Each spring and fall, 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, April 9, 6:30 p.m.

Library Pillow Room

Poetry and Prose
Alumnae/i Readers:

Matthew Schwartz received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1999, and his M.F.A. in Poetry from U.C. Irvine in 2003. His first book of poetry, Blessings for the Hands, has just been published by University of Chicago Press. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and the International Institute of Modern Letters. He has worked as a teacher, editor, and writer for several years. He lives in Brooklyn.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches modern poetry and creative writing at Manhattanville College. She received her B.A. in Russian language and literature from U.C. Berkeley in 1983 and her M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002. Her poems have appeared in BigCityLit, LUMINA, Nimrod, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry London, RATTLE, Rattapallax, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Chance of A Ghost, an anthology published by Helicon Nine in 2005. In 2002, she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her manuscript Talking Underwater, which has been a finalist for The University of Arkansas Press’ First Book Prize in 2006, a semifinalist for the Kenyon First Book contest in 2002, the Bright Hill Press in 2005, and a finalist for the Richard Snyder Poetry prize from Ashland Press in 2006, was published by Wind Publications in 2007. She lives in Armonk, New York, with her husband, John. They share four children, Ben, Angie, Kaitlin, and Fiona.

Phoebe Damrosch is the author of Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Entertainment Weekly, Food and Wine, Elle, American Way, Eating Well, The New York Post, The Daily News, and Slate. Damrosch holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She currently lives and writes in Harlem.

Porochista Khakpour’s debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove/Atlantic), came out in September 2007 to much acclaim from The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle. It was a Chicago Tribune “Fall’s Best” selection and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Her writing has also appeared in The Chicago Reader, The Village Voice, Paper, Flaunt, Nylon, Gear, Urb, Bidoun, and Alef magazines; and nerve.com, among others. Khakpour was born in Tehran and raised in Los Angeles; she currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Long Island’s Hofstra University.

Wednesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m

Reisinger Concert Hall

George Saunders

George Saunders is the author of the short story collections Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (both New York Times Notable Books), and, most recently, In Persuasion Nation. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. In Persuasion Nation was one of three finalists for the 2006 Story Prize for best short story collection of the year. Saunders is also the author of the novella-length illustrated fable The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, The New York Times bestselling children’s book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, illustrated by Lane Smith (which won major children’s literature prizes in Italy and the Netherlands), and, most recently, a book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone.

His work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in the O.Henry, Best American Short Stories, Best Non-Required Reading, and Best American Travel Writing anthologies. In support of his books, he has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show and Late Night with David Letterman. In 2001, Saunders was selected by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 top most creative people in entertainment, and by The New Yorker in 2002 as one of the best writers 40 and under. In 2006, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and named a MacArthur Fellow. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.

Friday, April 25 – Sunday, April 27

College Campus — various locations

Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival

Now a vital event for the New York Literary Community, the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival will take place over the weekend of April 25 – 27, 2008. The festival features both daytime and evening readings by the finest poets writing today, as well as some of the East Coast’s most innovative student work. This year’s readers include Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kurt Brown, Lynn Emanuel, Sage Francis, Suzanne Gardinier, Bob Hicock, Ilya Kaminsky, Alex Lemon, Victoria Redel, Matthew Rohrer, Sonia Sanchez, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tracy K. Smith, and more to be announced!

Wednesday, May 7, 6:30 p.m.

Library Pillow Room

Nicholas Dawidoff

Nicholas Dawidoff’s fourth book, The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball will be published by Pantheon in May. His book The Fly Swatter was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, In the Country of Country was named one of the greatest all-time works of travel literature by Conde Nast Traveller, and The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg was a critically acclaimed national bestseller. He is also the editor of the Library of America’s Baseball: A Literary Anthology and contributes to The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and The New York Times Magazine. A Guggenheim, Civitella Ranieri, and Berlin Prize Fellow, he is currently The Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University.

The Spring 2008 Reading Series is sponsored in part by: The Linda Ashear Fund for Visiting Poets and The Elaine Oakley Behr Fund for Visiting Writers