The School of Humanities and Sciences and the Department of Writing are pleased to welcome nonfiction writer Amitava Kumar, fiction writer ZZ Packer, and poet Evie Shockley as part of this semester’s Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. They will be reading, respectively, at 7:30pm on September 7th and September 28th in Clark Lounge, and October 26th in Klingenstein Lounge, Egbert Hal. The readings are free and open to the public.
Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of literary non-fiction including Passport Photos, Bombay-London-New York, and Husband of a Fanatic, as well as an acclaimed novel, Home Products. His latest book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, was described by The New York Times as a “perceptive and soulful” meditation on “the cultural and human repercussions” of the global war on terror. Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.
ZZ Packer is the author of the short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a PEN/Faulkner finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Best American Short Stories. Her nonfiction has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Essence, O, The Believer and Salon. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was named one America’s Best Young novelists by Granta and one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker.
Evie Shockley is the author of four collections of poetry: the new black, a half-red sea, and two chapbooks and the forthcoming study, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry. Her poems have appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies, including The Nation, TriQuarterly Online, Talisman, Iron Horse Review, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Hambone, Callaloo, and Harvard Review. Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University.
In addition to giving a reading, all three Distinguished Visiting Writers will contribute to teaching a 1-credit master class to Ithaca College students. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Catherine Taylor at ctaylor@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20110906092302669