All readings are held in the main Floor rotunda of the Valley
Library at 7:30p.m. unless otherwise noted.
They are free and open to the public.
(Sponsored by the OSU English Department, the Valley Library, and
the Provost's Office)
William
Kittredge
Thursday, October 18
William Kittredge was born in Portland, attended Oregon State in
the early 1950s, and earned an agriculture degree here. For many
years he worked on the eastern Oregon ranch on which he was raised,
before earning an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1969. He
has published two short story collections, The Van Gogh
Field (1969) and We Are Not in This together (1984),
a memoir, Hole in the Sky (1993), and three books of
essays, Owning It All (1987), Who Owns the West
(1996), and The Nature of Generosity (2000). Last year,
his first novel, The Willow Field was published to great
acclaim. It won the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award. Gretel
Erlich called it an "instant classic--a big, wild-hearted American
saga." Richard Ford hailed it as a "powerful novel . . . in love
with language itelf, as stargazers are in love with light."
In honor of Kittredge's OSU connection, and to celebrate the
university's literary legacy, there will be a small dedication
ceremony at 3:00 p.m. on the afternoon of October 18. The new
faculty lounge in the English Department's Moreland Hall will be
named in Kittredge's honor, to complement the department's student
lounge, named after Bernard Malamud. Kittredge will read from his
work at 7:30 p.m., October 18, in the first floor rotunda of the
Valley Library.
Janna
Malamud-Smith
Friday, November 9
Janna Malamud Smith was born in Corvallis and raised here until
she was nine years old. She is now a writer and psychotherapist,
and the author of three books, "Private Matters: In Defense of the
Personal Life," which the New York Times called a "gorgeously
written . . . cultural history"; "A Potent Spell: Mother Love and
the Power of Fear," and her memoir, "My Father is a Book," which
Mary Gordon called "a must for anyone interested in the work of
Bernard Malamud or the writer's life." Some of the most moving
chapters in the book detail Malamud Smith's childhood in Corvallis.
Many Corvallis residents recall the Malamud family's time here, and
so Ms. Malamud Smith's reading promises to be a wonderful community
event. She will appear at 7:30 p.m. in the first floor rotunda of
the Valley Library on Friday, November 9.
Friday, February 29
Stephen Yenser is the author of two books of poetry, The Fire in
All Things, which won the Walt Whitman Award in 1992, and Blue
Guide, published in 2006. L.A. Weekly reviewer Tom Cheney calls
Blue Guide "a creative zone where playful formalism coexists
comfortably with flights of free association and jazz
improvisation, where keenly skewed observations ripple through a
steady-flowing current of parental and fraternal love and seriously
tweaked humor." In addition to being an acclaimed poet, Yenser is
highly regarded critic with book length studies of the poets Robert
Lowell and James Merrill. With J.D. McClatchy, he has edited The
Collected Poems of James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover,
and The Collected Novels and Plays of James Merrill. He is
currently at work editing a volume of Merrill's selected letters.
Yenser curates the UCLA Hammer Poetry Readings, held at the Hammer
Museum in Westwood, and directs the undergraduate creative writing
program at UCLA.
April 24-27