The 13th Annual Montevallo Literary Festival (Friday, March 20, 2015)

Just in time for Women's History Month, the Montevallo Literary Festival is proud to feature four amazing women--Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, Amy Lemmon, and Catherine Wing. These four poets will read from their respective works at this year's festival, now in its 13^th year.

The Montevallo Literary Festival is scheduled for Friday, March 20 from noon until 6:00 p.m. at the Carmichael Library. The event is free to the public. For more information, visit the Montevallo Literary Festival's website. You can also Like MLF on Facebook or follow MLF on Twitter. 

About the Poets

Nickole Brown grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and Deerfield Beach, Florida. Her books include Fanny Says, a collection of poems forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2015; her debut, Sister, a novel-in-poems published by Red Hen Press in 2007; and an anthology, Air Fare, that she co-edited with Judith Taylor. She graduated from The Vermont College of Fine Arts, studied literature at Oxford University as an English Speaking Union Scholar, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She worked at the independent, literary press, Sarabande Books, for ten years, and she was the National Publicity Consultant for Arktoi Books and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She has taught creative writing at the University of Louisville, Bellarmine University, and at the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Murray State. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Series in Prose Poetry at White Pine Press and is on faculty every summer at the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. She is an Assistant Professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock and lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs. (from the author's website)

Jessica Jacobs grew up in Central Florida and has since lived in San Francisco and New York, with stints in Greece, Indiana, and Arkansas along the way. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cave Wall, Iron Horse, The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, and Rattle, among other journals and anthologies. She holds a B.A. from Smith College and an M.F.A. from Purdue University. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, textbook Acquisitions Editor, Editor-in-Chief of Sycamore Review, and now as a 2014-15 Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Hendrix College. She lives in Little Rock, AR with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown. Pelvis With Distance is her debut collection. (from the author's website)

Amy Lemmon is the author of two poetry collections: Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008) and Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009). Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Barrow Street, and many other magazines and anthologies. She is co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of the poetry chapbooks ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Amy holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. She is Professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology and lives with her two children in Astoria, Queens. (from the author's blog Saint Nobody)

Poet Catherine Wing was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended Brown University before earning her MFA from the University of Washington. Her collections of poetry include Enter Invisible (2005), nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Gin & Bleach (2012). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Nation, and The Chicago Review and has been featured in a number of anthologies, including Best American Poetry (2010). Wing has received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and teaches poetry at Kent State. (from Poetry Foundation)

BACHE Visiting Writers' Series: Brian Turner TOMORROW Tuesday Feb. 24

Dear UM students, staff, and faculty:

Please join us for a reading by award-winning poet Brian Turner, our final author in the 2014-15 BACHE Visiting Writers’ Series. Brian will read from his work and hold an audience Q&A starting at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 24 in the J.A. Brown Room at Carmichael Library. After the reading, Brian will sign books, which will be available for sale on site from Eclipse Coffee and Books. We also will have a reception, catered by Eclipse and generously sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences. This event is FREE and open to the public.

About Brian Turner
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005) which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. He also has a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country (2014) that retraces his war experience. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea. In 2009, Turner was selected as one of fifty United States Artists Fellows.

You can read samples of his poetry and essays on his web page or at the Poetry Foundation.

About the BACHE Visiting Writers’ Series
The Visiting Writers’ Series is one of the cornerstones of BACHE, a partnership among the five four-year colleges and universities in the greater Birmingham area. Each academic year, the BACHE VWS invites three esteemed authors to each of the five campuses as an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and the community to engage with poets and prose writers of national acclaim.

Check out the web page and Facebook page for more information.

Spring Reading Photos Now Online

Today marked our third library reading in as many weeks and we now have photos from all of them posted to Flickr and Facebook. Here's a sample:



University of Alabama Professor of English and Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, Hank Lazer, read his poems here on Tuesday, March 31^st.



Mary Ward Brown read from her award-winning collections of short stories here on Friday, April 17^th as part of the seventh annual Montevallo Literary Festival.



Lastly, Carmichael Library's own Alan May read from his recent book of poetry, Dead Letters, Tuesday, April 21^st.

Check out our other online spaces to see more photos!

Alan May Reading

Alan May will be reading selections from his poetry on Tuesday, April 21, at 3:30 in the Carmichael Library lobby. Alan has authored two books of poetry, Notes toward an Apocryphal Text and Dead Letters.

Poet Hank Lazer describes Alan’s work as "poetry rich in a nightmarish beauty made of music, image, and vision." His works have appeared in The New Orleans Review, and others. Alan is the editor of the online poetry journal Apocryphal Text. Alan holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama.

