'Hurst slates 8th annual Lit Fest
Two distinguished authors will read from their works and discuss their craft with Mercyhurst students during Mercyhurst College’s 8th Annual Literary Festival this spring.
The opening event on April 15 will feature novelist and short story writer Annie Dawid reading from her most recent work, And Darkness Was Under His Feet, stories loosely based on 100 years of her own family history.
She’ll be followed on April 22 by poet Andrew Hudgins, whose newest book, American Rendering: New and Selected Poems, is slated for publication just days earlier.
The festival concludes April 29 with a third event that celebrates the creative work of Mercyhurst students. The 2010 version of the creative arts magazine Lumen will be unveiled, and a variety of student writing awards will be presented.
All three events begin at 8:15 p.m. in Mercyhurst’s Taylor Little Theatre and are free and open to the public. For more information, contact festival organizer Dr. Kenneth Schiff at 824-2461.
ANNIE DAWID
Annie Dawid lives and writes in the Sangre de Cristo range of Colorado. An English professor and director of creative writing for 15 years at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, she left full-time teaching for full-time writing. She founded Bloomsbury West, a retreat for writers and artists, in 2006.
DAWID
Dawid's book of linking stories, And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories Of A Family, won the 2007 Litchfield Award for Short Fiction and was published in 2008.
A reviewer for Jewish Book World wrote, “This sprawling, warm-hearted story spans six continents and one hundred years, from the 1900 Sabbath table of Reizl and Lazar Solomon and their young sons, in Radautz, Bukovina, to a glorious millennial reunion in Paris. Dawid presents the family history in twenty-four accounts of varying length, rich in personal vignettes though mindful of the overriding historical arc.”
Dawid’s earlier books include Lily in the Desert: Stories (2001) and York Ferry (1993). Another novel, Paradise Undone, about Jim Jones and the mass suicide at Jonestown, has not yet been published, but was a finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest in 2008.
Her story about Sept. 11, 2001, “The Closer You Were, the Less You Knew,” won a prize in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and was published in the winter 2007 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.
ANDREW HUDGINS
Andrew Hudgins has published many volumes of poetry, including Ecstatic in the Poison (2003), Babylon in a Jar (1998), The Glass Hammer (1995), The Never-Ending (1991), After the Lost War (1988), and Saints and Strangers (1985). Overlook Press published his Shut Up, You’re Fine!: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children in 2009, with illustrations by Barry Moser.
HUDGINS
Hudgins also wrote The Glass Anvil, a collection of literary essays, and edited James Agee: Selected Poems. Saints and Strangers was one of three finalists for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; After the Lost War received the Poets’ Prize in 1989, and The Never-Ending was one of five finalists for the National Book Award in 1991.
His poems have appeared in many literary journals. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship is 2004, among many other honors and prizes.
Hudgins joined the faculty of Ohio State University in 2001 as a professor of English and is currently Humanities Distinguished Professor in English. He taught at the University of Cincinnati from 1985 to 2001, and in 1999 he was named Distinguished Research Professor.
Hudgins received an A.B. in English and history from Huntingdon College in 1969, an M.A. in English from the University of Alabama in 1976, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1983.
LUMEN UNVEILING
Once solely a literary magazine, Lumen has matured into a creative arts magazine for Mercyhurst College. Entirely student produced, it regularly wins awards for both its content and its design.
For the sixth year, Lumen will include an interactive CD as well as a printed magazine, both incorporating fiction, poetry, photos and artwork.
Faculty advisers to the staff are Dr. Kenneth Schiff of the English department and Jodi Staniunas-Hopper and Peter Stadtmueller, both of the graphic design program. Print designers for the 2010 edition are Erik Perrino, Samantha Williams and Marie Schiappa; Perrino handled the interactive design. They describe this year’s Lumen as “a celebration of the variety of human expression.” It uses a wide variety of vector art to illustrate the poems and stories, and includes fine art, music and dance components.
Free copies of Lumen will be distributed during this event and will be available afterward from Dr. Schiff at his office in Preston 214.
Awards and cash prizes will be presented during the reception to the top three works included in Lumen. In addition, the P. Barry McAndrew Award for the best essay in literature will be announced.
