Lydia Davis Reading for the UA Prose Series
Tuesday, October 16, 8 p.m.
at the Poetry Center

Lydia Davis
An American virtuoso, Lydia Davis is an innovator of the short story form. She is the author of four collections of short fiction, including Varieties of Disturbance (2007), Break It Down, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant and a novel, The End of the Story. Her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories (edited by Annie Proulx) and The Best American Poetry, and has been published in literary journals ranging from The New Yorker and Harper's to Conjunctions and McSweeny’s. Her work has been translated into six languages.

Davis is also the translator of numerous avant-garde French novels, memoirs, and volumes of literary criticism, including works by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and most recently Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, which received the French-American Foundation Annual Translation Prize. Among her other awards and honors, Davis was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translation, and in 2003 received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.

Judy Blunt Reading
Thursday, October 25, 8 p.m.
at the Poetry Center

Judy Blunt
Judy Blunt spent more than thirty years on wheat and cattle ranches in north central Montana, before leaving in 1986 to attend the University of Montana. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, with recent short pieces appearing in Oprah magazine, New York Times, Big Sky Journal and others. Her bestselling memoir, Breaking Clean, won the 1997 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work in progress, as well as a 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award, the 2003 Mountains and Plains Book Award and the 2003 Willa Award for memoir/nonfiction. The memoir was also listed as a New York Times Notable Book. In 2004 Blunt received a National Endowment for the Arts for nonfiction works in progress. In 2006 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to write essays about Montana ranch life. She is an Associate Professor on the Creative Writing faculty of the University of Montana, Missoula, where she teaches courses in creative nonfiction and western women’s memoir.

Lucille Clifton Reading
Thursday, November 1 at 7:00 p.m.
at St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church,
4440 N Campbell Ave

Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton is one of the most beloved and respected figures in American poetry today, widely acclaimed for her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, spirituality, and mortality. A major voice since her debut collection Good Times, in 1969, she has published 12 collections of poetry, one autobiographical prose work and 19 children’s books. She received the National Book Award for Poetry for Blessing the Boats (2000). Her most recent book of poems is Mercy (2005); other titles include Ordinary Woman, Quilting, and The Book of Light. Her work has been anthologized in close to 200 anthologies of poetry.

Ms. Clifton has received many fellowships and awards for her poetry collections and children’s books, including the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize, Shelley Memorial Prize, a Charity Randall Citation, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, selection as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, a Lannan Achievement Award in Poetry and a Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award.. She served as Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland from 1975-1985. Ms. Clifton serves on the board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the only poet to have had two books nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year.

Ms. Clifton served as distinguished Professor of Humanities and held the Hilda C. Landers Endowed chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland until her retirement in the fall of 2005. She continues to serve St. Mary’s as Professor Emeritus and Friend to the College.

Rae Armantrout Reading
Thursday, November 29 at 8 p.m.
at the Poetry Center

Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, in 1947, and grew up in San Diego. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Denise Levertov, and a master's degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University. She has published nine books of poetry, including: Up to Speed (2004), a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Poetry; Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001), also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award; The Pretext (2001); Made To Seem (1995); and The Invention of Hunger (1979). Her most recent collection, Next Life, was published by Wesleyan in 2007.

Armantrout's poetry has been widely anthologized, appearing in Language Poetries, In The American Tree, Postmodern American Poetry, Poems for the Millennium, Vol. 2, American Women Poets of the 21st Century and several editions of Best American Poetry. She is also the author of a prose memoir, True, which was published by Atelos in 1998. She has taught writing for almost twenty years at the University of California, San Diego