by Elizabeth Barker As students at the University of Portland, we are fortunate to have many amazing artists share their work with us. Recently, UP alumni Kunal Nayyar, from the primetime TV show The Big Bang Theory, came to share some wisdom at a Q and A before midterms. O. Alan Weltzien is going to join this list of speakers, and you definitely do not want to miss this one. Weltzien, a current English…
Award-winning novelist Peter Rock is a University of Portland Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writer and our final guest in the Fall Readings and Lectures series. Rock received his BA in English from Yale and has won numerous awards and fellowships for his writing, including Stanford’s Wallace Stegner Fellowship. He lives and writes in Portland, and teaches writing at Reed College. His most…
Novelist Willy Vlautin is the next guest in our Autumn Readings & Lectures series hosted by the University of Portland’s English Department. He has published four novels: The Motel Life (2007), Northline (2008), Lean on Pete (2010), and The Free (2014). For all the violence and tragedy that fuels the characters and storylines of his works, Willy Vlautin is one hell of a friendly guy. His band, alt-country…
Poet and author Kate Gray is the first guest in our Autumn Readings & Lectures series hosted by the University of Portland’s English Department. Her work in her poetry collection Another Sunset We Survive and in her first novel Carry the Sky explores the rhythms of water and rowing, the personal and impersonal erasure of queer and female…
by Olivia Van Wey Poet Jae Choi is a master of positioning words to the tempo and vibe of her pieces as she admits during her lecture, “I like sound obviously.” Behind her playful, courteous nature is a methodical mind that considers the power of language as she channels it to convey a love of…
by Hope Dorman On Monday, April 4th, the Garaventa Center and Department of English together are hosting “Godwit”, a poetry reading from Sister Eva Hooker. As a Writer in Residence and professor of English at St. Mary’s College in Indiana, she has some expertise in the subject, but her subject matter is what makes her…
by Jackie Ott In a short poem entitled “Endurance,” Elyse Fenton writes: “I used to stand in doorways and know / there was no human way to go on or through” (46). This poem, along with so many others reverently bound in Clamor, captures a deep human emotion not easily put into words. Fenton’s poetry engages…
by Hope Dorman On November 5th, the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers series hosts Martin Flanagan, an Australian journalist, fiction writer, and poet. I had the chance to ask him a few questions about his work to which he provided some interesting insight. Check out what he has to say before his presentation: How did you get…
by Morgan Mann Fiction writer and fellow Portlander Sara Jaffe will be on campus Wednesday, October 7th in the Bookstore as part of the English department’s Readings and Lectures Series, following the recent publication of her debut novel Dryland. Released in early September, Dryland is a coming of age novel narrated by 15-year-old Julie Winter…
by Jackie Ott On October 6, the University Book Store will be flooded with the wisdom of Robert Lax and the beauty of Michael McGregor’s words. McGregor’s reading is sponsored by our very own English department and the Garaventa Center, and he will read from his new book Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax,…