LitFest 2013

Be sure to check out SMU's LitFest while you are on campus!

Since the early eighties, SMU’s Literary Festival has featured notable writers that include John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, Robert Pinsky and Jill McCorkle. For 2013, the line-up in alphabetical order includes:

• Gabrielle Calvocoressi, awards and honors include a Stegner Fellowship, a Jones Lectureship at Stanford University and a Rona Jaffe Women Writers’ Award. She also runs the sports desk for the Best American Poetry Blog.

• Vievee Francis, published in Callaloo, Margie, Crab Orchard Review and Detroit’s Metro Times, author of Blue-Tail Fly, a Callaloo Workshop participant and Cave Canem Fellow.

• Alix Ohlin, author of novel Inside, Signs and Wonders, The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, with work appearing in Best American Short Stories, Best New American Voices, and on public radio’s Selected Shorts.

• Matt Olzmann’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Salt Hill, Margie, and other journals. He is a Kundiman Fellow and a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project.

• Alan Michael Parker has received awards and fellowships including three Pushcart Prizes, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; his novel, Whale Man, was a finalist for the 2011 ForeWord Reviews’s “Book of the Year Award” in the category of Literary Fiction.

• Natalie Serber, recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, Tobias Wolff Award, and H.E. Francis Award, was short listed in Best American Short Stories.

• Tatjana Soli, Winner of UK’s James, Tait Black Prize, New York Times Notable Book 2010 New York Times Bestseller, ALA 2011 Notable Book, LA Times Book Award Finalist, A Kirkus Reviews Top Debut Fiction, Bookmarks Magazine Best Literary Fiction.

• Debra Spark, author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Good for the Jews, edited the best-selling anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America’s New Young Writers. The Pretty Girl, a collection of stories about art and deception, will be published in 2012.

• MC: Paul Otremba, author of two poetry collections, The Currency and the forthcoming Pax Americana. In honor of his poetry a Barthelme Memorial Fellowship, a Krakow Poetry Seminar Fellowship, and a prize from the Academy of American Poets. “This is another amazing lineup of writers,” said David Haynes, head of the SMU creative writing department. “I’m advising everyone I know not to miss any of these readings.”

SMU holds its Literary Festival on campus and free of charge, allowing students, faculty and the surrounding community an opportunity to interact with and hear the latest works from some of the best authors in the country.

For more information, including bios about each author and times of readings, please visit: www.smu.edu/litfest