Each fall and spring, Sarah Lawrence College invites writers and poets to read at our Westchester County, New York campus. We invite you to join us for these literary evenings.

Wednesday, February 4, 6:30 p.m.

Lawrence Weschler
Library Pillow Room

Lawrence Weschler was a staff writer at the New Yorker for more than 20 years. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award and was also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award (1998). His many books include Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); The Passion of Poland (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006), which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Three new works were published in fall 2008, including an expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; and Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art. Weschler is currently director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, as well as contributing editor to McSweeney’s and the Truepenny Review. He is also director of the Ernst Toch Society, which is dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer.

Wednesday, February 25, 6:30 p.m.

James Longenbach
Location to be announced

James Longenbach is the author of three books of poems, most recently Draft of a Letter (Chicago, 2007), as well as several books of literary criticism, most recently The Art of the Poetic Line (Graywolf, 2008).  His poems and reviews have appeared recently in the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review. Having taught at Princeton and Oxford Universities, he currently teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and at the University of Rochester, where he is the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English.

Wednesday, March 4, 6:30 p.m.

Alumnae/i  Reading
Slonim Living Room

Erica Abeel ’58 is the author of five books, including the novel Women Like Us, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and I’ll Call You Tomorrow and Other Lies between Men and Women. Her newest novel, Conscience Point, was published in fall 2008. Additionally, her journalistic work has appeared in several major publications, including the New York Times. A former dancer, Abeel was, until recently, professor of French literature at City University of New York. Currently, she is working on a new novel and covering film for Filmmaker Magazine and indieWIRE.com. Abeel, a mother, lives and works in Manhattan.

Suzie Guillette ’05 recently completed her first book, Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassmen, which chronicles the year she spent collecting embarrassing stories on the streets of Manhattan in hopes of compiling them for publication. But, as the year progressed and the stories began to pile up, Guillette slowly came to realize that the embarrassing story she was really meant to tell was her own. Her work has appeared in Tin House and SELF, in addition to a handful of other publications. When she’s not writing, Guillette is likely to be found indulging in one of the following activities: dancing; eating chocolate; practicing yoga; or traveling to foreign lands in which she has friends (or potential friends). She lives in Brooklyn.

Robert Leleux ’03 is author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy. His writings have appeared in such publications as the New York Times Magazine and the Texas Observer, to which he is a regular contributor. He lives in New York City.

Alexandra Soiseth ’00 is the assistant director of the MFA writing program at Sarah Lawrence College where she also teaches. She is a recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant and an Ontario Arts Council grant. She is the former managing editor of and communications director for Global City Review, a New York City-based literary magazine, and her work has appeared on babycenter.com, literarymama.com, and in McGill Street Magazine, The Ryersonian, and on the radio program LifeRattle, among others. Her memoir, Choosing You: Deciding to Have a Baby on My Own, was published in May 2008 by Seal Press.

Wednesday, April 8, 6:30 p.m.

Marilyn Nelson
Heimbold Auditorium

Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of 12 books and three chapbooks. Her books have won numerous awards including the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award for The Homeplace, which was also a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets’ Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. A Wreath for Emmett Till won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. Other honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and is founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony. She was poet laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001 to 2006.

Wednesday, April 22, 6:00 p.m.

Amy Bloom
Library Pillow Room

Amy Bloom is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories. She has been a nominee for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and numerous anthologies here and abroad. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her latest novel, Away, is an epic story about a Russian immigrant. She lives in Connecticut and teaches at Yale University.

Schedule and venues are subject to change.  Please check www.sarahlawrence.edu/events for the latest information or call the Office of College Events at (914) 395-2412.

The Spring 2009 Reading Series is sponsored in part by: The Linda Ashear Fund for Visiting Poets and The Elaine Oakley Behr Visiting Writers Fund

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