2009 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival Schedule

2009 Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, October 29 - 31


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29
8:00 - 9:15 p.m.
Readings by Sebastian Agudelo and Fred Leebron
Student Center Auditorium

9:15 - 10:00 p.m.
Festival Reception (sponsored by the SIUC Dept. of English)
Student Center J.W. Corker Lounge


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30
- panel discussions, Student Center Auditorium -

10:00 - 10:50 a.m.
Poetry Panel featuring Sebastian Agudelo, Eugene Gloria, David Kirby, and William Notter

11:00 - 11:50 a.m.
Fiction Panel featuring Jane Alison, Fred Leebron, L.E. Miller, and Donald Ray Pollock

2:00 - 3:15 p.m.
Readings by William Notter and L.E. Miller
Student Center Auditorium

3:15 - 4:30 p.m.
Reception and Booksigning featuring all festival readers
Student Center Old Main Lounge

5:00 - 6:15 p.m.
Readings by Donald Ray Pollock and David Kirby
Student Center Auditorium


SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31
11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Readings from the new CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW, “Color Wheel: Cultural Heritages in the 21st Century”
Student Center Auditorium

1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Readings by Eugene Gloria and Jane Alison
Student Center Auditorium


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- Sebastian Agudelo

Sebastian Agudelo was born in Mexico City, and he earned his MA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His poetry collection, TO THE BONE, was selected by Mark Doty as the winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize in 2008, and he is also the author of the artist collaboration book ON COLLECTING, published by Shandy Press. His poems have in appeared in numerous periodicals including LUCID STONE, BELLINGHAM REVIEW, MUVFAGGE, and KARAMU, and his translations of Robert Lowell and Frank O’Hara have been published by EDICIONES EL EQUILIBRISTA. Agudelo has taught at Temple University, Drexel University, and The University of the Arts, and this Fall he’s offering a poetry workshop for the MFA program at Rutgers.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- Jane Alison

Jane Alison was born in Canberra, Australia, and spent two years in Australia as a small child, growing up mainly in the United States as a child of diplomatic parents. She attended public schools in Washington, D.C., and then earned a B.A. in classics from Princeton University in 1983. Before writing fiction, she worked as an administrator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, as a production artist for the Washington City Paper, as an editor for the Miami New Times, and as a proposal and speech-writer for Tulane University. She also worked as a freelance editor and illustrator before attending Columbia University to study creative writing.

Her first novel, THE LOVE-ARTIST, was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and has been translated into seven languages. It was followed by THE MARRIAGE OF THE SEA, a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. Her third novel, NATIVES AND EXOTICS, appeared in 2005 and was one of that summer's recommended readings by Alan Cheuse of National Public Radio. Her latest book is a memoir, THE SISTERS ANTIPODES, published in 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was a PEOPLE Magazine Editor's Pick and has also been published in Australia and the Netherlands. Her short fiction and essays have recently appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES; INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE; TRIQUARTERLY; YOU Magazine; and FIVE POINTS. She has also written several biographies for children and co-edited with Harold Bloom a critical series on women writers. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Programs at the University of Miami and at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- Eugene Gloria

Eugene Gloria was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in San Francisco, California. He earned his BA from San Francisco State University, his MA from Miami University of Ohio, and his MFA from the University of Oregon. He is the author of two books of poems: HOODLUM BIRDS, published in the Penguin Poets Series in 2006; and DRIVERS AT THE SHORT-TIME MOTEL, which was selected for the 1999 National Poetry Series and the 2001 Asian American Literary Award. Gloria’s poems have appeared widely in journals, including PLOUGHSHARES, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and THE GETTYSBURG REVIEW. He has received a Fulbright Fellowship, an artist grant from the San Francisco Art Commission, 96 Inc.’s Bruce P. Rossley Literary Award, and the Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award. He has been a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, and at Le Château de Lavigny in Switzerland. He currently teaches creative writing and English literature at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- David Kirby

