Noted writers to speak during annual UF festival

February 17, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The 57th annual MFA@FLA Writers’ Festival, to be held Feb. 17-18, will feature Jo Ann Beard, Barbara Hamby, David Kirby and Scott Spencer.

The authors will read from their work and hold informal talks at the Research Room of the Smathers Library, formerly known as Library East, on the University of Florida campus. The festival is free and open to the public.

This festival is presented by MFA@FLA, the creative writing program of the English Department at the University of Florida. It receives generous support from Terry and Dorothy Smiljanich, Nathan Collier, ACCENT, The Gainesville Sun, Goerings Book Store, Jeff Grogin/Snood.com and Steve’s Café Americain.

For further information please contact the program director, Padgett Powell, at powell@english.ufl.edu, or visit the MFA@FLA Web site at http://www.english.ufl.edu/crw/.

Readings
Friday, Feb.17, readings by Jo Ann Beard and David Kirby at 8 p.m.

Informal talks
Saturday, Feb.18, informal talks by Jo Ann Beard at 1 p.m., David Kirby at 1:30 p.m., Barbara Hamby at 2 p.m., Scott Spencer at 2:30 p.m.

Readings
Saturday, Feb.18, readings by Barbara Hamby and Scott Spencer at 8 p.m.

Receptions
at the Research Room both nights

Background on the festival writers:

  • Jo Ann Beard is the author of “The Boys of My Youth” and has received a Whiting Writers’ Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Story and other magazines. She is a graduate of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa and now lives in Tarrytown, N.Y.
  • Barbara Hamby’s first full-length book, “Delirium,” won the Vassar Miller Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Prize. Her second book, “The Alphabet of Desire,” won the New York University Prize for Poetry and was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the 25 best books of 1999. Her third book, “Babel,” was chosen by Stephen Dunn for the 2003 AWP/Donald Hall Prize. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2000, Pushcart Prizes 2001, The Paris Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review and many other magazines. She has won three fellowships from the Florida Arts Council and one from the National Endowment for the Arts.
  • David Kirby has received many honors for his work, including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and citations in Best American Poetry 2000 and 2001, and in Pushcart Prize 2005. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Florida Arts Council. Kirby is the author or co-author of 22 books, including the poetry collections “The Ha-Ha,” “The House of Blue Light,” and “The Traveling Library,” and a collection of essays, “What Is a Book?” His poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Southern Review and Ploughshares. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Kirby writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The San
    Francisco Chronicle.
  • Scott Spencer has written seven novels, among them “Endless Love,” a National Book Award Finalist that has sold more than two million copies. His most recent novel, “A Ship Made of Paper,” was also nominated for a National Book Award. Spencer has written for The New York Times, Esquire, The Nation and Rolling Stone. He has taught fiction writing at Columbia University and at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in upstate New York.