Agnes O’Donnell Poets and Writers Series
Sponsored by the Green Blotter Literary Society of Lebanon Valley College, the Agnes O’Donnell Poets and Writers Series brings authors to campus for readings, writing workshops, and other events. The series is funded by a gift from Agnes O’Donnell, professor emerita of English who remained active in the department after her retirement in 1987 until her death in 2008.
Upcoming Events
Karen Russell
Reading and Book Signing
Wed. April 10, 2013, 7 pm
Leedy Theater
Karen Russell’s debut novel, Swamplandia!, was chosen by The New York Times as one of the “Ten Best Books of 2011,” and was long-listed for The Orange Prize. Russell has been featured in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. In 2009, she received the “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. Formerly a writer-in-residence at Bard College and Bryn Mawr College, she is the recipient of the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize and was awarded a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.
Russell is also the author of the celebrated short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Knopf, September 2006). Her new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, was published by Knopf in January 2013.
Past Events
Juan Martinez
Reading
February 20, 2013, 7 pm
Lutz Hall, Blair Music Center
Juan Martinez’s fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Pindeldyboz, NPR’s Selected Shorts, Norton’s Suddenly Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America, and The Perpetual Engine of Hope: Stories Inspired by Iconic Vegas Photographs. His scholarly work has appeared in The Nabokovian, the Nabokov Online Journal, Journal of Popular Culture, and elsewhere. Dr. Martinez teaches creative writing and literature at LVC. Visit and say hi at http://www.fulmerford.com/.
Anya Achtenberg
Reading and Book Signing
October 23, 2012, 7 pm
Zimmerman Recital Hall
Anya Achtenberg’s novel Blue Earthwas published in August 2012 by Modern History Press, which published her novella The Stories of Devil-Girl in 2008. Her second book of poetry,The Stone of Language, was published in 2004 by West End Press (Albuquerque) after being finalist in 5 poetry competitions. Her stories have received awards from Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story, New Letters, and others. Her first book of poetry, I Know What the Small Girl Knew, was published by Holy Cow! Press (MN). She is at work on History Artist, a novel centering in the experience of a Cambodian woman born of an African American father at the moment the bombing of Cambodia by U.S. forces began.
She teaches creative writing widely and is the founder and author of Writing for Social Change:Re-Dream a Just World, a series of multi-genre workshops on writing for social change.