The English Department Reading Series is sponsoring weekly events for February at noon the Harold B. Lee Library auditorium on the Brigham Young University campus.
The four readings--scheduled for Feb. 6, Feb. 11, Feb. 20 and Feb. 27--allow recently published authors to share their work in an informal setting. The series also provides opportunities for students to interact with the author and talk about their work.
The participants for the series are:
Claudia Rankine, Friday, Feb. 6. Rankine is the author of three collections of poetry, including “PLOT,” “The End of the Alphabet” and “Nothing in Nature is Private,” which was awarded the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Williams College and a master’s degree in poetry from Columbia University. Originally from Jamaica, Rankine resides in New York City and teaches English at Barnard College.
Dean Young, Wednesday, Feb. 11. Young has published five collections of poetry: “Skid,” “First Course in Turbulence,” “Strike Anywhere,” “Beloved Infidel,” winner of the Colorado Poetry Prize, and “Design with X.” His honors include a Stegner fellowship from Stanford University and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Loyola University in Chicago.
Marilynne Robinson, Friday, Feb. 20. Robinson’s first novel, “Housekeeping,” received the PEN/Hemingway award for best first novel and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, she published “Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She currently teaches at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Robinson received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. She is a native of Idaho.
Helen Walker Jones, Friday, Feb. 27. Jones is a part-time instructor of creative writing at BYU. She has published poetry and short fiction in “Harper’s,” “Apalachee Quarterly,” ”Texas Review,” ”Sunstone” and “BYU Studies.” She has received honors from the Utah Arts Council and the Association of Mormon Letters. She has also been a finalist in the Iowa Short Fiction contest and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
For more information about the reading series, contact the English Department office at (801) 422-4938.
Writer: Thomas Grover
