The fifth year of the University of Houston-Victoria/American Book Review Reading Series continues in January with a diverse mix of award-winning authors, editors, poets, instructors and scholars.

 

“We are proud to attract an extraordinary level of expertise to the UHV/ABR Reading Series,” said Jeffrey Di Leo, ABR editor/publisher and dean of the UHV School of Arts & Sciences. “Victoria is becoming increasingly known for having an active community of writing talent, and the Reading Series authors are looking forward to sharing their knowledge of writing.”

 

Opening the Spring Reading Series on Jan. 27 is Jayne Anne Phillips, a Guggenheim Fellow whose works have been translated into 12 foreign languages. Phillips began her career with three critically acclaimed short-story collections. Since the mid-1980s, she has written four novels, including the 2009 “Lark and Termite,” which was one of five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction. Her work has appeared most recently in “Harper’s,” “Granta,” “Doubletake” and the “Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.”

Jayne Anne Phillips

 

Phillips also has held two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Bunting Fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. She has taught at Harvard University, Williams College and Boston University, and is currently a professor of English and director of a new Master of Fine Arts Program at Rutgers University-Newark.

 

“UHV and ABR are proud to welcome Ms. Phillips, one of the finest novelists working today,” said Thomas Williams, an ABR associate editor and chair of the Humanities Division of the UHV School of Arts & Sciences. “Her fiction will break your heart and heal it on the same page.”

 

Phillips’ free talk will begin at noon in the Alcorn Auditorium of UHV University West, 3007 N. Ben Wilson. The public is invited to attend, and light refreshments will be served.

 

Other writers for the Spring Reading Series are:

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

 

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Feb. 9 –Griffiths is a poet, writer, photographer and painter. A Cave Canem Fellow, she received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Delaware and an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the recipient of fellowships including the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, Soul Mountain, New England Humanities Council and others. Her literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies and periodicals.

Kate Bernheimer

 

Kate Bernheimer, Feb. 17 –Bernheimer has published novels, stories, children’s books, creative nonfiction and essays on fairy tales, and has edited three influential fairy-tale anthologies. As a fiction writer devoted to fairy tales, she also has helped preserve this literary tradition through essays and editorships. In 2005, she founded, and currently remains editor of, “Fairy Tale Review,” the leading literary journal dedicated to fairy tales as a contemporary art form. As an associate professor of English and writer in residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, she teaches a graduate fiction workshop.

Beverly Lowry

 

Beverly Lowry, March 10 – Lowry has received awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, “Black Warrior Review,” Texas Institute of Letters and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She has served as president of the Texas Institute of Letters. She is director of the creative nonfiction program at George Mason University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of seven novels and two nonfiction works. She was the recipient of the 2007 Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award at the Natchez Literary Festival. She taught at George Mason University but has moved to Austin.

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

 

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, April 21 – Hinojosa-Smith focuses on American literature, specializing in life and literature of the Southwest. Hinojosa has devoted most of his career as a writer to his “Klail City Death Trip Series,” which comprises 15 volumes to date. He has completely populated a fictional county in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas through this generational narrative. Hinojosa was the first Chicano author to receive the prestigious Premio Casa de las Américas award. He also received the third and final Premio Quinto Sol Annual Prize in 1972.

 

Authors who are part of the Spring Reading Series will attend roundtable discussions with UHV faculty and students, make classroom visits to area schools, give lectures open to the community, and go to receptions hosted by Friends of ABR patrons while they are in Victoria.

 

ABR is a nonprofit, internationally distributed literary journal that is published six times a year. It began in 1977, moved to UHV in 2007 and has a circulation of about 8,000. The journal specializes in reviews of works published by small presses.

 

For more information about the UHV/ABR Reading Series, call ABR Managing Editor Charles Alcorn at 361-570-4100 or go to www.americanbookreview.org.