The Anne & William Axton Reading Series

The Anne and William Axton Reading Series was established in 1999 through the generosity of the late William Axton, former University of Louisville English professor, and his wife, Anne. The Series brings highly distinguished poets and writers from across the country to the University of Louisville for two-day visits to read from their work, and to share their knowledge and expertise with the University and local community. Writers give a public reading followed by an informal question and answer session on the first evening at the Belknap Campus at 7:30 pm. The following morning they conduct a master class where student work is critiqued. Both events are free, and the public is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Previous seasons have included Robert Pinsky, Charles Wright, Nathaniel Mackey, Susan Minot, Mary Karr, Stephen Dobyns, Lynnell Edwards, Colson Whitehead, Robin Lippincott, Robert Hass, Silas House, Beverly Lowry, George Saunders, and Louise Glück.  The Fall 2008 Series will bring Brock Clark, the University of Louisville’s first slam poetry event, Junot Diaz, and Susanna Sonnenberg.
 

Fall 2008 Schedule

Brock Clark is the author of two novels, the critically acclaimed An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England and The Ordinary White Boy, and two story collections, Carrying the Torch and What We Won’t Do. Twice a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, his work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Review, as well as the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies. His fiction has also been read on National Public Radio’s series Selected Shorts. He teaches creative writing and English at the University of Cincinnati.

Reading: Thursday, Sept. 18th, 7:30 p.m., Bingham Poetry Room
Master Class: Friday, Sept. 19th, 10am-noon, Humanities 300 

Slam poetry has been alternatively praised as a vital, democratic form of poetry and, in the words of Harold Bloom, condemned as “the death of art.” Despite its controversial status in the academy, its popularity has spread from its emergence in Chicago in the mid-1980s to films, a series on HBO, and nation-wide competitions. The Axton series is pleased to present University of Louisville’s first community-focused slam event, hosted and accompanied with a reading by NEA-recognized slam and page poet Jeffrey McDaniel, who currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence and is the author of three books of poetry, Alibi School, The Forgiveness Parade, and The Splinter Factory. Judges will include Pat Lawler, a former Axton reader, as well as other poets to be announced.

McDaniel Reading: Oct. 2, 7:30pm, Bingham Poetry Room
Slam Event: Oct. 3, 7:30pm, Cressman Center (Downtown) 

Junot Diaz’s books are the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and the critically acclaimed story collection Drown.  His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Story, The Paris Review and Best American Short Stories, and he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 Pen/Malamud Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He won the 2007 Sargant First Novel Prize and teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reading: Thursday, Oct. 23rd, 7:30 p.m., Chao Auditorium
Master Class: Friday, Oct. 24th, 10am-noon, Humanities 300 

Susanna Sonnenberg is the author of Her Last Death, a memoir which Kirkus Reviews calls “a worthy companion to Simone de Beauvoir's and Vivian Gornick's explorations of the complicated mother-daughter dynamic.” Her essays have appeared in Elle, O, and in the collection About What Was Lost. She lives in Montana with her family.

Reading: Thursday, Nov. 13rd, 7:30 p.m., Bingham Poetry Room
Master Class: Friday, Nov. 14th, 10am-noon, Humanities 300
 

Locations and dates subject to change.  Please call the English Department at U of L to verify schedule at (502) 852-6801.