Each summer, the Plymouth Writing Project invites contemporary authors to visit our summer institutes to talk about their experiences writing, publishing and teaching. Summer institute fellows are specifically expected to attend, and these events are also open to the public within the limits of the available venue. You may contact site director Dr. Meg Petersen for more details.
All Sessions will be held in Frost Commons on the Plymouth State University Campus 1:30-4 p.m. All sessions are free of charge and open to the public.
Author Visits for our 2011 Summer Institute
All Sessions will be held on the Plymouth State University Campus 1:30-4:00. All sessions are free of charge and open to the public.
June 28th Liz Ahl
Liz Ahl teaches poetry and creative writing at Plymouth State University, where she is the Chair of the English Department. She has published poetry in various literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, The American Voice, The Formalist, Southern Poetry Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 5AM, Sundog, and The Woman’s Review of Books. She has published two books of poetry, A Thirst That’s Partly Mine and Luck.
July 5thCarolyn Coman
Carolyn Coman’s acclaimed books for children and young adults include What Jamie Saw (a National Book Award finalist and Newbery Honor Book) and Many Stones (a National Book Award finalist and Printz Honor Book) and The Big House (Children’s Book Sense Pick). Her most recent book for children is The Memory Bank, a graphic story book created with artist Rob Shepperson. Her professional book for teachers, Writing Stories: Ideas, Exercises and Encouragement for Teachers and Writers of all ages, has just been published by Stenhouse.
July 12th J. Kates
| Jim Kates is a poet, literary translator and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press, a non-profit press that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. He has received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in poetry and translation, as well as an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems and several books of translation of French and Russian poetry. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association, he is also the co-translator of three books of Latin American poetry. | |
July 19th Rhina P. Espaillat
Rhina P. Espaillat was born in Santo Domingo and spent her early childhood in La Vega, Dominican Republic. In 1939, when she was seven, she joined her family, exiles from Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship who had settled in New York City. At sixteen, she became a member of the Poetry Society of America and began publishing her work. She received a BA from Hunter College of the City University of New York and an MA from Queens College, also in New York City. She worked briefly as an English and Social Studies teacher until the birth of her first child. In 1965, she returned to high-school English teaching until her husband retired in 1980, when she resumed writing full time. In 1990 they moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts. She has published eight full-length books and three chapbooks, comprising poetry, essays and short stories in both English and her native Spanish. Her work has appeared in over fifty anthologies, and has earned her several national and international awards, including the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Award, and a Robert Frost Award for translation.
July 26th The Plymouth Writers’ Group
The Plymouth Writers Group is an association of teacher/writers dedicated to publishing an annual literary anthology comprised entirely of teachers’ writing. Their aim is to celebrate the writing teachers do—with their classes, in summer writing workshops and on their own time. They hope to provide them with an outlet specifically geared to the publication of teachers’ work. They first published an anthology of teachers’ writing in 1996. This reading will feature teacher-writers published in the anthologies talking about their writing process and reading from their work.
Overcast. Fog. Temperature: 60; Wind: Calm; Conditions as of Sat May 26 at 06:00 AM EDT