February 16, 2006
SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Susquehanna University will present its 2nd Annual Literature and Writing Conference on Monday, Feb. 20. Titled “Vocalissimus,” the conference will feature the creative and scholarly work of Susquehanna students and guests from Mansfield University. The conference begins at 9 a.m. and runs through the 7:30 p.m. poetry reading by Shara McCallum, assistant professor of English at Bucknell University.
The conference will include day sessions, chaired by faculty of Susquehanna’s Department of English and Creative Writing, on such topics as institutional and expressive languages, gender, education, literary journalism, feminism, poetry and process, horror, and forms of desire. A keynote address will be presented at 1 p.m. in Degenstein Campus Center by guest lecturer Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring professor in Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College.
Born in Mexico to an Eastern European Jewish family, Stavans is a distinguished Latino critic, editor and author. The New York Times calls him “the czar of Latino literature in the United States,” having published four books in the first five months of 2005 including Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion. His earlier publications include The Hispanic Condition (1995), On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001), and the controversial socio-linguistic reference work, Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003). He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. His latest work, The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories, and a simultaneous feature film based on the novella will be released in August 2006.
The undergraduate literature and writing conference is presented in connection with Susquehanna’s 2005-2006 university theme, Latin American Mosaic: Nations and Cultures/Mosaico Latinoamericano Naciones y Culturas. The poetry reading Monday evening by Shara McCallum is also part of The Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by The Writers’ Institute at Susquehanna University.
Born in Jamaica, McCallum is the author of two poetry collections, Song of Thieves and The Water Between Us, winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her work has been anthologized in The New American Poets. In addition to her teaching, McCallum serves as director of the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. Her reading, which will be held in Isaacs Auditorium of Seibert Hall, is free and open to the public.
The Undergraduate Literature and Writing Conference is sponsored by the Department of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University, and made possible by the Stellfox Endowment Fund, the School of Arts, Humanities and Communications Humanities Fund, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Jewish Studies Program. For more information about the conference, call 570-372-4196.
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Contact: Victoria Kidd
570-372-4119
#vk/2214#
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