Nelson / Boswell Reading Series
For more information about readings, please contact us at:
La Sociedad para las Artes
New Mexico State University
Department of English, Box 3E
Las Cruces, NM 88003
All readings are held Fridays at Hardman Hall, Room 106 at 7:30 PM and are free and open to all
(unless otherwise noted).
All readings sponsored by the NMSU English Department, Las Cruces Organization for the Arts (LOLA), the Southwest Border Cultures Institute and the Louletia B. Valentine Endowment.
Spring 2012 Readings
February 3—Joshua Edwards w/ MFA Candidate Phil Hurst
Joshua Edwards is the author of Campeche. director and co-editor of Canarium Books. His poems and translations have appeared in Colorado Review, CROWD, Slate, Skanky Possum, and elsewhere, and his translation of Mexican poet Maria Baranda's book-length poem, Ficticia, was published by Shearsman Books in September 2010. He's received grants and fellowships from the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Program, Vermont Studio Center, Zoland Poetry, University of Michigan, and Stanford University, where he's currently a Stegner Fellow.
February 24—Joni Wallace with MFA candidate
Joni Wallace grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Moab, Utah. She is the author of Blinking Ephemeral Valentine, winner of the Fourways Books 2009 Levis Poetry Prize, chosen by Mary Jo Bang. She is also author of Redshift (Kore Press, 2000) and her recent poems appear in Barrow Street; Boston Review; Conduit; Connotations Press, An Online Artifact; Forklift, Ohio; Laurel Review and No Tell Motel. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana and currently lives in the Southwest with her husband, John, and their two young children.
April 13—Jon Davis with MFA candidate Camille Acker
Jon Davis is the author of three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry. The Bloomsbury Review said of his collection Preliminary Report: "This is one of the best books of poetry to appear this year." He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including a Lannan Literary Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of America Poets. For the past twenty years, he has been a professor of Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
April 20—Christopher McIlroy with MFA candidate Chris Schacht
Christopher McIlroy is the author of a short story collection All My Relations, winner of the 1994 Flannery O'Connor Award, and his stories have been anthologized widely, including in the Best American Short Stories series. He has served on the Arizona Commission on the Arts since 1979, and in 1986, he co-founded ArtsReach, which brings writing programs to Native American communities in southern Arizona. He is also the author of Here I Am A Writer, a book that grew out of that experience, featuring ten of his former students, their writings, and life stories based on interviews. He will conduct a training session with students in NMSU's school outreach program the following day, Saturday, April 21, 2012.
April 27—Blake Butler with MFA candidate Anna Pattison
Blake Butler is the author of the novel There Is No Year, the novella Ever, and the novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas. He edits "the internet literature magazine blog of the future" HTMLGiant, as well as two journals of innovative text, Lamination Colony and No Colony. He lives in Atlanta.
Fall 2011 Readings
September 9—Lee K. Abbott with MFA candidate Floydd Michael Elliott
Lee K. Abbott, an NMSU alumnus, is the author of several collections of short fiction, including Wet Places at Noon, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, Love Is the Crooked Thing, and All Things, All At Once. He has twice won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, was awarded a Major Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council in 1991, and has taught at The Ohio State University since 1989. His many short stories and reviews, as well as articles on American literature, have appeared in such journals and magazines as Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Southern Review, Epoch, Boulevard, and The North American Review.
September 23—Lily Hoang with MFA candidate Joshua C. Bowen
Lily Hoang is the author of the books Unfinished, The Evolutionary Revolution, Changing (recipient of a PEN Beyond Margins Award), and Parabola (winner of the 2006 Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest). She serves as an Associate Editor at Starcherone Books and Editor at Tarpaulin Sky. With Blake Butler, she co-edited the anthology 30 under 30.
October 7—Juliana Spahr
18th Annual HUNGER BENEFIT for Casa De Peregrinos
(5pm-Midnight at Beverly Hills Hall, 150 Hermosa Avenue)
Join La Sociedad Para Las Artes for live music, carnival games, a chili cook-off, cash bar, and a reading by Juliana Spahr and selections from Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Spahr is a poet, scholar, and editor. Her latest book, Well Then There Now, demonstrates the vibrant possibilities of an investigatory poetics through a collage of "found language," a deep curiosity about place, and restless intelligence. Sheila Black, a local poet, will read from Beauty is a Verb with Jennifer Bartlett, Kara Dorris, and Jim Ferris.
October 21—José de Piérola with MFA candidate Megan Wong
José de Piérola is the author of the short story collection Sur y Norte, the novels El camino de regreso and Shatranj: El juego de los reyes, and the short novel Un beso de invierno, winner of the Short Novel Prize awarded by the Reserve Bank of Peru. He has translated into Spanish The Art of Fiction by Walter Besant and Henry James. His short story "In the Belly of the Night" won the Max Aub International Short Story Award in Spain, and his short story "Lápices" won the Short Story Biennial awarded by Copé in Peru. His fiction has been anthologized in Peru, Mexico, Spain, France and USA. He earned a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His work in progress includes Summa Caligramatica, an exploration of the role of memory and writing in the construction of the self, and At The Edge of History, a critical study of the historical novel and its theoretical underpinnings.
November 4—Alex Shakar with MFA candidate Melanie Sweeney
Alex Shakar's first novel, The Savage Girl, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and Booksense 76 Pick, and has been translated into six foreign languages. His story collection, City In Love, was the winner of the FC2 National Fiction Competition. A native of Brooklyn, NY, he now teaches fiction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lives in Chicago with his wife, the composer Olivia Block. His new novel, Luminarium, came out in August 2011.
December 2—Bin Ramke with MFA candidate Adam Crittenden
Bin Ramke edits the Denver Quarterly and teaches literature and creative writing in the English Department at the University of Denver. During his childhood in the south he intended to become a mathematician, and then a sculptor, but ended up at LSU a literature major instead. Later he received a Ph.D. from Ohio University then taught in Georgia prior to arriving at the University of Denver. He sometimes teaches part of the year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His first book won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and he has since published eight other books of poems, most recently Tendril (Omnidawn, 2007). Ramke was awarded the Phipps Chair, and is an Evans Professor.
Spring 2011 Readings
January 14- poet Patty Seyburn
January 28- prose writer Sallie Bingham
February 11- poet Rosa Alcala with MFA candidate Erin Reardon
February 25- prose writer Peter Atkinson with MFA candidate Laura Walker
March 11- prose writer Debra Monroe with MFA candidate Heather Frankland
April 1- poet Jacqueline Osherow with MFA candidate Carrie Murphy
April 15- poet Rachel Levitsky with MFA candidate Peter Brooks
April 29- prose writer Evan Lavender-Smith with MFA candidate Mike Meginnis
Fall 2010 Readings
October 22nd- Cynthia Hogue with MFA candidate Elizabeth Brasher
November 5th- Daniel Black with MFA candidate Daniel Cameron
November 12th- Annual Hunger Benefit featuring Charles Bowden
December 3rd- Dorine Jennette with MFA candidate Tracy Bowling
Spring 2010 Readings
Jan 22nd- Sheila Black and MFA candidate Candice Morrow
Feb 5th- Eula Biss and MFA candidate Krystal Languell
Feb 19th- Kevin Prufer and MFA candidate Mac McCormick
March 5th- Rus Bradburd and MFA candidate Ryan Orr
March 12th- Abraham Smith and MFA candidate Ramona Reeves
April 2nd- Sallie BIngham and MFA candidate Joshua Wheeler
April 30th- Don Waters and MFA candidate David Roe