August 30, 2010

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Writers' Series is an annual offering of the Department of English's Program in Creative Writing. For more information, call 205-934-4250.

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2010

Novelist James Braziel at 4 p.m., in UAB's Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. S. Braziel is the author of the novels Birmingham, 35 Miles (Bantam 2008) and Snakeskin Road (Bantam 2009). Snakeskin Road was named by The Georgia Center for the Book as "one of the books all Georgians should read for 2010," was shortlisted for the 2010 Townsend Prize and was named one of Locus Magazine's Best of 2009. Braziel's fiction and poetry have appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Chattahoochee Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Clackamas Literary Review, among other journals. He also has been the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Georgia Council for the Arts and twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Braziel joined UAB's Department of English faculty in August 2010.

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010

Poet Mary Jo Bang at 4 p.m., in UAB's Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. S. Bang is the author of five books of poems, including Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2007), The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (2004), The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of the Swans (2001) and Louise In Love (2001). Her first book, Apology for Want (1997), was chosen by Edward Hirsch for the 1996 Bakeless Prize. Bang's work has been chosen three times for inclusion in the Best American Poetry series. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a "Discovery"/The Nation award, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and a Hodder Award from Princeton University. Louise in Love and Elegy both received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress. Bang was the poetry co-editor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She lives in St. Louis, Mo., where she is professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University.

Monday, Oct. 25, 2010

Daniel Alarcón, at 4:30 p.m., in UAB's Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. S. Alarcón is associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of two works of fiction, War by Candlelight (Harper 2006; a PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist) and Lost City Radio (Harper 2008), a novel published in more than a dozen countries. He has won numerous prizes, including a Whiting Award (2004), Guggenheim and Lannan fellowships (2007) and a National Magazine Award (2008). The reading is co-sponsored with Manos Juntas, the UAB Lecture Series and the Friends of Sterne Library.

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010

Poet Andrew Hudgins at 4 p.m., in UAB's Spencer Honors House, 1190 10th Ave. S. Hudgins' volumes of poetry include American Rendering: New and Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2010); Shut Up, You're Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children (Overlook Press 2009); Ecstatic in the Poison (Overlook Press, 2003); Babylon in a Jar (1998); The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood (1994); The Never-Ending: New Poems (1991), a finalist for the National Book Awards; After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988), which received the Poetry Prize; and Saints and Strangers (1985), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He also is the author of a book of essays, The Glass Anvil (1997). Hudgins's awards and honors include the Witter Bynner Award for Poetry, the Hanes Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hudgins has taught at Baylor University and University of Cincinnati; he currently teaches at Ohio State University.

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010

Annual Mersmann Poetry Awards, at 6 p.m., in UAB's Spencer Honors House, 1190 10th Ave. S. The Mersmann Awards are given annually for the best reading or rendition by a student of a poem written by another author and a best original poem.

About the UAB Department of English

The UAB Department of English offers an undergraduate degree in English with concentrations in creative writing, linguistics or professional writing and public discourse, and graduate degrees in literature, rhetoric and composition, and creative writing.