Reading Series
The UTSA Creative Writing Reading Series was inaugurated in 1983 when Carolyn Forché read on a Friday afternoon to a room of 100 people. Over the years the series has hosted such writers as Mary Oliver, Ernest Gaines, Tobias Wolff, Denise Levertov, Alberto Ríos, Pat Mora, Diane Wakoski, Edward Hirsch, and many other poets and fiction writers who not only give public readings but also visit classes and meet with students about their writing. We’ve had as many as twelve readings by visiting writers in a year but have settled on three or four annually as an ideal number.This reading series is made possible through the generosity of our Donors.
Matthea Harvey
October 12, 2012—7:30 p.m.
Harris Room (UC III 2.212)
Matthea Harvey is the author of Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004) and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000). Her third book of poems, Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. She has authored two children’s books, The Little General and The Giant Snowflake, illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel (Tin House Books in 2009), and Cecil the Pet Glacier, illustrated by Giselle Potter (Random House, 2012), as well as an illustrated erasure entitled Of Lamb, with images by Amy Jean Porter (McSweeney’s, 2010). A contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper, and BOMB, Matthea has taught at Warren Wilson, the Pratt Institute, and the University of Houston. Currently she is on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College; she lives in Brooklyn.
Natasha Trethewey
November 16, 2012—7:30 p.m.
Denman Room (UC 2.01.28)
Natasha Trethewey is the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her first collection of poems, Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), won the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, and the Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), received the Mississippi Insititute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, was a finalist for both the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin and Leonore Marshall prizes, and was named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association. For her third collection, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.
Levi Romero
February 1, 2013—7:30 p.m.
Harris Room (UC III 2.212)
Levi Romero’s A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works (University of New Mexico Press, 2008) received the 2009 Southwest Book of the Year Award. Other books include In the Gathering of Silence (West End Press, 1996; reprinted 2007) and Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland (forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press). He is the author/director of a number of ethnographic projects, including Stories Along the High Road: A Narrative Cruise Through the Manito Homeland; La Nueva Resolana: Finding the Contemporary Community Gathering Place; and two oral history documentation projects, Following the Manito Trail and Reconciliation: The Symbiotic History of the Pueblo and Hispano People of New Mexico. He is a research scholar at the University of New Mexico.
This reading is sponsored in conjunction with The Macondo Foundation, which works with dedicated and compassionate writers who view their work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change. To learn more about Macondo’s Writing Workshops, Grants and Residencies, visit them at: macondoworkshop.org
Teju Cole
February 22, 2013—7:30 p.m.
Harris Room (UC III 2.212)
Teju Cole is a writer, art historian, and street photographer. His first novel, Open City (Random House, 2011), won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction, the New York Society Library Award for Fiction, and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is also the author of Every Day Is For the Thief, a novella with photographs (Cassava Republic Press, 2007). Born in the United States to Nigerian parents, Cole grew up in Nigeria. He received his M.Phil in 16th-century northern European visual culture from Columbia University, where he is working on his Ph.D. Currently Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College, Cole is at work on a nonfiction narrative about Lagos called Small Fates.
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