Visiting Writers Series

Nebraska Wesleyan University's Visiting Writers Series brings prominent national and international writers to campus. In addition to giving public readings, our visiting writers meet with students to discuss the craft of writing. The mission of this series remains the promotion of literary experiences with contemporary writers meant to enliven and to educate young writers here at NWU.

All readings are free and open to the public.

 

Carolyn Hembree (Poet)

Thursday, February 22, 2018
6 p.m.
Callen Conference Center

Carolyn Hembree was born in Bristol, Tenn.

Her debut poetry collection, Skinny, came out from Kore Press in 2012. In 2016, Trio House Books published her second collection, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, selected by Neil Shepard for the 2015 Trio Award and by Stephanie Strickland for the 2015 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Contrary, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Poetry Daily, and other publications. She has received grants and fellowships from PEN, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Southern Arts Federation. An assistant professor at the University of New Orleans, Carolyn teaches writing and serves as poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. Thanks to an ATLAS grant, she will spend the next year writing.

 

Sandy Longhorn (Poet)

Tuesday, March 20, 2018
6 p.m.
Callen Conference Center

Sandy Longhorn is the 2016 recipient of the Porter Fund Literary Prize and the author of three books of poetry. The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, her latest book, won the 2014 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press. Her other books are The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths and Blood Almanac. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, diode, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hotel Amerika, The Southeast Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Longhorn holds a BA in English from the College of St. Benedict and an MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas. She teaches in the Arkansas Writers MFA Program at the University of Central Arkansas, where she directs The C. D. Wright Women Writers Conference. In addition, she blogs at Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty.

 

Julie Schumacher (Author)

Thursday, April 5, 2018
6 p.m.
Callen Conference Center

Julie Schumacher is the author of nine books, including the national bestseller Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Schumacher is the only woman to have won the Thurber Prize. Schumacher’s first novel, The Body Is Water, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle for Higher Education and other publications; most recently, she is the author of Doodling for Academics—a coloring and activity book. She is a professor of English and the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.

 

 

Robyn Schiff (Poet) and Nick Twemlow (Author)

Thursday, April 19, 2018
6 p.m.
Callen Conference Center

Robyn Schiff is the author of three poetry collections, the most recent of which, A Woman of Property, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, and was an Editors’ Choice at the New York Times. In 2016 Schiff was made an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard. She co-edits Canarium Books and teaches poetry at the University of Iowa.

 

 

 

Nick Twemlow's second book. Attributed to the Harrow Painter, was released in November 2017. His first book, Palm Trees, was award the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is a senior editor at the Iowa Review and co-edits Canarium Books. He teaches at Coe College.

 

 

Past Visiting Writers

Year	Writers
Fall 2017	Cole Swensen Carol Guess
Spring 2017	Brenda Shaughnessy Brian Blanchfield
Fall 2016	Peter Gizzi Claudia Rankine Lucy Ives
Spring 2016	Porochista Khakpour Michael Knight Shane McCrae
Fall 2015	Dagoberto Gilb J.D. Schraffenberger Kit Yan
Spring 2015	Sarah Braunstein Erik Campbell Robert Fernandez Mary Hickman Amaud Jamaul Johnson Bradford Tice
Fall 2014	Mark Jay Brewin, Jr. Travis Mossotti David James Poissant Christine Sneed
Spring 2014	Trey Moody Joshua Robbins Mary Helen Stefaniak
Fall 2013	Tricia Currans-Sheehan Jeanne Emmons Kristi Maxwell Bradford Tice Laura van den Berg
Spring 2013	Oni Buchanan Charlotte Pence Adam Prince John Walker Jon Woodward
Fall 2012	Chi Tak Chan Chun Ying Lin Caryl Pagel Lysley Tenorio Stephanie Ye
Spring 2012	Suzanne Buffam Jennifer S. Davis David Philip Mullins Srikanth Reddy
Fall 2011	Margaret Lazarus Dean Hye-Kyung Lee Dorothy Tse Susan Wheeler Yueran Zhang
Spring 2011	Jessica Savitz Willy Vlautin
Fall 2010	Meg Kearney Ed Roberson Robert Wrigley
Spring 2010	Arthur Smith Hannah Tinti
Fall 2009	Marcia Douglas John McManus
Spring 2009	Mary Jo Bang Brian Evenson Sheila Heti Gary Lutz
Fall 2008	Joanna Klink Timothy Liu
Spring 2008	Chris Bachelder William Henry Lewis Ben Marcus Selah Saterstrom
Fall 2007	Erik Campbell Graham Foust Christian Hawkey Harryette Mullen Sawako Nakayasu
Spring 2007	Cary Holladay Josip Novakovich Julie Orringer Bapsi Sidhwa
Fall 2006	Grace Bauer Anthony Hawley Jeffrey McDaniel Robyn Schiff
Spring 2006	Chris Offutt Z.Z. Packer
Fall 2005	John D’Agata Denise Duhamel Dean Young