David Kirby is the winner of the 2009 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry for his collection of poems THE TEMPLE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. He is the author or co-author of twenty-nine books, including the poetry collections THE HOUSE ON BOULEVARD ST.: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, THE HA-HA, THE HOUSE OF BLUE LIGHT, and THE TRAVELING LIBRARY, and essay collections, including WHAT IS A BOOK? and ULTRA-TALK: JOHNNY CASH, THE MAFIA, SHAKESPEARE, DRUM MUSIC, ST. TERESA OF AVILA, AND 17 OTHER COLOSSAL TOPICS OF CONVERSATION. He has received many honors for his work, including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and his work appears frequently in the BEST AMERICAN POETRY and PUSHCART PRIZE volumes. David Kirby has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Florida Arts Council. His poetry has appeared in many publications, including THE KENYON REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN REVIEW, and PLOUGHSHARES. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Kirby also writes regularly for THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, and CHICAGO TRIBUNE. He currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida, where he is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida State University.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- Fred Leebron

Fred Leebron has been a faculty member at Gettysburg College since 1997. He is also program director of the master's in fine arts in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, and serves as curriculum director of the Tinker Mountain Writers' Workshop at Hollins University, Virginia.

He has received several writing awards, including a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener Award, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and an O. Henry Award. Leebron received a bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University, a master's from the Johns Hopkins University and a master's in fine arts from the University of Iowa.

Fred Leebron is the author of three novels: SIX FIGURES (which was made into a movie featured at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005), IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS, and OUT WEST. He also co-edited POSTMODERN AMERICAN FICTION: A NORTON ANTHOLOGY and co-authored CREATING FICTION: A WRITER’S COMPANION. His work has also appeared in magazines and anthologies such as TIN HOUSE, DOUBLETAKE, GRAND STREET, PLOUGHSHARES, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, TRIQUARTERLY, FLASH FICTION, MORE, and REDBOOK. A new long story of his, “Life in Wartime,” has been optioned, and he is currently working on its novelization so that it can be made into a feature film.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- L.E. Miller

L.E. Miller has published short fiction in THE PEN/O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2009 (for her story "Kind," which was originally published in THE MISSOURI REVIEW); SCRIBNER'S BEST OF THE FICTION WORKSHOPS 1999, edited by Sherman Alexie; and twice in CALYX. Miller holds an MA in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire. She lives in Newbury, Massachusetts, and is at work on a collection of short stories.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- William Notter

William Notter won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award for his collection HOLDING EVERYTHING DOWN, which was published by Southern Illinois University Press in Fall 2009. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nevada Arts Council, and Sierra Arts Foundation, and was awarded the Walton Fellowship twice from the University of Arkansas program in creative writing. His chapbook, MORE SPACE THAN ANYONE CAN STAND, was published as the 2001 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize winner from Texas Review Press. His poems have appeared in ALASKA QUARTERLY REVIEW, AGNI ONLINE, ASCENT, THE CHATTAHOOCHEE REVIEW, CONNECTICUT REVIEW, THE MIDWEST QUARERLY, SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW, WILLOW SPRINGS, the anthology GOOD POEMS FOR HARD TIMES, and on NPR’s THE WRITER’S ALMANAC. He received a BA from the University of Evansville and an MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and he has taught writing at Grand Valley State University and the University of Nevada, Reno.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is the winner of the 2009 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose for his collection of stories KNOCKEMSTIFF. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THIRD COAST, THE JOURNAL, SOU’WESTER, CHIRON REVIEW, RIVER STYX, BOULEVARD, FOLIO, and THE BERKELEY FICTION REVIEW. Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. He dropped out of high school at seventeen to work in a meatpacking plant, and then spent thirty-two years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. Currently, he is a graduate student in the MFA program at Ohio State University and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy, a high school English teacher. He hopes to someday teach fiction writing.

He is currently at work on a novel set in 1965, about a serial killer named Arvin Eugene Russell.


The festival is sponsored by GRASSROOTS, the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Department of English’s undergraduate literary magazine. The Devil’s Kitchen Fall Literary Festival is made possible through funding from the SIUC Fine Arts Activity Fee, the SIUC Creative Writing Program’s Visiting Writers Series, and CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW.