School of Writing, Literature, and Film*

The 2011-12 OSU Visiting Writers Series

All our events are free and open to the public and followed by a Q & A and book-signing. Please check schedule for variations in time and/or location.

Brian Turner
Friday, October 28, 7:30 p.m.
The Valley Library Rotunda
Co-sponsored by the Spring Creek Project for Nature, Ideas, and the Written Word

Brian Turner is a poet, essayist, biographer, and editor. As one of New Zealand's most significant writers on landscape, environmentalism and sports, Turner brings a fresh perspective to nature poetry, and at once aims to be personal but unsentimental in his approach. Brian Turner was appointed as the fourth Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate in 2003. His work is frequently anthologized in collections of poetry and literary sports writing. He has published numerous collections of poetry, as well as works of non-fiction.

Aimee Bender
Friday, November 11, 7:30 p.m.
The Valley Library Rotunda

Aimee Bender is the author of four books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which recently won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and has been heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. Her fiction has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing at USC.

Julie Orringer and Ryan Harty
Thursday, February 16, 7:30 p.m.
The Valley Library Rotunda

Julie Orringer is the author of The Invisible Bridge, a novel (Knopf, 2010), and How to Breathe Underwater, a short story collection (Knopf, 2003). Her stories have been published in The Yale Review, where they’ve twice been awarded the Editors’ Prize for best story of the year; the Paris Review, which awarded her the Discovery Prize in 1998, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is a 1996 graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford from 1991-2001. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Ryan Harty.

Ryan Harty’s first book, Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona, won the John Simmons Award for Short Fiction and was named a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. His stories have been widely published in national magazines and journals, have been performed on NPR’s Selected Shorts, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize. He received his BA from UC Berkeley, his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and held a Truman Capote Fellowship in the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. He has taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University.

Lia Purpura
Friday, March 9, 7:30 p.m.
The Valley Library Rotunda

Lia Purpura is the author of three books of poetry and two books of lyric essays. Her first poetry collection won an AWP Poetry Award, and her most recent essay collection, On Looking, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also held NEA and Fulbright Fellowships (Translation, Warsaw, Poland), three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, and multiple residencies and fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony, and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts.  Purpura’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in: Agni Magazine, DoubleTake, Ecotone, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and many other magazines and anthologies.  Six of her essays have been cited as “Notable Essays” in The Best American Essays. Purpura is Writer in Residence at Loyola University in Baltimore and teaches in the low-residency MFA program, Rainier Writing Workshop, at PLU in Tacoma, Washington. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, conductor Jed Gaylin, and their son.

Eric Goodman
Friday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.
Grass Roots Books & Music

Eric Goodman’s fifth novel, Twelfth and Race, will be published in March, 2012, by the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction series. Previous novels include In Days of Awe and Child of My Right Hand.   His work has been awarded three Ohio Arts Council fellowships and residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, Ragdale and the MacDowell Colony.  Goodman has also published more than 150 articles and essays, with work appearing in the L.A. Times Sunday Magazine, GQ, Travel & Leisure, Saveur, and several anthologies. For the past decade, Goodman has directed the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Sandra Alcosser
Thursday, May 24, 7:30 p.m.
The Valley Library Rotunda
Co-sponsored by the Spring Creek Project

Sandra Alcosser has published seven books of poetry, including A Fish To Feed All Hunger and Except By Nature, which have been selected for the National Poetry Series, the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award, the Larry Levis Award, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Poetry, and the William Stafford Award from Pacific Northwest Booksellers. She is the National Endowment for the Arts’ first Conservation Poet for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Poets House, New York, as well as Montana’s first poet laureate and recipient of the Meriam Award for Distinguished Contribution to Montana Literature. She founded and directs the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University each fall, and is, or has been, a member of the faculty at University of Michigan, University of Montana, and Pacific University and a writer-in-residence in Glacier National Park and Central Park, New York.  She received two individual artist fellowships from NEA, and her poems have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Sandra Alcosser's reading is the concluding event of her writer-in-residency for the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.

Brian Kellow
Wednesday, May 30, 7:30 p.m.
Memorial Union Journey Room

Brian Kellow, an alumnus of OSU’s English Department, is the author of four biographies, and features editor of Opera News Magazine. His newest book, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (Viking, October, 2011), is the first biography of the acclaimed American film critic. At Opera News, Kellow writes a popular column called “On the Beat,” and has also written profiles of many leading opera celebrities, including Deborah Voigt, Bryn Terfel, Joan Sutherland, and Natalie Dessay. His articles have appeared in such magazines and newspapers as Travel and Leisure, BBC Music Magazine, and Newsday, He is a popular host at many New York City musical events.