Live Literature!

Montclair State University is fortunate to claim outstanding faculty-writers as our own.  Our poets, dramatists, novelists, memoirists, and writers of other genres are published locally, nationally, and even internationally, and because of the multitude of writers we're privileged to offer "Live Literature" events throughout the year. Current faculty-writer information can be found here.  At “Live Literature” events, typically two or three writers share a stage, first reading their work, and then responding to questions from the audience.  Attending a “Live Literature” event is a wonderful way for students to gain perspective on the writing process.

Students in College Writing II: Writing and Literary Study will typically be required to attend at least one “Live Literature” event; this is a requirement to be enjoyed.

Schedule for Spring 2012:

PDF version of schedule here.

Wednesday, February 15th
4-5:15pm
University Hall 1070

Sarah Ghoshal - creative non-fiction and poetry
Sarah Ghoshal's poetry has been published (under her maiden name, Sarah Kolbasowski - can you imagine saying Kolbasowski your entire life?) in several journals, such as Press 1, Downtown Brooklyn, Shouted Whisper, the Edison Review and The Alchemy Review. In the past, she has been awarded a fellowship from Summer Literary Seminars and also studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She has work forthcoming in Brooklyn Paramount. She has also had a short memoir, “My Suburbia,” published on Amazon.

Susan Somers-Willett - poetry
Professor Somers-Willett is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry, Quiver and Roam, and a book of scholarly criticism, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry. An award-winning poet and scholar, her poems have appeared in a number of periodicals including Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Poets & Writers, and the Poetry Foundation website. Her honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and a Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media. A professor here at MSU, she teaches creative writing, contemporary poetry and poetics, African American literature, and gender and performance studies. 

Nancy Toomey - fiction
Nancy Toomey earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Rutger's Newark.  She published her first novel From the Abuelas' Window in 2005. Her short story, "The Last Day" appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of the literary journal Pilgrim: A Journal of Catholic Experience. She lists Flannery O'Connor among writers who most inspire her fiction. A member of the first year writing faculty at Montclair State University, she is at work on a collection of short stories. She lives in Montclair, NJ.

Thursday, February 23rd
1pm
Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall

Saskia Hamilton - guest
Saskia Hamilton is the author of As for Dream (Graywolf Press, 2001), Divide These (Graywolf, 2005), and Canal: New and Selected Poems (Arc Publications [UK], 2005). She is also the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) and co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). Her most recent work appears in Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets British and American, edited by Christopher Ricks (Waywiser Press, 2010). She directs Women Poets at Barnard College.  Sponsored by the Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Endowed Chair of English. See https://english.barnard.edu/profiles/saskia-hamilton.



Monday, March 5th
2:30-3:45pm
Student Center Ballroom

Kristen Julia Anderson - fiction
Kristen currently teaches college composition both in the classroom and in a one-on-one setting. She’s currently working on a collection of short stories, a part of which was published in the web journal Gone Lawn and that are a mix of fantasy and thriller and related through the same character and theme.

Leslie Doyle - fiction
Leslie Doyle teaches first year writing at Montclair State University and Bloomfield College. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees from The University of Michigan in English Literature, where she was fortunate to win several Hopwood Awards for Poetry and Essay.  Since then, though, she has mostly concentrated on writing fiction.  Her stories have been published in Clapboard House and Front Porch. Currently, she is revising a novel set in the Hackensack Meadowlands.  She divides her time between Bloomfield and North Cape May. When not teaching or writing, she can usually be found on a kayak in the Meadowlands, the Delaware Bay, or anywhere in between where there's water. 

Wilson Santos - fiction
Wilson Santos earned his Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from Montclair State University with a concentration in American Literature and an emphasis on Film Studies. Wilson has completed two original feature length screenplays; Love & Ecstasy, which was optioned to Swiss filmmaker, Tomi Streiff and The Navy Yard, which was optioned to Belier Entertainment. He has also had several of his original spoken word projects released on various House Music record labels, which have garnered him performance bookings in the States and abroad. Wilson is currently compiling fifteen years of his poetry into book form. At present, he teaches composition in the first-year writing program at Montclair and at Essex County College.

