By Keaton Gaughan In anticipation of her up-coming campus reading, I sat down with poet and esteemed UP alum, Sarah Bokich, to learn a bit more about her, her newest chapbook, and life after UP. You can peruse our exchange below. Come hear Sarah read from her newest publication on Thursday, February 8th at 7:30pm…
Interview with Leni Zumas
by Keaton Gaughan Leni Zumas, author of the upcoming fiction novel Red Clocks (selected for Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 Literary Fiction” list), will be visiting campus later this month as part of the University of Portland’s 2017-2018 Readings and Lectures Series. Her reading will be November 15th at 7:30pm in the campus bookstore. Zumas teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Portland State University. She is also the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator, and…
An Interview with Dr. Hill on the German novelist Julia Franck
by Monica Salazar Award-winning, contemporary German author Julia Franck will be visiting campus for the University of Portland’s Readings & Lectures Series this November. In her writing, Franck explores Germany’s dark, complex history and how major political events shaped the lives of everyday German citizens—especially women—during the twentieth century. I sat down with Dr. Alexandra Hill, a German professor here at UP who has written extensively about Franck in her academic publications, to ask her a bit about…
An Interview with O. Alan Weltzien
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…
An Interview with Peter Rock
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…
An Interview with Willy Vlautin
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…
Professor Spotlight: Elyse Fenton
Last November, Elyse Fenton came to University of Portland to read from her wildly acclaimed poetry book Clamor. Her collection caught literary fire after she was not only the first American author to win the University of Wales’ Dylan Thomas Prize, but also the first poet. She’s been interviewed on NPR and BBC. After her reading at…
Freshman Feature: Cameron Beasley
In preparation for my profile on a first year English major (Class of 2020—remarkable), I scoured past blog posts for inspiration and was nothing short of jarred when I came upon the December 9, 2013 “Featuring First Years,” which, to the surprise of my ever-roaming memory, popped up with a picture of myself clad in…
Lunch Table Preview: Swidzinski and Buck-Perry
This Thursday, October 27 is our next English Lunch Table! Be quick to RSVP and score a free lunch and riveting conversation with Professor Swidzinski and Professor Buck-Perry. I sat down with Swidzinski and Buck-Perry to get a preview of possible discussion for Thursday: Who are they really? What are they reading? What’s up with the Shakespeare authorship conspiracy? What’s…
An Interview with Kate Gray
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…