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| Craig Lesley |
The Center for Writing and Learning (CWL) has created a lecture series entitled The Craft of Writing, which focuses on the value of writing across the curriculum. The series presents a wide range of OSU faculty, academic, and professional writers, as well as editors, literary agents, publishers, and professionals involved in all aspects of the writing process. In addition to reading their work, speakers for the Craft of Writing talk about how they draft, revise, publish, and think about their writing in their discipline. In the past, the Craft of Writing Series has featured historians, memoirists, novelists, poets, philosophers, editors, and essayists. The goal of the series is to give students, faculty, and members of the Corvallis community an opportunity to listen to and learn from people who have discovered how important writing is in their professional and personal lives.
In the Fall Term of 2004, the Craft of Writing Series Committee became a student-run organization. We can be reached by sending an email to CraftofWriting@gmail.com or by attending one of our meetings on Mondays at 4:00pm in Waldo 121. Meetings are held every Monday during Fall, Winter, and Spring Terms.
Friday, October 19th:Two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Craig Lesley, will be visiting Oregon State University to deliver a reading, sign books, and answer questions. Lesley's books, Winterkill, River Song, and The Sky Fisherman won him three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards, as well as a Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for Best Novel. He also received an Oregon Book Award for his novel Storm Riders. Currently, he is the Writer-in-Residence at Portland State Univerity. The reading will take place on Friday, October 19th, in the Memorial Union Journey Room at 4:00 pm., and is free and open to the public.
Without sensationalism or self-pity, unsparingly compassionate, Craig Lesley writes of the marginal, the dispossessed, the hardscrabble people of America. He writes with grace and gravity and the driest humor, the quietest passion, the rarest, unjudging justice. --Ursula K. LeGuin
Friday, May 18, 2007: Tom Spanbauer, Portland author of Now is the Hour and The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, will be visiting Oregon State to deliver read from his work, hold a question and answer session, and do a book signing. Hosted by the Craft of Writing Series in conjunction with OSU Queer Pride Week, his reading will take place on Friday, May 18, in the Owen Hall, room 106, at 4:00 pm., and is free and open to the public.
Tom Spanbauer is the author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for best fiction, and a "dazzlingly accomplished" novel, according to the Washington Post. His most recent book, Now is the Hour, was selected by Publisher's Weekly as one of the 100 best books of 2006. Spanbauer is a Pulitzer nominee and the founder of Dangerous Writing, a writing workshop that has produced such writers as Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. Believing that "fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer," Spanbauer writes about the complex interplay of sexual orientation, race, and family, and is perhaps most known for his queer perspective on the West.
The event is co-sponsored by the Craft of Writing Series, the Rainbow Continuum (as part of Queer Pride Week), the Center for Writing and Learning, the Native American Student Association, and the Native American Longhouse.
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007: Oregon Book Award finalist Geronimo Tagatac comes to Oregon State University to read from his short story collection, The Weight of the Sun, and to share his unique life experiences with the community.
The event on May 3rd, hosted by the Craft of Writing Series, begins at 7:00 pm in the Journey Room of OSU's Memorial Union and is free and open to the public.
Tagatac's first book, The Weight of the Sun, was nominated for the 2006 H.L. Davis Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in such publications as Writers' Forum, The Northwest Review, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Clackamas Literary Review and most recently in Best Stories of the American West. He has also received the Oregon Literary Fellowship and the Fishtrap Fellowship.
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007: Two-time Oregon Book Award winner Gina Ochsner comes to OSU to read from her most recent short story collection, People I Wanted to Be, and to share her experiences, insights, and vision with the OSU community and the public. The event takes place in the Valley Library Rotunda. Ochsner is an Oregon native who has won more than twenty literary awards, including the William Faulkner Award, the Raymond Carver Prize, the Chelsea Award for Short Fiction, and the PNBA Book Award. Her stories have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Best American Non-Required Reading, Prairie Schooner, and many others. Ochsner's first collection, The Necessary Grace to Fall, won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was an Austin Chronicle Top Ten Pick. In addition to reading from her work, Ochsner will conclude her talk with a question and answer session and book signing.
Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 4:00 pm: Jennifer Richter. Celebrated poet and former OSU instructor, Jennifer Richter shares her vision of verse and prose poetry with the OSU and Corvallis community in a reading and talk taking place in room 213 of the Memorial Union. A recipient of the prestigious Wallace Stegner and Jones Lectureship and Stanford University, Richter has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, the Carolina Quarterly, as well as the Corvallis-based journal CALYX. An experienced and respected teacher, Richter has led poetry workshops for children, adults, and recovering substance abusers. In addition to a selection of her work, the reading will feature insight into the process of writing, prose poetry, and will be followed by a question and answer session.
