UHV announces visiting authors for fall reading series
The University of Houston-Victoria/American Book Review Reading Series is bringing five talented authors to Victoria this fall, including an internationally known artist, a journalist born and raised in India, a contributor to major magazines, a Pushcart Prize winner and a cross-genre writer.
“The fall reading series features an exciting variety of speakers who bring perspectives from many walks of life,” said Jeffrey Di Leo, dean of the UHV School of Arts & Sciences, and ABR editor and publisher. “Each of these award-winning authors have made lasting contributions to the literary world. The Victoria community is in for a real treat.”
Visiting authors will read selections from their work at 11 a.m. in the Alcorn Auditorium inside UHV University West, 3007 N. Ben Wilson St. Immediately after the readings, authors will be available to sign copies of their work. All readings are free and open to the public.
The American Book Review chose to move the readings to 11 a.m. because the new time will allow more UHV students to participate in the series, Di Leo said. In addition, the university’s “Composition I” and “Composition II” courses will be aligned to allow students to attend the series and participate in author roundtable discussions immediately after the readings.
Authors scheduled for the UHV/ABR Fall Reading Series are:
Mark Amerika, Sept. 13 – Amerika’s artwork has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Whitney Biennial of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Walker Art Center. He is the author of many books, including “The Kafka Chronicles,” “Sexual Blood,” “remixthebook,” “META/DATA: A Digital Poetics,” “remixthecontext” and “Locus Solus (An Inappropriate Translation Composed in a 21st Century Manner).” Amerika is a University of Colorado Professor of Distinction, where he is the founding director of the doctoral program in intermedia art, writing and performance, and a professor of art and art history. In 2017, the 20-year anniversary of Amerika’s groundbreaking work of net art, “GRAMMATRON,” was celebrated in London at a two-day international symposium titled “Beyond GRAMMATRON: 20 Years Into the Future.”
Amitava Kumar, Oct. 11 – Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, India, and grew up in nearby Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. He is the author of several works of nonfiction and two novels, most recently “Immigrant, Montana,” which Publisher’s Weekly described as “consistently surprising and hilarious … an inventive delight.” Kumar lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. In 2016, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Carina Chocano, Nov. 1 – Chocano is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. She writes regularly for Elle, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Cut and many others. She has been a film and TV critic at the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com. Her book, “You Play the Girl,” is the winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and was a finalist for the PEN/Diamondstein-Spielvogel Award for Criticism. She lives in Los Angeles.
Don Lee, Nov. 15 – Lee is the author of the novels “Lonesome Lies Before Us,” “The Collective,” “Wrack and Ruin” and “Country of Origin,” and the story collection “Yellow.” He has received an American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Temple University and splits his time between Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Shelley Jackson, Dec. 6 – Jackson is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including her 1995 hyperfiction, “Patchwork Girl,” which used tissue, scars, the body and the skeleton as metaphors for the juxtaposition of lexia and link. She also is the author of several children’s books and the short story collection “The Melancholy of Anatomy.” In 2003, she launched the “Skin Project,” a novella published exclusively in the form of tattoos on the skin of volunteers, one word at a time. Jackson’s first novel, “Half Life,” was published by HarperCollins in 2006. “Half Life” went on to win the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award for science fiction and fantasy.
ABR is a nonprofit, internationally distributed literary journal published six times a year. It began in 1977, moved to UHV in 2006 and has a circulation of about 8,000. The journal specializes in reviews of works published by small presses.
Authors will be available after each reading to sign copies of their books. Each author also will meet with students and attend a community reception.
For more information about the UHV/ABR Reading Series, call the ABR office at 361-570-4101 or go to www.americanbookreview.org.
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 80 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.
