Springing into a New Season with the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series
An impressive list of events is coming to the library this spring as the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series returns. Please join us as we welcome a number of renowned poets, fiction writers, and lovers of the written (and spoken) word. All events are presented free of charge. While one event will be zoomed, the rest will be held in Love Library room 430. All in-person events will be recorded and posted on the Living Writers Series’ YouTube page after the event. The schedule is listed below.
But first, here is a conversation about the upcoming fall series between Living Writers Series Director Meagan Marshall and English & American Literature Librarian Markel Tumlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQUHDOzwU7w
The Spring 2023 schedule:
In-Person Event— Wednesday, February 22nd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Author and Editor, Manuel Paul López
Details: Manuel Paul López will read from his most recent book, Nerve Curriculum, which has been lauded as “…the thrilling confirmation of a unique élan that can fuel the Latinx imagination.”
Manuel Paul López’s books include Nerve Curriculum (Futurepoem), These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Earnest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories: In the Time of Covid and Uprising (City Works Press), Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press), and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works Press), all three generated from a community-based writers’ workshop of the same name that he’s co-facilitated since 2016 in Southeast San Diego. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.
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In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 1st at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Acclaimed Author, Andrew Kelly Stewart
Details: Andrew Kelly Stewart will read from his debut novella, We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep, which has been described as “a lyrical and page-turning coming-of-age exploration of duty, belief, and the post-apocalypse.”
Andrew Kelly Stewart’s writing spans the literary, science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural genres. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and ZYZZYVA. He is a Clarion Workshop alum and holds an MFA in Creative Writing. We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep is his first publication with Tor.com. Stewart lives and writes in southern California.
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In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 15th at 7 p.m.: Celebrated Poet and Interdisciplinary Artist, Elisabeth Houston
Details: Elisabeth Houston will perform pieces from her book, Standard American English. Houston is celebrated as “…an inventor, a new voice to ready ourselves for, a voice we need.”
Elisabeth Houston wrote an author biography and then deleted said biography and then decided instead to write a paperback romance novel, which riffed off the prolific priestess of romance Miss Danielle Steel; this romance novel also required an encyclopedia to accompany its reading, a long thick index which contained towering columns of notes which distinguished facts from fiction, fiction from friction, words from gibberish, gibberish from poetry, and on and on. The books stalled at the final stages - printers got jammed, machines convulsed, ink and bodies and language run amok. Elisabeth Houston refused to write a proper author biography to be penned on the book’s final page, and readers were tired and angry. Then the readers decided to riot. They demanded authorial integrity, they demanded coherence, and so they violently destroyed the book.
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In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 22nd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Author, Lance Olsen
Details: Lance Olsen will read from his latest publication, Always Crashing in the Same Car, which has been praised as “a phantasmagorical mosaic of facts and fantasies concerning the life and art of David Bowie, entirely appropriate to its subject, for whom the mask always melted into the face and vice versa.”
Lance Olsen is the author of more than 30 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels Skin Elegies (Dzanc, 2021) and My Red Heaven (Dzanc, 2020). His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, Rockefeller Center Bellagio Residency, N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, Olsen teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.
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In-Person Event— Wednesday, April 5th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Multi-genre Author, Pedro Eiras
Details: Pedro Eiras will share from his most recent publications, including new work translated from the Portuguese by Sandra Alcosser, Ricardo Vasconcelos, Thais Chagas, and Philip Maechling. This event is sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures and the Camões — Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua.
Pedro Eiras was born in Porto in 1975. Since 2001, he has published works of fiction (Bach, A Cura, Cartas Reencontradas de Fernando Pessoa, O Mapa do Mundo... ), poetry (Inferno, Purgatório, Paraíso), theater (Um Forte Cheiro a Maçã, Uma Carta a Cassandra, Um Punhado de Terra, Bela Dona...), essays (Tentações, Os Ícones de Andrei, Constelações, Língua Bífida...), and other genres, more difficult to classify. He has several books published in Brazil and in France, England, Italy, and Romania; his theater plays have been staged or read in ten countries. With Esquecer Fausto (2005) he won the Portuguese Pen Clube Essay Prize, and with Inferno (2020) the António Cabral Literary Prize. He is Professor of Portuguese Literature at the College of Letters of the University of Porto.
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Virtual Event— Wednesday, April 12th : The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning Poet and Editor, Naoko Fujimoto
Details: Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. The spring 2023 Okuma Author, Naoko Fujimoto, will share poems from her most recent publications and answer questions from attendees.
Register in advance for this event: https://SDSU.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlde-ppzsjE9UA5Rc3XlI7Atr-k4a_Pyqj
Naoko Fujimoto was born, raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University. Her poetry collections are We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan, winner of C&R Press Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Award by C&R Press (2022), Where I Was Born, winner of the editor’s choice by Willow Books (2019), Glyph: Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory by Tupelo Press (2021), and four chapbooks. She is a RHINO associate & translation editor and Tupelo Quarterly translation editor.
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In-Person Event— Wednesday, April 26th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Poet and Editor, Rick Barot
Details: Rick Barot will read from his most recent publications, including The Galleons, which has been described as “…significant, the work of a poet at the height of his powers.”
Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002), which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (2015), which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and received the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was listed on the top ten poetry books for 2020 by the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and was on the longlist for the National Book Award. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New Yorker. Barot directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University.
Thanks for checking out our schedule!
We’re looking forward to seeing you!!