November 16, 2005: The Craft of Writing Series kicks off the 2005 - 2006 program with a reading by the best selling and critically acclaimed author Pam Houston on Wednesday, November 16th at 6:00pm in the LaSells Stewart Center. Houston is the author of the story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness, which won the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, as well as the collection Waltzing the Cat, which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. She has also written a collection of essays entitled A Little More About Me and her first novel, Sighthound was published in January, 2005. Houston's stories have been selected for some of the most prestigous awards in contemporary American literautre, including The Pushcart Prize, The O. Henry Awards, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Monday, April 17, 2006: A diverse group of students representing many majors and cultures, the Black Poets Society, or BPS, is open to all students and regularly performs in the Corvallis area. Offering a slam to showcase the group’s talents and the intricacies of their craft, this event also featured an open-mic for anyone willing to read, as well as an introduction from graduating senior and CWS member, Theo Sery.
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006: the Craft of Writing Series, in conjunction with the Visiting Artist Series and the Center for Writing and Learning hosts recent Oregon State Honors College graduate in Fine Arts Bryan Ko. His presentation, "Showing & Telling: Designing a Career in Picture Books," emphasizes Ko´s unique vision of the world of picture-books, as well as relate his experience with the challenges and inspirations found in starting a career in this highly competitive genre. The event begins at 4:00 PM in the Joyce Powell Leadership Center Journey Room of OSU’s Memorial Union.
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006: Charles D'Ambrosio. D'Ambrosio is nationally known, frequently anthologized and often studied in creative writing and contemporary American Literature classes at OSU. In addition to The Dead Fish Museum, he is the author of another short story collection entitled The Point, published in 1996, and a book of essays entitled Orphans, published in 2005. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, several anthologies including Best American Short Stories, and the O'Henry Prize Stories. D'Ambrosio's work has received many prizes including the Pushcart Prize for Fiction, a James Michener Fellowship and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. Originally from Seattle, Washington, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop where he is currently teaching as a visiting faculty member.
November 10, 2004: Diane Middlebrook, "Call and Response: The creative partnership of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes." Diane Middlebrook, a distinguished scholar, was the Chair of the National Book Award Non-Fiction Committee in 2004 and gave an electrifying talk about her most recent book, Her Husband, which was on the creative relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The book became an L.A. Times bestseller, and will be featured in A&E’s Biography program on Sylvia Plath in May 2005. Her previous biography on the poet Anne Sexton was published in 1991 and spent eight weeks as a New York Times best seller. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and received the Gold Medal in non-fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California
April 6th, 2005: Joseph Tate, “Into Radiohead, or How to Disappear Completely in Music, Art, and Politics.�? OSU English Instructor Joseph Tate delivers a talk on his personal experience with the rock band from Oxford, England. After Radiohead’s fourth studio album, Kid A, was released, Tate started a website entitled “Pulk-Pull: An Ongoing Investigation of the Music and Art of Radiohead.�? Since then, he has followed the group’s actions closely, offering scores of interpretations of the band’s music and lyrics and publishing an essay on their antivideos. His CWS talk precedes his latest project: The Music and Art of Radiohead, a collection of essays that he edited.
May 19, 2005: Sherman Alexie. This talk is co-sponsored with Student Affairs, Indian Education Office, and Diversity Development. As one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th and 21st centuries, Sherman Alexie has produced an impressive body of distinguished short stories, novels, and screenplays, one of which he directed. Additionally, Alexie co-wrote and produced a soundtrack for his 1995 film, Reservation Blues. Although it would be disingenuous to label him an “ethnic�? writer, as a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie’s dedication to expressing the condition of Native Americans through all of these genres makes him a powerful, credible, and accessible voice in American literature and film.
January 22, 2004: Sandra Scofield, "From Memory to Narrative: What Does Truth Have to Do With It?" Sandra Scofield is the author of seven novels (1989-1996), including Beyond Deserving, a 1991 Finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; A Chance to See Egypt, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters 1997 Jesse Jones Fiction Award; and three finalists for the Oregon Book Awards. Egypt was also nominated for the 1998 Dublin International Impac Awards. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Institute of Letters, and the Oregon Arts Commission. Her Craft of Writing talk grows out of writing her 8th and most recent book, a memoir entitled Occasions of Sin.
February 19, 2004: Scott Nadelson. As an OSU graduate with his master's degree in creative writing, Scott reads from his recently published first collection of short stories entitled Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories. His talk covers the experience of both writing and publishing his first book.
Spring term feature-speakers included Marjorie Sandor, an OSU faculty member in creative writing and Colleen Mohyde, a literary agent for the Doe Coover Agency in Boston.
For more information about the Craft of Writing Series, contact Dennis Bennett at (541) 737-2932 or email him at Dennis.Bennett @ oregonstate.edu
