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Language Arts Live

Language Arts Live celebrates the diverse vitalities of today’s poetry and fiction.

Bates has a long tradition of welcoming poets and fiction writers to read from their work. In 1932 William Butler Yeats read from his poetry in the Chapel. From the 50s through the 80s, the inimitable Bates professor-poet John Tagliabue brought many distinguished writers to campus, including Allen Ginsberg and Gwendolyn Brooks. Since 1991, the college has hosted readings, class visits, and residencies by over 75 authors, among them Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott; Pulitzer Prize winners Paul Muldoon, Donald Justice, Elizabeth Strout, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Richard Ford; Carolyn Forché, Grace Paley, Galway Kinnell, Marge Piercy, and Sarah Manguso.  Recent Bates alums have also returned to read from their prize-winning first books: Jessica Anthony, Christian Barter, Gabriel Fried, Christina Chiu, and Craig Teicher.  Language Arts Live events are open to the public free of charge.

2012-2013 Language Arts Live Series

Fall

Poet  BRIAN TURNER (presented in cooperation with L/A Arts)
730 pm Sept. 27th, 2012 @ Muskie Archives 

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005) which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA “Best in the West” award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner’s poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea. In 2009, Turner was selected as one of 50 United States Artists Fellows.

Novelist  SARAH BRAUNSTEIN
730 pm Oct. 24th, 2012 @ Chase Lounge

Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W.W. Norton, Feb. 2011; paperback 2012; Italian publication 2012). The novel was a finalist for the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. In 2010 she was named one of “5 Under 35” fiction writers by the National Book Foundation, and she received a 2007 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award.Stories and essays have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the Green Mountain Review, Five Chapters, AGNI, Post Road, Ploughshares, The Sun, Nylon Magazine, Maine Magazine, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. She teaches at Harvard University Extension School, the Stanford University Online Writer’s Studio, and in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. Based in Portland, Maine, she is at work on a second novel and a book of essays.

 Poet  RICHARD BLANCO
730 pm Nov. 8th, 2012 @ Muskie Archives 

Richard Blanco, whose acclaimed first book of poetry, City of a Hundred Fires, explores the yearnings and negotiation of cultural identity as a Cuban-American, received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. His second book, Directions to The Beach of the Dead, won the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center for its continued exploration of the universal themes of cultural identity and homecoming. A third collection, Looking for The Gulf Motel, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2012. His poems have appeared in top literary journals including, The Nation, the New Republic, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and TriQuarterly Review; and several anthologies including, The Best American Poetry, Great American Prose Poems, Breadloaf Anthology of New American Poets, and American Poetry: The Next Generation.

Winter

Poet BRIAN BRODEUR
730 pm Jan. 17th @ Muskie Archives 

Brian Brodeur is the author of Natural Causes (2012), which won the 2011 Autumn House Poetry Prize; Other Latitudes (2008), winner of the University of Akron Press’s 2007 Akron Poetry Prize; and So the Night Cannot Go on Without Us (2007), which won the Fall 2006 White Eagle Coffee Store Press Poetry Chapbook Award. Recent poems and reviews have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Margie, The Missouri Review, Verse Daily, The Minnesota Review, and Pleiades. Brian lives with his wife in Cincinnati where he is the Elliston Fellow in Poetry in the PhD in English and Comparative Literature program at the University of Cincinnati.

Novelist DEB OLIN UNFERTH
730 pm Feb. 11th @ Muskie Archives 

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection Minor Robberies; and the novel Vacation, winner of the Cabell First Novel Award and New York Times Critics Choice. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, the Boston Review, and elsewhere. She has received two Pushcart Prizes and a Creative Capital Grant for Innovative Literature. She is an associate professor at Wesleyan University.

Novelist RON CURRIE Jr.
730 pm Mar. 27th @ Muskie Archives 

Ron Currie Jr. was born and raised in Waterville, Maine, where he still lives. His first book, God Is Dead, won the Young Lions Fiction Award from the New York Public Library and the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His debut novel, Everything Matters!, will be translated into a dozen languages, and is a July Indie Next Pick and Amazon Best of June 2009 selection. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, Swink, The Southeast Review, Glimmer Train, Willow Springs, The Cincinnati Review, Harpur Palate, and New Sudden Fiction (W.W. Norton, 2007).

BATES COLLEGE Reading Series since ca. 1990

  • GRACE PALEY
  • MICHAEL HARPER
  • DEREK WALCOTT
  • SEAMUS HEANEY
  • YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
  • TONI CADE BAMBARA
  • TONY HOAGLAND
  • MARK DOTY
  • SHARON SHEEHE STARK
  • KATE BARNES
  • ANN LAUTERBACH
  • FRED D’AGUIAR
  • HEATHER McHUGH
  • JOHN ENGELS
  • CAROLYN FORCHE (Woodrow Wilson Residency)
  • CHARLES BAXTER
  • DONALD JUSTICE
  • LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO
  • LEO CONNELLAN
  • GALWAY KINNELL
  • SUSAN RICHARDS SHREVE (W. Wilson Residency)
  • SYDNEY LEA
  • ABIGAIL STONE
  • JOHN HAINES
  • CORNELIUS EADY
  • ROBERT PINSKY
  • JOHN TAGLIABUE
  • BETSY SHOLL
  • SONIA SANCHEZ
  • PAMELA ALEXANDER
  • PAUL MULDOON
  • JANE SHORE
  • ELIZABETH STROUT
  • GERALD STERN
  • HENRY TAYLOR
  • CHARLES SIMIC
  • CHRISTINA CHIU (alum)
  • MARGE PIERCY
  • DAVID WAGONER
  • DEBRA SPARK
  • RICHARD RUSSO
  • CARL DENNIS
  • BARON WORMSER
  • LORNA GOODISON
  • DONALD HALL
  • CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS
  • C.K. WILLIAMS
  • CLEOPATRA MATHIS
  • RICHARD FORD
  • IRA SADOFF
  • LIZ STROUT (alum)
  • JEAN MONAHAN (alum)
  • PETER FALLON
  • CHRISTIAN BARTER (alum)
  • TRACY K. SMITH
  • GABRIEL FRIED (alum)
  • JOANNE KYGER
  • PAT ROSAL
  • ADRIAN BLEVINS
  • CRAIG TEICHER (alum)
  • JEFFREY THOMSON
  • SAMANTHA HUNT
  • RAVI SHANKAR
  • SARA MANGUSO
  • BRIAN KIM STEFANS
  • ELIZABETH BRADFIELD
  • CAROLINE KNOX
  • DARA WEIR
  • DOROTHEA LASKY
  • JAMES HANNAHAM
  • JESSICA ANTHONY (alum)
  • PAUL LAFARGE
  • MARIANNE BORUCH
  • WESLEY McNAIR
  • DEBRA SPARK
  • COURTNEY ELDRIDGE
  • ANDER MONSON
  • EMILY BARTON
  • ARACELIS GIRMAY
  • MAJOR JACKSON
  • DINAW MENGESTU
  • GREGORY PARDLO
  • LAURA VAN DEN BERG
  • JAMES RICHARDSON
  • DAWN POTTER
  • MEG KEARNEY
  • JUSTIN TUSSING

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