Writers Speak Reading Series

MFA Program in Writing and Literature Presents: Writers Speak - Spring 2009

Wednesdays at 7 p.m., Duke Lecture Hall (Chancellors Hall)
Stony Brook Southampton
Free & Open to the Public

Refreshments - Mingling - Book Signings

March 4 - Jules Feiffer
MFA faculty member regales us with truth and humor.

Jules Feiffer's Pulitzer-winning and internationally syndicated cartoon ran for 42 years in The Village Voice. His sensibility permeates a wide range of creative work: from his Obie-winning play Little Murders, to his screenplay for Carnal Knowledge, to his Oscar-winning anti-military short subject animation Munro. Other works include the Tony nominee Knock Knock and the Pulitzer nominee Grown-Ups, as well as his screenplays for Popeye and I Want to Go Home, winner at the Venice Film Festival.

March 11 - Bill Schutt
Nonfiction notable reads from his batty best seller.

Bill Schutt earned his Ph.D. in Zoology at Cornell and worked on a postdoctoral research fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History with bat expert Nancy Simmons. He is currently an associate professor of biology at C. W. Post and a research associate in Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History.

March 18 - Steve Hamilton, Emma Walton Hamilton and Guests
Co-directors of the new Southampton Playwriting Conference affirm that
the play's the thing.

Stephen Hamilton, a producer, actor, director, and teacher, co-founded Bay Street Theatre in 1991 with Emma Walton Hamilton and Sybil Christopher. For 17 years, Steve served as the Theatre's Executive Director and produced over 50 productions, many of which transferred to Broadway and Off-Broadway. Among his directing credits are the World Premiere of Ira Lewis' Gross Points, starring Alec Baldwin. Steve also served as director of Ensemble Studio Theatre's annual Summer Conference.

Emma Walton Hamilton is a theater professional and arts educator, as well as a best-selling author and editor. A co-founder of Bay Street, she served as the Theatre's Co-Artistic Director. Walton Hamilton has written 16 children's books in partnership with her mother, actress Julie Andrews, and serves as Editorial Director for The Julie Andrews Collection publishing program. Her latest book, a solo venture, is entitled Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment.

March 25 - Julie Sheehan
MFA faculty member reads from her forthcoming collection, Bar Book:
Poems & Otherwise.

Julie Sheehan won a Whiting Writer's Award this past year. Other honors include the Barnard Women Poets Prize for her second book Orient Point and the Poets Out Loud Prizes for her first book, Thaw.

April 1 - The Southampton Review Launch in New York City
No fooling! Issue No. 4 hits the literary scene with a celebration at the MFA in Writing & Literature's Manhattan campus. By invitation only. MFA student sign-up sheet in program office.

April 15 - Kaylie Jones
MFA faculty member reads from her work.

Kaylie Jones, born in Paris, received her B.A. from Wesleyan and her MFA from Columbia. She attended the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language Study in Moscow. Jones is the author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, loosely based on her experiences growing up in an expatriate artistic home as the daughter of famed novelist James Jones. Other novels include Celeste Ascending and Speak Now.

April 22 - Fiona Maazel & John Wray
Hot young fiction writers heat up Duke Lecture Hall

Fiona Maazel's first novel, Last Last Chance, was published in 2008. She is National Book Foundation '5 Under 35' honoree for 2008 and recipient of the 2009 Bard Prize.

John Wray's first novel, The Right Hand of Sleep, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and won a Whiting Award in Fiction. For his second novel, Canaan's Tongue, he traveled down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans on a raft made out of Home Depot surplus, giving readings in towns along the way. This past year, Granta magazine selected him as one of the best American novelists under the age of thirty-five. He lives in Brooklyn.

April 29 - Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Prolific and multi-genre author reads from her most recent book, a memoir, Not Now, Voyager, just out from Counterpoint.

Among Lynne Sharon Schwartz's 21 books are the novels The Writing on the Wall; In the Family Way, Disturbances in the Field; Leaving Brooklyn (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award) and Rough Strife (nominated for a National Book Award). She's the author of the poetry collection, In Solitary; the memoir, Ruined by Reading, and editor of The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald. Her work has been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays. She teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars.

May 6 - MFA Students & Alumni Reading

The tradition continues: students and alumni take the stage to share their work.