KSU English Department :: Conferences & Special Events
17th Annual Contemporary Literature and Writing Conference
March 27-30, 2006
Welcome!
The Contemporary Literature and Writing Conference of the Department of English at Kennesaw State University was created in 1989 to bring famous and respected writers and artists of the word to campus for the benefit of KSU, its students, its faculty, and all of its friends. Since that time, Mary Hood, Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Sonia Sanchez, Victor Villaseñor, Robert Pinsky, Samuel Hazo, Gail Godwin, Janet Fitch, Alison Lurie, and many others have shared their craft and taught and inspired us all. Join us this year for another exciting conference.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Monday, March 27
Andrew Plattner | 8:00 PM | Leadership Room
Andrew Plattner's book of short stories, Winter Money, won the Flannery O'Connor Award (1997). He has published in such journals as The Paris Review, Sewanee Review, and Georgetown Review .
Wednesday, March 29
Wyn Cooper | 12:30 PM | Leadership Room
Cooper will talk about writing poems versus song lyrics and provide insight into the music and songwriting business.
Wyn Cooper has published three books of poems: The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987), The Way Back (White Pine Press, 2000), and Postcards from the Interior, (BOA Editions, 2005), as well as a chapbook, Secret Address (Chapiteau Press, 2002). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Poetry , Ploughshares , Crazyhorse , AGNI , Verse , Fence , and more than 60 other magazines. His poems are included in 20 anthologies of contemporary poetry, including The Mercury Reader, Outsiders , and Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms .
In 1993, “Fun,” a poem from his first book, was turned into Sheryl Crow's Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do.” He has also cowritten songs with David Broza, David Baerwald, and Bill Bottrell. In 2003, Gaff Music released Forty Words for Fear , a cd of songs based on poems and lyrics by Cooper, set to music and sung by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. It has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition and World Café, and has been written about in Esquire , The New York Times Magazine , The New York Observer , and elsewhere.
He has taught at the University of Utah, Bennington College, Marlboro College, and at The Frost Place, where he now serves on the advisory board. He is a former editor of Quarterly West , and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. He lives in Halifax, Vermont, and helps run the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
Wyn has given readings across the United States as well as in Europe, and is available for readings, workshops, and residencies.
Wyn Cooper | 8:00 PM | University Rooms C, D, & E
Cooper will read poetry selections.
Thursday, March 30
Scott Cairns | 8:00 PM | Leadership Room
Scott Cairns is the author of five collections of poetry, The Theology of Doubt , The Translation of Babel , Figures for the Ghost , Recovered Body , and, most recently, Philokalia: New & Selected Poems . With W. Scott Olsen, he co-edited The Sacred Place , a collection of prose and verse celebrating the intersections of landscape and ideas of the holy. His poetry has been included in Best Spiritual Writing , 1998 and 2000, The Pushcart Prize XXVI , Upholding Mystery (Oxford, 1997), The Best of Prairie Schooner , and Shadow & Light , among other anthologies. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly , The Paris Review , The New Republic , Poetry , Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion , Spiritus , Western Humanities Review , and many other journals. He has taught American literature, poetry writing, and poetics courses at Westminster College, University of North Texas, Old Dominion University, and at University of Missouri, where he is currently Professor of English. Since 1993, he has served as series editor for the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. His current projects include Slow Pilgrim , further poetic studies of the mystical theology of Eastern Christianity, and a collection of essays focussing on sacramental poetics.
KSU Faculty
The Kennesaw State University Master of Arts in Professional Writing program includes talented and well-published authors in several genres. Creative Writing faculty include Tony Grooms, Robert Hill, Greg Johnson, Linda Niemann, and Ralph Tejeda Wilson.
Acknowledgements
This conference is free and open to the public. Support for the CLWC is provided by the John and Mary Franklin Foundation, President Betty L. Siegel, Robert Williams and the Horace Sturgis Library, the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project, the Graduate Writers Association, the Graduate Student Association, Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Human Resources, and the staff and faculty of the Kennesaw State University English Department.
Contact
For more information, contact Ralph Tejeda Wilson.