UF to co-host five authors during writers' festival

October 13, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Five award-winning authors will visit Gainesville and the University of Florida for the 62nd Florida Writers’ Festival Oct. 20-22.

Hosted by UF’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, known as MFA@FLA, and the Alachua County Library District Headquarters, the festival brings nationally distinguished poets and fiction writers to the UF campus for a series of readings and lectures. The festival is free and open to the public. This year’s authors are:

  • David Berman, musician and author of “Actual Air”
  • Amy Hempel, author of four collections of stories including “The Dog of the Marriage” and “Reasons to Live”
  • Laura Kasischke, author of eight novels and eight collections of poetry, most recently “Space, in Chains”
  • D. A. Powell, author of the poetry collections “Chronic” and “Cocktails”
  • Kevin Young, author of seven books of poetry, including “Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebellion” and “Jelly Roll: A Blues”

SCHEDULE OF FESTIVAL EVENTS:

  • Oct. 20, 6 p.m.: David Berman reads, Alachua County Library District Headquarters, 401 E. University Ave.
  • Oct. 21, 8- 10 p.m.: Amy Hempel and D.A. Powell reads, followed by an informal reception, Ustler Hall Atrium
  • Oct. 22, 1-3 p.m.: Hempel, Powell, Young, and Kasischke present 30-minute Craft Talks, followed by an informal reception, Ustler Hall Atrium
  • Oct. 22, 8-10 p.m.: Laura Kasischke and Kevin Young read, Ustler Hall Atrium.

For more information about the Florida Writers’ Festival, please contact Becca Evanhoe at floridawritersfestival@gmail.com. Visit the festival’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/floridawritersfestival or the MFA@FLA website at www.english.ufl.edu/crw . MFA@FLA, the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Florida, is one of the oldest writing programs in the country.

Biographies of the 2011 Florida Writers’ Festival Authors

David Berman, former front man for the indie-rock band Silver Jews, released his debut poetry collection, “Actual Air,” in 1999 with Open City Books. Poet James Tate praised the work, saying that his poems are “beautiful, strange, intelligent and funny. They are narratives that freeze life in impossible contortions.” The New Yorker wrote that “his words have an easy, eloquent gait; each line needs to be a line. The landscapes are crisply American, and history, especially Southern history, casts a shadow.”

Amy Hempel is the author of four collections of short stories. Her “Collected Stories” was released in 2006 and named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of the Year. She has won the Rea Prize for the Short Story, the Ambassador Award for Best Fiction of the Year, and a USA Foundation Fellowship, and she was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine and Vogue. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and at Harvard University.

Laura Kasischke is the author of eight collections of poetry and eight novels. Two of her books “The Life Before Her Eyes” and “Suspicious River,” have been made into feature films. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes. Her writing has appeared in “Best American Poetry,” The Kenyon Review, Harper’s, and The New Republic. She teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan.

Kevin Young is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently “Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebellion.” “Jelly Roll: A Blues” was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. He won the 2010 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize for “The Grey Album: Music, Shadows, Lies.” Young works at Emory University as the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English and curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library.

D. A. Powell’s most recent books of poetry are “Chronic” and “Cocktails.” Both volumes were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he received the Kingsley Tufts Award in 2010. He has taught at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, Davidson College, New England College and Harvard University, and he teaches at the University of San Francisco.