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Writers at Newark Reading Series: Brenda Shaughnessy & Colm Toibin
April 18, 2017 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
| Brenda Shaughnessy earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy (1999), Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, Our Andromeda (2012), a finalist for the Griffin Prize, and So Much Synth (2016). Her work has appeared in the Yale Review, the Boston Review, McSweeney’s, and Best American Poetry, among other places. With C.J. Evans, she edited the anthology Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House Magazine (2009). Shaughnessy has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, where she was a Bunting Fellow, the Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission, and the Howard Foundation of Brown University. She has taught at universities including Columbia, the New School, Princeton, and New York University. Poetry editor-at-large of Tin House, Shaughnessy is currently an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, where she teaches in the MFA program.
Colm Toibin, born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland, and educated at University College Dublin, is the author of eight novels, including The Heather Blazing, The Story Of The Night, The Blackwater Lightship (finalist, Booker Prize, International Impac Dublin Literary Award, 1999), The Master (finalist Booker Prize, winner International Impac Dublin Literary Award, LA Times Novel of the Year, Stonewall Book Award, Lambda Literary Award, 2004), Brooklyn (adapted into an Oscar nominated film), and Nora Webster; and two collections of stories, Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family (finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, 2011). He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction and The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950. His play ‘The Testament of Mary’ was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 2013. His non-fiction work includes, New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers & Their Families, Love In A Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, and On Elizabeth Bishop, a Finalist for the 2016 National Book Critic’s Circle Award. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. An Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is Sidney and Irene Silverman Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. |
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The Rutgers University – Newark MFA Creative Writing Program is interested in the real world experience our students bring to the classroom, as well as to creative exchange beyond the university campus. Our most visible bridge to the University and to Newark is The Writers at Newark Reading Series, which brings nationally prominent writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to campus. The Reading Series provides the opportunity for a diverse audience of students, faculty, staff and the public to hear and interact with these writers in an intimate and dynamic setting. It is also the centerpiece for our community outreach programs, such as our Writers at Newark Mentors Program, where the Rutgers University – Newark Chancellor’s Office and the MFA Program partners with local Newark high schools. More information about the Writers at Newark Reading Series This program is made possible in part by the Graduate School-Newark, the English Department, the Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Paul Robeson Galleries, the Cultural Programming Committee, the Department of African American and African Studies, the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies, the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, and the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities. |