McNeese MFA

Jack B. Bedell The Leo Luke Marcello Poetry Reading Series	September 15, 2007 BBC
Michael Knight Fiction	October 26, 2007 BBC
Joseph Harrison Poetry	March 1, 2008 BBC
John Wood Lecture “Sex, Death and God: Reflections on Poetry and History”	March 15, 2008 BBC
Sheryl St. Germain Lecture	April 9, 2008 BBC
Ron Carlson Fiction	May 10, 2008 BBC
Ava Haymon The Leo Luke Marcello Poetry Reading Series	September 19, 2008 BBC
Jeanne Leiby Fiction	October 10, 2008 BBC
Steven Wingate Fiction	February 6, 2009 BBC
Susan Ludvigson Poetry	March 21, 2009 BBC
ZZ Packer Fiction	April 3, 2009 BBC

Jack B. Bedell (Saturday, September 15) Poet Jack B. Bedell was born and raised in Houma, Louisiana, in 1966. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Arkansas—Fayetteville, and a Ph.D. in English/creative writing from the University of Louisiana--Lafayette. Currently, he is a Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also serves as Editor of Louisiana Literature. His poetry, reviews and criticism have appeared in several journals including Southern Review, Hudson Review, Connecticut Review, Texas Review, Kansas Quarterly, West Branch, Yarrow, Kentucky Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Negative Capability, Short Story, and Critique. His chapbook, Sleeping with the Net-Maker, was published in 1996 by The Devil’s Millhopper press. His first full-length collection, At the Bonehouse, won the 1997 Breakthrough Award for Southern and Southwestern Poets and was published by the Texas A&M Press Consortium. His most recent collections are What Passes for Love and Come Rain, Come Shine, both published by Texas Review Press. Bedell is also a recent recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship. Back To Top
Michael Knight (Friday, October 26) Author Michael Knight will be reading at the BCC on Friday, October 26 at 8:00 pm. Knight, who directs the creative writing program at UT-Knoxville, is the author of two short story collections (Dogfight and Goodnight, Nobody and a novel, Divining Rod). His most recent book, Holiday Season, was hailed by the New York Times as "authentic and intense." Neil Connelly, director of McNeese's MFA program, says of Knight, "Michael's a brilliant writer with a rich emotional spectrum. His work may make you laugh or cry, but I guarantee you'll have a powerful response." The reading, sponsored by the Department of Languages and the Master of Fine Arts program, will be free and open to the public. Back To Top
Joseph Harrison (Saturday, March 1) Joseph Harrison will be reading at the BCC on Saturday, March 1 at 7:00 pm. Joseph Harrison was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1957, grew up in northern Virginia and Alabama, and took his BA from Yale in 1979 and his MA from Johns Hopkins in 1986. His poems have appeared in various journals, amongst them The Antioch Review, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, as well as in The Best American Poetry 1998. His book Someone Else’s Name was published by Waywiser in the UK in 2003 and by Zoo Press in the USA, and was a runner-up for the 2005 Poet’s Prize. Earlier in 2005, he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The reading, sponsored by the Department of Languages and the Master of Fine Arts program, will be free and open to the public. Back To Top
John Wood (Saturday, March 15) John Wood will be reading at the BCC on Saturday, March 15 at 7:00 pm. Dr. Wood thinks that poetry has been misdirected. We now -- mistakenly, he says – think that poetry must consist only of deeply serious, contemplative, personal meditations. But he says that humor has a definite place in poetry, and that we need narratives that tell stories and engage the reader in more than just the life of the poet. He explored these thoughts in a lecture at Harvard’s Barker Center for the Humanities, and he’s coming back to Lake Charles to continue the discussion. He will give us his thoughts on poetry and history, illustrated by slides of 20th century sculpture and painting and 19th century photographs, and accompanied by readings from his own work, including poems from a new book inspired by 19th century photographic portraits. Dr. Wood is a prize-winning poet and art historian, as well as founder and 25-year director of McNeese’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. The reading, sponsored by the Department of Languages and the Master of Fine Arts program, as well as The Frank Granger Poetry Reading Series, will be free and open to the public. Back To Top
Sheryl St. Germain (Wednesday, April 9) A native of New Orleans, Sheryl St. Germain has taught creative writing at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Knox College and Iowa State University. She currently directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham College where she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has received several awards, including two NEA Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, the Ki Davis Award from the Aspen Writers Foundation, and most recently the William Faulkner Award for the personal essay. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including TriQuarterly Review, Chatahoochee Review, New Letters, River Styx and Calyx. Her books include Going Home, The Mask of Medusa, Making Bread at Midnight, How Heavy the Breath of God, and The Journals of Scheherazade. She has also published a book of translations of the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, Je Suis Cadien. A book of lyric essays, Swamp Songs: the Making of an Unruly Woman, was published in 2003 by The University of Utah Press. She will be reading from her most recent book of poems, Let it Be a Dark Roux. Back To Top
Ron Carlson (Saturday, May 10) Ron Carlson will be reading at the BCC on Saturday, May 10 at 8:00 pm. Ron is the author of nine works of fiction, including the story collections At the Jim Bridger and A Kind of Flying. His most recent novel, Five Skies, follows three outcasts as they build an Evil Knievel style ramp for a canyon jump. Carlson’s accolades include Pushcart and O’Henry Prizes and a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature award. He is also the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Carlson is the newly named director of the Graduate MFA Program in Fiction at the University of California at Irvine. He is this year’s Ada Vincent Visiting Writer. The reading, sponsored by the Department of Languages and the Master of Fine Arts program, will be free and open to the public. Back To Top
Ava Haymon (Friday, September 19) Ava Leavell Haymon's poems appear in journals such as Poetry, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun; in five chapbooks; and in two collections, The Strict Economy of Fire and Kitchen Heat, with another forthcoming, all from LSU Press. She holds the Louisiana Literature prize for poetry in 2003. She teaches in Louisiana during the academic year and in New Mexico in the summer, where she directs a retreat center for writers and artists. Back To Top
Jeanne Leiby (Friday, October 10) Jeanne Leiby grew up downriver Detroit. She graduated from the University of Michigan, earned her MA from the Bread Loaf School of English/Middlebury College, and her MFA from the University of Alabama. Her stories have appeared in Fiction, New Orleans Review, The Greensboro Review, and Indiana Review, among others. For ten years, she lived in Orlando, Florida, teaching creative writing at the University of Central Florida and editing The Florida Review. In 2008, she moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as an associate professor of English at Louisiana State University and editor of The Southern Review. Her collection Downriver, published by Carolina Wren Press, was winner of the 2006 Doris Bakwin Award. Back To Top
Steven Wingate (Friday, February 6) Steven Wingate's debut short story collection Wifeshopping won the 2007 Bakeless Prize in fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin in July 2008. His fiction, reviews, and assorted prose have appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, The Pinch, The Journal, Brand (UK), Sonora Review, and Colorado Review. He studied in the Creative Writing MFA program at McNeese in 1997 and 1998 and currently teaches writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he lives with his wife and two sons. Back To Top
Susan Ludvigson (Saturday, March 21) Susan Ludvigson is the author of nine volumes of poems and the recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Fulbright, NEA and Witter Bynner Fellowships. A native of Wisconsin, she has made her home in the South for more than 30 years and travels to France as much as possible. She teaches at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. Her newest book, Escaping the House of Certainty, marks a departure from her previous verse and taps a new experimental vein for the poet, with some of the poems resembling abstract art. She has also been featured on Garrison Keillor's widely syndicated "Writer's Almanac." Back To Top
ZZ Packer (Friday, April 3) ZZ Packer was first published at the age of nineteen for Seventeen Magazine. Her short story "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" was featured in The New Yorker's 2000 Debut Fiction issue. In 2003, that story became part of a collection published under the same name, to widespread critical acclaim. The collection was selected by John Updike for the Today Show Book Club and was a finalist for the 2004 Pen/Faulkner Award. Back To Top
See last year's readings