Friday, September 19th, Union 212, 4:00 PM
V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan
Novelist

EDUCATION:
-Harvard Graduate, 2002
-Iowa's Writers' Workshop, M.F.A., 2005  
-Columbia Graduate School Journalism, M.A., 2007

HONORS:
-Bennett Fellow and Writer-In-Resident at Phillips Exeter Academy, 2005-2006
-Bollinger Fellow specializing in Arts & Culture journalism, 2007
-Vice President of the South Asian Journalists Association
-Member of the graduate board of the Harvard Crimson

REVIEWS:
"As if she were stringing a necklace of bright beads, the author relates the stories of Yalini's Sri Lankan forebears in lapidary folkloric narratives, some no longer than a few sentences…. What she does here, she does quite affectingly."  As reviewed in The Boston Globe.

Friday, October 10th, Union 212, 4:00 PM
Meredith Hall
Memoirist

EDUCATION:
-Bowdoin College Graduate (at age 44)

HONORS:
-Won $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation
-Pushcart Prize
-Notable essay recognition in Best American Essays

REVIEWS:
Francine Prose, of O Magazine, states that Hall's Without a Map "…may forever change the way you look at small-town life. [Her] memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance. Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind, have made us who we are."

Wednesday, October 22nd, Forum Hall, 7:30 PM
Charles Simic
Poet

EDUCATION:
-New York University, B.A., 1966

HONORS:
-15th Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress, 2007
-Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, 2000
-Jackstraws, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, 1999
-Academy Fellowship, 1998
-American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1995
-Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1990

REVIEWS:
The Harvard Review-
"There are few poets writing in America today who share his lavish appetite for the bizarre, his inexhaustible repertoire of indelible character and gestures… Simic is perhaps our most disquieting muse."

Wednesday, November 19th, Union 212, 4-5 PM

Janice A. Radway

Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Professor of Gender Studies and American Studies at Northwestern University

"Girls' Zines and the Problem of the Future: Gender, Narrative, Subjectivity"

Friday, April 3rd, Beach Museum, 7:30-8:30 PM

KEVIN RABAS
Poet

EDUCATION:
-Kansas State University Alumnus, M.A., 1998
-Kansas University, Ph.D., 2002-2007

HONORS:
-Langston Hughes Award
-Salina New Voice Award

REVIEWS:
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate-
"…Rabas has an authentic voice." She goes further to say, "…As an accomplished musician, he has the ability to translate sound into words."

Friday, April 10th, Union Little Theatre, 4-5 PM
Helena Maria Viramontes
Fiction Writer

Helena Maria Viramontes is Professor of English with the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University. An award-winning writer, she has received critical acclaim for her depictions of Chicano/a culture. Her short stories and novels focus on the struggles of Chicana women in their families and society. Author of The Moths and Other Stories (1985) and Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), Viramontes recently published Their Dogs Came with Them (2007). In addition to her creative work, Viramontes has published Chicana Creativity and Criticism (1996) and Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film (1996), both co-edited with Maria Herrera Sobek.

"[W]orking firmly in the social-realist vein of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, [Viramontes] paints a harrowing ensemble portrait of migrant laborers in California's fruit fields." -- Publishers Weekly, reviewing Under the Feet of Jesus (1995)

"The author of a short story collection, The Moths (1995), circles the same territory in this furious stream-of-consciousness depiction of Latino culture in east L.A. from 1960 to 1970. [...] Clarity is nowhere near the top of the list of Viramontes' concerns, which will frustrate some readers. But those who are up for the ride may find that her emotionally raw novel reads, at times, like a crash course in survival strategies for those immersed in the despair and violence of the inner city." -- Joanne Wilkinson for Booklist, reviewing Their Dogs Came with Them (2007)

Graduate Links

Children's Literature

Creative Writing

Cultural Studies

Language, Composition,
and Rhetoric

Literature

Technical Writing and
Professional Communication

Related Links

Past Visiting Writers and Speakers

Calendar

Department of English
108 E/CS Building
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas
66506-6501
english@ksu.edu
Phone (785) 532-6716
FAX (785) 532-2192