Wilkes University English Department Hosts Authors for the Allan Hamilton Dickson Spring Writers Series

Distinguished Authors Dave Eggers, Carmen Maria Machado and NoViolet Bulawayo To Read Their Work

Wilkes-Barre, PA (01/15/2019) — The Wilkes University English Department's Allan Hamilton Dickson Fund Writers Series brings three distinguished writers to campus in the spring 2019 semester. Each of the writers will visit campus to read from their work and conduct workshops with students. The readings are free and open to the public.

The series kicks off on Thursday, Feb. 28 with Dave Eggers, best-selling author and founder of McSweeney's. The reading will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center for the Performing Arts, 239 S River St, Wilkes-Barre. The event is free and open to the public. Earlier in the day, Eggers will lead a student workshop.

Eggers is the author of ten books, including Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, A Hologram for the King, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing and a monthly magazine. McSweeney's also publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world.

The other authors in the spring 2019 series are:

Carmen Maria Machado, author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, will read on Monday, March 18 in the Salon of Kirby Hall at 7:30 p.m. Nominated for the National Book Award, The New York Times called Machado's collection "a love letter to an obstinate genre that won't be gentrified. It's a wild thing, this book, covered in sequins and scales, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi, and borrowing from science fiction, queer theory and horror." The book won the Bard Fiction Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, among others. Her memoir, In The Dream House, will be released in fall 2019 by Greywolf Press. Machado earned the Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She is writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Acclaimed novelist, essayist and short story writer NoViolet Bulawayo will read on Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Salon of Kirby Hall. She is the author of the novel We Need New Names, which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. It was recognized with the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Pen/Hemingway Award, and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. It also was selected to The New York Times Notable Books of 2013 list, the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers list and others. In writing about her novel in The New York Times, Uzodinma Iweala praised Bulawayo's "striking ability to capture the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomer's arrival in America, to illuminate how the reinvention of the self in a new place confronts the protective memory of the way things were back home." NoViolet's story "Hitting Budapest" won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. A native of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo earned the Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University and is now the Jones Lecturer in fiction at Stanford University.

About Wilkes University:

Wilkes University is a private, independent, non-sectarian institution of higher education dedicated to academic and intellectual excellence through mentoring in the liberal arts, sciences and professional programs. Founded in 1933, the university is on a mission to create one of the nation's finest small universities, offering all of the programs, activities and opportunities of a large university in the intimate, caring and mentoring environment of a small college, open to all who show promise. The Economist named Wilkes 25th in the nation for the value of its education for graduates. In addition to 47 majors, Wilkes offers 25 master's degree programs and five doctoral/terminal degree programs, including the doctor of philosophy in nursing, doctor of nursing practice, doctor of education, doctor of pharmacy, and master of fine arts in creative writing. Learn more at www.wilkes.edu.

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