SPRING 2012 READINGS

WEDNESDAY, February 15, 7:30 p.m., Soda Center with JUDITH CLAIRE MITCHELL

Judith Claire Mitchell is the author of the novel The Last Day of the War. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, The Iowa Review, and Best of the Fiction Workshops. A former recipient of the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship, she is currently a professor in the English Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she co-directs the Program in Creative Writing and directs the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

WEDNESDAY, March 14, 7:30 p.m., Soda Center with SHANE BOOK 

Shane Book’s first collection, Ceiling of Sticks (University of Nebraska Press, 2010) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. His work has appeared in fifteen anthologies and over forty magazines in the U.S., U.K., and Canada—and on film. His honors include a New York Times Fellowship in Poetry, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a National Magazine Award.

WEDNESDAY, April 11, 7:30 p.m., Soda Center with SAMINA ALI

Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India and raised both there and in the United States. Her debut novel, Madras On Rainy Days, was awarded the Prix Premier Roman Etranger 2005 Award by France and was also chosen as the finalist for both the PEN/Hemingway Award in Fiction as well as the California Book Reviewers Award. Poets & Writers magazine named Madras as one of the Top 5 Best Debut Novels of the Year in 2004. Ali speaks regularly at colleges across the country and has traveled internationally with the U.S. State Department.  She has written for Self and Child magazines, The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times.

WEDNESDAY, May 9, 7:30 p.m., Soda Center

WESLEY GIBSON AND TINA PARSONS

Wesley Gibson received his MFA from Brown University and is the author of You Are Here: A Memoir of Arrival and the novels Shelter and Personal Saviors. His stories have appeared in The Village Voice and the Mississippi Review and his art criticism has appeared in The New Art Examiner. He edits the literary journal Bloom and has been awarded residencies to Yaddo and MacDowell artists’ colonies. He lives in San Francisco and teaches in the MFA Program at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Tina Polito Parsons earned her degree in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MFA in nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College.  Her essays have been published in the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and East Bay Monthly, and in the anthologies Something That Matters and In Real Life. She has taught composition, ghost-written medical columns, worked as a resume writer and college application essay consultant for high school students, all while continuing to write. Her blog—a mix of memoir and reportage called China Ate My Jeans—is about her year seeking, finding and buying products made in the United States.

 ALL READINGS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

For More information on The Creative Writing Reading Series please contact Sara Mumolo, (925)631-8556 or sm13@stmarys-ca.edu.