said Christopher Ames, provost and dean of the college. “He will build on the traditions that have made the Literary House a haven for the creative arts, and he will contribute fresh ideas and new energy to Washington College’s already vibrant literary community.”

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Jane Smiley Visits Washington College for Sophie Kerr Weekend

Chestertown, MD — Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley will kick off the annual Sophie Kerr Weekend with a reading at Norman James Theatre on Friday, March 28, at 4 p.m.

Smiley, who holds an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, is the author of 11 novels, includingA Thousand Acres, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992. She also is the author of four books of nonfiction, including Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005). Her essays have been published inVogue, The New Yorker, Harper's, the New York Times, The Nation and many other publications.

Smiley's latest novel, Ten Days in the Hills, was published in 2007 by Knopf/Random House. A re-imagining of Boccaccio's Decameron set among the Hollywood crowd in the opening days of the Iraq War in 2003, Ten Days in the Hills has enjoyed universal acclaim.

"The book is generating early buzz," observed The Wall Street Journal. In a starred review,Publishers Weekly hailed the hot new novel as a "scintillating tale... Smiley delivers a delightful, subtly observant sendup of Tinseltown folly, yet she treats her characters ... with warmth and seriousness." The Philadelphia Inquirer praises the author for "delivering a Tinseltown classic." The Los Angeles Times Book Review declared the novel "a blazing farce, a fiery satire of contemporary celebrity culture and a rich, simmering meditation on the price of war and fame and desire." The Times U.K. called it a "highly entertaining yet thoughtful examination of postmillenial America."

Dubbed "the reigning master of social satire" by Elle magazine, Smiley received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006.

Held every March at Washington College, the Sophie Kerr Weekend gives a group of high school-age writers a chance to experience the College's renowned creative writing program through readings, seminars and small-group workshops with visiting authors and faculty members.

The Sophie Kerr Weekend also honors the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has enriched Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to Washington College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor"—the famed Sophie Kerr Prize—and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Admission to Jane Smiley's March 28 presentation is free and open to the public.

March 11, 2008

Best-Selling Author Mary Karr Kicks Off Sophie Kerr Weekend at Washington College, March 23

Chestertown, MD, March 14, 2007 — Washington College welcomes acclaimed poet and memoirist Mary Karr, New York Times best-selling author of The Liars' Club and other works, to kick off the annual Sophie Kerr Weekend with a lecture/reading at Norman James Theatre on Friday, March 23, at 5 p.m.

"Spitfire," "devotedly irreverent" and "elegantly devastating" are just some of the phrases that have been used to describe author Mary Karr. Her first memoir, The Liars' Club, depicts a wild, eccentric Texas upbringing. A highly influential work, it is credited with reviving the memoir as a creative literary form. The Liars' Club won the PEN Martha Albrand Award for best first nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and was a "Best Book" for more than 30 newspapers and magazines.

The sequel, Cherry, about Karr's adolescence, was a bestseller for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle. It was a "Best Book" for those periodicals and The New Yorker, where it was excerpted.

Karr's poetry has won prizes from Best American Poetry and Pushcart. To date, she has had four poetry collections published, the most recent being Sinners Welcome (Harper Collins, 2006). Her poems appear in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry and Parnassus.

In her Washington College appearance, Karr will read from her works and present a talk titled "Truth, Lies and the Craft of Memoir." A booksigning will follow.

Held every March at Washington College, the Sophie Kerr Weekend gives a group of 100 high school-age writers a chance to experience the College's renowned creative writing program through readings, seminars and small-group workshops with visiting authors and faculty members.

The Sophie Kerr Weekend also honors the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has enriched Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to Washington College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor"—the famed Sophie Kerr Prize—and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Admission to Mary Karr's March 23 presentation is free and open to the public.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen to Kick off College's Annual Sophie Kerr Weekend for Young Writers, March 31

Chestertown, MD, March 8, 2006 — Washington College welcomes acclaimed essayist and novelist Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, to kick off its annual Sophie Kerr Weekend, Friday, March 31, 2006 at 4 p.m. in the College's Norman James Theatre. The reading from his forthcoming "personal history" The Discomfort Zone is free and open to the public. Book signing to follow.

Held every March at Washington College, the Sophie Kerr Weekend gives a group of 100 high school-age writers a chance to experience the College's renowned creative writing program through readings, seminars, and small-group workshops with visiting writers and faculty members.

The Sophie Kerr Weekend also honors the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has enriched Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to Washington College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor"—the famed Sophie Kerr Prize—and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Jonathan Franzen joins authors and poets such as Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, and Billy Collins, who in recent years have read from their works to start the weekend's activities.

When The Corrections was published in the fall of 2001, Jonathan Franzen was probably better known for his nonfiction than for the two novels he had already published. In an essay he wrote for Harper's in 1996, Franzen lamented the declining cultural authority of the American novel and described his personal search for reasons to persist as a fiction writer. "The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read," he wrote. "Where to find the energy to engage with a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture?"

Five years after publishing this essay, Franzen became fully engaged with his culture. The Corrections was an enormous international bestseller, with translations in 35 languages, American hardcover sales of nearly one million copies, and nominations for nearly every major book prize in the country. Franzen was awarded the National Book Award for this novel. As if sales and critical acclaim weren't enough to boost his profile, the author found himself in a public relations imbroglio over his conflicted reaction to his book's endorsement by Oprah's Book Club.

Franzen's first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), was a reimagination of his hometown, St. Louis, through the eyes of conspirators and terrorists from South Asia. His second novel, Strong Motion (1992), was a thriller-cum-love-story set in the student slums of Boston. Both books displayed Franzen's ability to connect the personal and the political, the emotional and the social, in compelling and richly textured narratives.

