Thursday, February 26, 2009:
7:30 pm (please note different venue) Main Classroom Auditorium, across from the Howard A. Mims African American Cultural Center (MC 135).

A reading with Jericho Brown and Terrance Hayes, in cooperation with the Cleveland State University Black Studies Program.

Western Michigan University's New Issues Poetry & Prose published Brown’s first book, Please. The recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, Brown is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego where he teaches creative writing. 

Hayes is the author of three collections of poetry, including Wind in a Box and Hip Logic. His first book, Muscular Music won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.  He is an professor of Creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University, and lives in Pittsburgh with his family.

Monday March 2, 2009:
7:30 pm, Fenn Tower Theater (FT 102), 1983 East 24th Street
A reading with Mary Morris and Varley O'Connor

Mary is the author of fourteen books: six novels, including Revenge, Acts of God, The Night Sky, and House Arrest; three collections of short stories, including The Lifeguard; and four travel memoirs, including Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling and The River Queen (Picador, 2008), which recounts her adventures on the Mississippi River in a houseboat with two river pilots. Her stories and travel essays have appeared in The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, and Vogue. Morris teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Varley is the author of three novels: The Cure (2007), loosely based on her father’s polio as a child; A Company of Three (2003), about the world of theater and acting; and Like China (1991). Her short prose has appeared in The Sun magazine and AWP’s Writer’s Chronicle. O’Connor is an assistant professor of English at Kent State University and in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) program.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009:
7:30 pm, Fenn Tower Theater (FT 102), 1983 East 24th Street
A reading with Robert Hill Long and Allison Benis White

Long is the author of a collection of flash fiction, The Effigies, as well as two poetry collections published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center: The Work of the Bow, winner of the 1995 CSUPC Prize, and The Power to Die. He taught for many years at the University of Oregon.

White was born in Santa Monica and received her M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Pleiades, among other journals. Her full-length collection, Self-Portrait with Crayon, was selected by Robert Hill Long as the winner of the 2008 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Competition.

Monday, April 20, 2009:
7:30 pm, Fenn Tower Theater (FT 102), 1983 East 24th Street
A reading with featured poet Karen Schubert (and another author, to be arranged), and the student winners of the Spring 2009 Creative Writing Contest.

Lardner is the author of the poetry chapbook Tornado, published in the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series by The Kent State University Press (2008). His poems have appeared in such journals as Arsenic Lobster, Rhino, and Pleiades. He is a professor in the Department of English at CSU where he teaches writing and where he also served as former director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

Schubert's chapbook, The Geography of Lost Houses was published earlier this year by Pudding House Press, and her poems have appeared in various journals including Water-Stone Review, The Mid-America Poetry Review, and Poetry Midwest. Schubert is in the NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts) through Cleveland State University, where she is editor of Whiskey Island Magazine.

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Wednesday, April 22, 2009:
7:30 pm, Fenn Tower Theater (FT 102), 1983 East 24th Street
A reading with Mary Biddinger, Sarah Gridley, and Craig Paulenich

Biddinger is the author of the poetry collection, Prairie Fever, and is the new editor of the Akron Series in Poetry. She is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of Akron and NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program, where she teaches literature and creative writing. In 2007, Biddinger founded the independent literary magazine Barn Owl Review.

Gridley received her M.F.A. from the University of Montana, where she was named the 1998 Richard Hugo Scholar, and also won the 1999 Merriam Frontier Award. Her poems have appeared in Jubilat and the Beloit Poetry Review, among other journals. Her first book is Weather Eye Open. Her second book of poems, Redundancy, Redundancy is forthcoming from the University of California in 2010. She is Poet in Residence at Case Western Reserve University.

Paulenich is the author of the collection of poems The Drift of the Hunt, and is co-author (with Kent Johnson) of Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry. He is an associate professor of English at Kent State University and NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program.

Friday, April 24, 2009:
5:30 pm, Fenn Tower Theater (FT 102), 1983 East 24th Street

David Kirby is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Temple Gate Called Beautiful and The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems, which was a National Book Award Finalist. He is the recipient of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, an NEA grant and a Guggenheim fellowship, among other honors. His poems have been included in Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and he sits on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle.

The New York Times Book Review says that Kirby’s poems “resemble the riffs of a brainy stand-up comedian,” and the poet Philip Levine says that the world of Kirby’s poems is “something like the world we inhabit but funnier and more full of wonder and terror.” Kirby has taught at Florida State University since 1969 where he is currently The Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English.

Hear David Kirby earlier that day on “Around Noon with Dee Perry,” WCPN 90.3 fm after the noon news. On Saturday, April 25 David Kirby will be at Cuyahoga County Public Library South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch 4645 Mayfield Road, South Euclid, OH 44112 for “Poetry, Coffee and the Art of Reading Poetry”  registration requested. To register call 216-382-4880 or visit cuyahogalibrary.org.

David Kirby’s visit is sponsored by Cuyahoga County Public Library in cooperation with the CSU Center for Arts and Innovation, the Department of English, The Lit, and Arts Education Playhouse Square