**Fiction Writer** 

4:30 p.m.

OPEN HOUSE

Co-sponsored by Religious Life

**Fiction Prize Winner** 

8:00 p.m.

Barney-Davis Board Room

**Poet**

8:00 p.m.

Barney-Davis Board Room

Co-sponsored by the Department of Black Studies

**Nonfiction Writer** 

8:00 p.m.

Barney-Davis Board Room 

David Ebenbach is the author of two books of short stories—Between Camelots (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) and Into the Wilderness (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2012)—a chapbook of poetry entitled Autogeography (Finishing Line Press, 2012), and a non-fiction guide to creativity called The Artist’s Torah (Cascade Books, 2012). He has been awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; the GLCA New Writers’ Award; fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center; and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Ebenbach teaches at Georgetown University.

Alan Heathcock’s fiction has been published in many of America’s top magazines and journals.  Volt, a collection of stories, was a “Best Book 2011” selection from numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer, was named as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize.  The winner of the 2012 GLCA New Writers Award in fiction, Heathcock has also received a Whiting Award, a National Magazine Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference He is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho.  A native of Chicago, he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University.

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. Of his sixteen collections of poetry, his most recent titles include Duppy Conqueror (Copper Canyon, 2013); Wheels (2011); Hope’s Hospice (2009); and Wisteria (2006), which was a finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize. Dawes has also published two novels: Bivouac (2009) and She’s Gone (2007), winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel. In 2007 he released A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative. Fifteen of Dawes’s plays have been produced, and he has acted in, directed, or produced several of these productions himself, most recently One Love at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. He is also an accomplished storyteller, broadcaster, and was the lead singer in Ujamaa, a reggae band. Dawes is currently the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA Program in Oregon.

David Shields is the author of fourteen books, including How Literature Saved My Life (Knopf, 2013), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (a New York Times bestseller), and Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (reissued in paperback by Vintage in 2011)—a book that challenges our most basic assumptions about originality, authenticity, and creativity. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Yale Review, the Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and the Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.