UHV announces lineup for fall reading series
Editor's Note: Ladan Osman originally was scheduled to speak on Sept. 12. However, she is unable to attend, and university administrators hope to have her come during the spring semester.
The University of Houston-Victoria/American Book Review Reading Series is preparing to kick off its fall 2019 series with a diverse lineup of writers who have published collections, chapbooks, essays, memoirs and even digital poetry projects.
“The American Book Review is always looking for diverse, compelling writers to participate in the reading series,” Jeffrey Di Leo, ABR editor and publisher, and dean of the UHV School of Arts & Sciences. “Each of these writers has a distinct voice and perspective in many genres and media, and I look forward to sharing their work with the community.”
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.
Authors scheduled for the UHV/ABR Fall Reading Series are:
Ladan Osman, Sept. 12 – Osman is a Somali-born poet and essayist. She is the author of “Exiles of Eden” and “The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony,” winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize, and the chapbook “Ordinary Heaven,” which appeared in the box-set “Seven New Generation African Poets.” She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, Luminarts Foundation and Michener Center for Writers Fellowship, among numerous other nominations.
Christine Hume, Oct. 3 – Hume is the author of “Saturation Project,” a lyric memoir in the form of three interlinked essays, as well as three books of poetry. Her chapbooks include “Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active Sense;” “Ventifacts;” “Atalanta: an Anatomy;” “Question Like a Face,” a text image collaboration with Jeff Clark and a Brooklyn Rail Best Nonfiction Book of 2017; and the forthcoming “Red: A Different Shade for Each Person Reading the Story.” Since 2001, she has been part of the faculty in the interdisciplinary creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.
A. Van Jordan, Oct. 24 – Jordan is the author of four collections: “Rise,” which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; “M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A,” which was listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; “Quantum Lyrics;” and “The Cineaste.” Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He also is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. He serves as the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature at The University of Michigan.
Amaranth Borsuk, Nov. 14 – Borsuk is a poet, scholar and book artist working at the intersection of print and digital media. Her most recent volume is “The Book,” an exploration of a technology we think we know intimately. She is the recipient of a National Education Association Expanded Artists’ Books grant for the collaboration “Abra,” a limited-edition book, and free iPad and iPhone app that recently received the Turn on Literature prize for electronic literature. She has collaborated on installations, art bookmarklets and interactive works, and is the author of five books of poetry. She teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, and serves as associate director of the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and poetics.
Nick Montfort, Dec. 5 – Montfort’s computer-generated books of poetry include “#!” (pronounced “shebang”), the collaboration “2×6,” “Autopia,” “The Truelist” (in Counterpath’s “Using Electricity” series), and “Hard West Turn.” He has six books out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, most recently “The Future.” He performs and shows digital artwork internationally, and his projects include “Taroko Gorge” and the collaborations “The Deletionist” and “Sea and Spar Between.” Montfort runs the micropress Bad Quarto. Further underground, he is lead organizer for the demoparty Synchrony and MCs as Doc Mofo. He is professor of digital media at MIT, where he directs The Trope Tank, and lives in New York.
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.