Wednesday, March 28th
4-5:15pm
University Hall 1020

John Hodges - fiction
John Oliver Hodges is the author of the novella War of the Crazies (Main Street Rag). His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including StoryQuarterly, The Literary Review, Swink, Chiron Review and Rattle. He has taught at FSU, the University of Mississippi, Montclair State University, and the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. He holds a BA and an MA in Creative Writing from FSU, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi.

Anne Keefe - poetry
Anne Keefe is the author of a book of poems, Lithopedia, which won the 2010 Bull City Press First Book Award. She is finishing a dissertation on ekphrastic poetry in the 21st century at Rutgers University and holds an MFA from the University of Maryland, College Park. Winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2006, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals including Prairie Schooner, The Southeast Review, Cream City Review, The Grove Review, and Ekphrasis. Anne is the manuscript editor for Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Leslie Rapparlie - fiction
Leslie Rapparlie is the author of Writing and Experiential Education: Practical Activities and Lesson Plans to Enrich Learning. Her short stories have appeared in The Broken Plate and she has forthcoming fiction in South Philly Fiction and The Evening Street Review. She contributed an article to Teaching Adventure Education: Best Practices and co-authored four texts on adventure sports. 

Thursday, April 5th
1pm
Brantl Lecture Hall, Dickson Hall

Tracy Brimhall - guest poet
Traci Brimhall is the author of two books of poetry: Our Lady of the Ruins (forthcoming from W. W. Norton & Co.), which won the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), which won the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She was the 2008–2009 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She teaches at Western Michigan University, where she is a doctoral candidate and King/Chávez/Parks Fellow. 

Claudia Cortese - poetry
Claudia Cortese just completed her first book of poetry, which explores trauma, myth, fairy tales, and girlhood. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2011, Crazyhorse, Rattle, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Third Coast, among others. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College's MFA program, she teaches writing, literature, and poetry at Bloomfield College and Montclair State. 

 

Thursday, April 12
1pm
Kops Lounge, Russ Hall

Pamela Redmond Satran - fiction
Pamela Redmond Satran’s newest novel is The Possibility of You, the story of three women at three key moments of the past century grappling with changing pressures and timeless choices. Her previous novels include The Man I Should Have Married and Younger, optioned by ABC as a television series.  Satran is also the author of the New York Times bestselling humor book How Not To Act Old and a creator of Nameberry.com. She cowrites The Glamour List column for Glamour and Back to the Ranch for Park Place, a New Jersey Monthly publication, and also writes for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and More.  She lives with her family in Montclair, where she is the founder of the 800-member Montclair Editors & Writers (MEWS) group.  For more on the author and her work, see www.possibilityofyou.com and www.pamelaredmondsatran.com.

Tuesday, April 17th
1pm
Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall

Deena Linett - guest poet
Deena Linett's third poetry collection, The Gate at Visby is forthcoming this winter. She has published short fiction, most recently in The Massachusetts Review and forthcoming in The Bellevue Literary Review. She’s had fellowships to Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, and The Baltic Centre for Writers & Translators on Gotland, which gave her new book, The Gate at Visby, its title poem. Linett is Professor, emerita, Montclair State University, and is very glad to be back! See http://www.deenalinett.org

Carole Stone - guest poet
Carole Stone has published seven chapbooks and two books of poetry: Lime and Salt (Carriage House Press), Traveling with the Dead, (Backwaters Press). A third book, American Rhapsody, was published by CavanKerry Press in March, 2012. She received several fellowships from The NJ State Council on the Arts and a Fellowship to Hawthornden Writers Retreat, Scotland. Stone is Professor of English, emerita, Montclair State University.



Thursday, April 26th
4pm
Student Center 411-412

Student Edition of Live Lit!
Join us to hear the creative work of this year's winners of the English Department's fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction contests. Featuring:

Angel Tuohy - fiction

Steve Criscuolo - poetry

Maheen Ahmad - creative nonfiction

For More Information or to List Similar On-Campus Literary Readings email Professor Maria Giura, Assistant Director of First Year Writing, at giuram@mail.montclair.edu.

last updated April 2012