Born in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1959, Jonathan Franzen grew up in Webster Goves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1981, he studied in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and later worked in a seismology lab at Harvard. Franzen is also the author of a bestselling collection of essays, How to Be Alone. He lives in New York City and continues to write essays, including political journalism for The New Yorker.

Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in historic Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, it was the first college chartered in the new nation.

Sophie Kerr Weekend Brings Author Christine Lincoln '00 And Musical Poets Brady's Leap To Campus, March 18

Chestertown, MD, March 9, 2005 — Washington College launches its annual Sophie Kerr Weekend literary celebration with a reading by alumna Christine Lincoln, author of Sap Rising and winner of the 2000 Sophie Kerr Prize, Friday, March 18, at 4 p.m. in the College's Norman James Theatre. Following Lincoln's reading, Brady's Leap, a band of musically inspired poets from Youngstown, Ohio, will give a free performance. Both events are open to the public.

Lincoln attended Washington College as a non-traditional student and is distinguished not only for winning the Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation, but for her critically-acclaimed collection of short stories, Sap Rising, published by Pantheon Books a year after her graduation. Her inspiring story of hardship, perseverance and creative accomplishment appeared everywhere from the pages of the New York Times to the Oprah Winfrey show. Lincoln's debut work, Sap Rising, is a series of connected narratives that take readers inside the hearts and minds of African Americans whose lives unfold against in a fictional rural Maryland community, brought to life with an engaging, natural style and an extraordinary sensitivity and depth of emotion. The New York Times wrote, “Lincoln writes with understated grace and a terrific eye for detail,” while People magazine called the work “Lyrical…shimmering, worldly-wise.”

The literary celebration will continue with a performance by Brady's Leap, a klatch of writers and poets who share their love of language and stories through music. Celtic ballads and original songs, poems spoken and set to music, layered a cappella and instrumentals, from the eighth century to eight o'clock this morning—all of this fills the room and pulls each listener into every tune.

Sponsored by Washington College's Creative Writing Program and Admissions Office, the annual Sophie Kerr Weekend brings young, high school-age writers to campus for three days of creative writing workshops, seminars and readings with some of today's top literary lights. The weekend events also celebrate the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Poet Billy Collins Visits For Annual Sophie Kerr Weekend

Public Reading March 19-20 in the Norman James Theatre

Chestertown, MD, February 16, 2004 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr Committee,O'Neill Literary House and Admissions Office welcome the 2001-2003 United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, to campus for the College's annual Sophie Kerr Weekend for high school students interested in creative writing. Collins will give a public reading from his works Friday, March 19, at 4 p.m. in the College's Norman James Theatre. The event is free and all are invited to attend.

A phenomenon in the world of contemporary literature, Collins is a poet who has stepped out of chapbook obscurity into popular success. Accessible, humorous, and contemplative, Collins has been called “an American original” and “a metaphysical poet with a funny bone.” The author of seven books of poetry, including Nine Horses (2002), Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001), Picnic, Lightning (1997), The Art of Drowning (1995), and Questions About Angels (1991)—selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series—Collins also has recorded a CD audiobook of poetry, The Best Cigarette (1997). His poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, and periodicals, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. Collins' works have been selected for The Best American Poetry anthology in 1992 and 1993 and have garnered him the Bess Hokin, Frederick Bock, Oscar Blumenthal, and Levinson prizes from Poetrymagazine. Collins has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and for several years he has conducted summer poetry workshops at University College-Galway. He is poet-in-residence at Burren College of Art in Ireland and professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY).

The Sophie Kerr Weekend is named in honor of the late writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's creative writing program and literary culture. When Kerr died in 1965, she left the bulk of her estate to the College specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor,” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Sophie Kerr Weekend March 21-22: Novelist Tim O'Brien To Speak March 21

In the spirit of the writer and her gift that established the nation's largest undergraduate literary prize, the Sophie Kerr Weekend at Washington College welcomes award-winning author Tim O'Brien to the College's Norman James Theatre, Friday, March 21, at 4 p.m.

Known for his gripping novels about the Vietnam War experience, O'Brien will read from his works with a book-signing to follow.

This a free event and the public is invited to attend. Learn more about the Sophie Kerr Legacyat Washington College.

Award-Winning Author William Kennedy at Washington College

Chestertown, MD — Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Kennedy will read from his work at 4 p.m., Friday March 24 in the Norman James Theatre at Washington College.

Kennedy is best known as the author of the "Albany Cycle," seven novels set in a semi-fictional Albany, N.Y. The narrative force of his fiction spurred critic James Atlas to write, "What James Joyce did for Dublin and Saul Bellow did for Chicago, William Kennedy has done for Albany, New York. His cycle of Albany novels is one of the great resurrections of place in our literature."

Kennedy's Albany novels include "Legs" (1983); "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game" (1978); "Ironweed" (1983), which was subsequently made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep; "Quinn's Book" (1988); "Very Old Bones" (1992); and "The Flaming Corsage" (1996). His latest work, "Roscoe," deals with the life of the all-powerful political machine that ran Albany between World War I and II.

Kennedy, whose writing has been characterized as "funny . . . rich . . . grounded in detail and humanity . . . pure verbal energy" won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Circle Critics award for Ironweed. He received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, a portion of which supports the New York State Writers Institute.

William Kennedy appears courtesy of the Sophie Kerr Committee and the O'Neill Literary House. The reading is part of Sophie Kerr Weekend during which high school student writers are invited to Washington College for readings and writing workshops. Kennedy's reading is free and open to the public.