Murphy Interviewed for Alabama Public Radio

Listen as Montevallo's own Jim Murphy is interviewed by Jeanie Thompson, executive director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum. Murphy is the author of Heaven Overland, published this year by Kennesaw State University Press. He is associate professor of English here at UM, and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Southern Humanities Review, Brooklyn Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Fine Madness, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, and in other journals, as well as in The Memphis Sun (Kent State University Press, 2000). He serves as Director of the Montevallo Literary Festival, held on campus each spring, and as an editor in poetry for Red Mountain Review, a Birmingham-based literary journal.

Here's the link to the audio, to be aired on Alabama Public Radio: http://arts.alabama.gov/actc/1/20090414murphy.mp3

On the Web:

• Alabama Arts Radio Series website
• RedMountainBlog
  

Hank Lazer Reading, Tuesday March 31st

Hank Lazer will be reading and signing books in the library on Tues. March 31st. Please drop by for a lively reading and talk.

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Time: 3:30pm - 4:30pm
Location: Carmichael Library, Main Floor

Hank Lazer has published 14 books of poetry, including The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), Elegies & Vacations (Salt, 2004), and Days (Lavender Ink, 2002). He has given poetry readings and talks in the United States, France, Canada, the Canary Islands, China, Mexico, and Spain. Lazer's poetry has been nominated for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and the 2004 Forward Prize. With Charles Bernstein, he edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. For the past twelve years, his essays on innovative poetry, new modes of lyricism, and representations of spiritual experience have appeared in a variety of journals, including Facture, The Boston Review, Jacket, American Poetry Review, and Talisman. In 2008, Omnidawn published Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays, 1996-2008 (see http://www.omnidawn.com/ ). Over the past few years, Lazer has collaborated with jazz musicians Tom Wolfe and Chris Kozak on some jazz & poetry improvisations and with outsider artist Pak on a series of poem-paintings. He is currently working with animation artist Janeann Dill on a poetry-video installation project. Hank Lazer is a Professor of English at the University of Alabama where he is also an administrator serving as the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs.

C.D. Wright Reading

C.D. Wright will be reading at 3:30 on Feb. 24 in Palmer Commons, 2nd floor, Comer.

Visit her page at the Academy of American Poets' website. You can read her bio, her poems, and more.

Also, check out her readings at PennSound.

Kay Ryan Named U.S. Poet Laureate

Kay Ryan replaces Charles Simic as Poet Laureate. An article on Ryan from the International Herald Tribune can be found here.

See more on Ryan, read her work, and hear her read her poems at the Academy of American Poets website.

Justice For Vandals Is Poetic

I wanted to share a link from a recent edition of NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Last December, students from Middlebury College broke into the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, Vt. — the place where poet Robert Frost spent his summers — to hold a party. Before it was over, the house was trashed, with broken china and furniture throughout. Some of the 28 people charged with trespassing and vandalism accepted an unusual plea agreement — they had to take a class on Robert Frost.

Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing at Middlebury College, talks about instructing some of these students in poetry and poetic justice.

I thought this a fascinating interview on how poetry can be used to teach life lessons. While we don't yet have his latest book, Why Poetry Matters, you'll find many others written by or edited by Dr. Parini in our catalog.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Come to the library and check out some poetry! We have several books on display at the "Ask Here Desk."

From the archives: "The Love Song of Martin Bormann," a poem and print from Of Desire, and the Circles of Hell: Selected Poems by Dwight Eddins; Illustrations by A. C. Sella; this is on display in a case on the main floor.

Also, check out the Academy of American Poets web site here. Today, in the "Poem a Day" section, they've posted a poem by Theodore Worozbyt, a Tuscaloosan whose book The Dauber Wings was published in 2006 by Dream Horse Press.

Poets Laureate

In the past month or so, two poets have have been appointed laureate positions. In August, the Librarian of Congress appointed Charles Simic as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Click here to read more about Simic and his work.

MTV recently appointed John Ashbery as the MTVU Poet Laureate, a new position to MTVU. More of Ashbery's work can be found here.

You can use Lion and Literary Reference Center, two of our literature databases, to find more works by these authors (not to mention criticism, reviews, essays, and bibliographies concerning them). (You'll have to log in using your UM i.d. if you're off campus. )

If you 'd like to check out books by Charles Simic, we have The World Doesn't End and The Metaphysician in the Dark.

Hopeflully, we'll have a few books by John Ashbery soon. In the mean time, you can see Ashbery read over 20 of his poems in Lion's Poets on Screen section.