English

English

Contemporary Writers Series

Founded with a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation and continued through the Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professorship Program, the writer series is generously supported today by the Office of Academic Affairs and the Hassett and Scoma Endowments, and with the cooperation of The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Just Buffalo Literary Center, Western New York Writing Project, and Talking Leaves Books.

FALL 2012

Stephen Kuusisto imageStephen Kuusisto

Thursday, October 17, 7:00 p.m.
Montante Cultural Center

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of two memoirs, Planet of the Blind and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, and two collections of poetry, Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of Hobart College and the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, and a Fulbright Scholar, he is director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program at Syracuse University, where he holds a University Professorship in the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies.

SPRING 2013

Tracy Smith imageTracy K. Smith

Thursday, March 13, 7:00 p.m.
Grupp Fireside Lounge

Born in Massachusetts, Tracy K. Smith earned her BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. She is the author of three books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essence Literary Award; and Life on Mars (2011), which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn.

Paula Meehan imagePaula Meehan

Thursday, April 3 or April 10, 7:00 p.m.
Montante Cultural Center
11th Annual Hassett Reading

Paula Meehan was raised in two working-class districts in Dublin. She attended Trinity College and earned an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. She is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Painting Rain. She has also written plays and has taught at Trinity College and at University College Dublin. She’s received the Martin Tonder Award for Literature, the Butler Award for Poetry from the Irish American Cultural Institute, and has had two of her volumes of poetry short-listed for the Irish Times Literary Award. She lives in Dublin and conducts workshops in universities, inner-city communities, and prisons.

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