April 9--------Kevin Stewart

Please join us on April 9 at 8 pm in Memorial Hall on the UMass Amherts campus for a reading by novelist Kevin Stewart as part of the Visiting Writers Series.

A native of Princeton, WV, Kevin Stewart is the author of The Way Things Always Happen Here: Eight Stories and a Novella (Vandalia Press, 2007) and Margot (Texas Review Press, 2000). He has been nominated for Forward Magazine's Book of the Year Award for fiction/short stories, and the Weatherford Award for Appalachian fiction/poetry. Stewart has also been awarded the Appalachian Heritage's Plattner Award in fiction, the Texas Review novella prize, and state arts fellowships from Louisiana and West Virginia. Stories from his forthcoming collection Tales From The North Gates have appeared in the Southeast Review and are forthcoming in the Hamilton Review. Other work has appeared in Shenandoah, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review and more. He currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown.

Feb. 2: Tomaz Salamun

Please come and witness the elegance and majesty of one of Slovenia's and the world's greatest contemporary poets, Tomaz Salamun, on Monday, February 2, at 8 p.m. in Memorial Hall on the UMass Amherst campus.

He's kind of a big thing. With confident steps and a steady hand, Salamun maps the ever-fluctuating space occupied by avant garde poetry. His poetry informs of the possibilities contained within the union of mystery and emotion bound together by the fearful joy of absurdity. To read Salamun is to embark upon a journey through the mind of a poet who, for over 40 years, has made it his imperative to find intrigue in the ordinary, to find beauty in the ordinary, and to find beauty in the intrigue of everything from "a robbery of bees" to "trash bags smashed on the heads of maids." He has fittingly been bestowed with accolades and honors from prestigious institutes on both sides of the Atlantic. He was for a time the Slovenian Cultural Attaché to the U.S., and he has taught at various writing programs in the U.S., including the Iowa Writers Workshop and the UMass Program for Poets and Writers. So come!

As always, this event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.