U-M English Department Zell Visiting Writers Series.
Sept. 13, 17, 20, & 27 (different locations). Readings by poets and fiction writers.
Sept. 13: Poetry reading by award-winning Austin-based poet Carrie Fountain. Her poems have an inviting style and often revolve around a mundane event, closely observed, that gestures toward some dark, violent, or heartbreaking aspect of life.
Sept. 17: Poetry reading by Fiona Sampson, an acclaimed London poet (and current U-M visiting poetry professor) whose 2010 collection, Rough Music, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her poetry has been praised for its subtlety and control as well as its successful fusion of traditional forms with experimental freedoms.
Sept. 20: Reading by widely anthologized fiction writer, essayist, and poet Robin Hemley. The BBC is currently developing a film based on Invented Eden, his book about a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. Writer Robert Olen Butler calls Hemley’s forthcoming short story collection, Reply All, “laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad and deeply in touch with the profound humanity underneath the increasingly bizarre surface of our culture.”
Sept. 27: “Uncanny Valley.” Pianist and award-winning poet Oni Buchanan and poet Jon Woodward perform their concert-length piece that incorporates piano, spoken word, and electronics and explores semantic satiation, the psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word to temporarily lose meaning.
5:10 p.m., UMMA Auditorium (except Sept. 27, Michigan League Pendleton Room), 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330. [map]
