Please join us for another fabulous season of celebrating the literary arts! Now in its fifteenth year, Readers & Writers is committed to bringing award-winning authors to the greater Baton Rouge community. Our line-up for the 2009-10 season includes six critically acclaimed writers who are certain to pique, tickle, delight and inspire. Readings will be held on September 20th, November 15th, March 21st, and April 23 rd —all events are free and open to the public—we look forward to seeing you there.

Jerry Kennedy Lara Glenum	POE & Poetry! On September 20, 2009, the Readers and Writers 2009-10 season opens at the Dodson Auditorium with two of LSU's own: acclaimed scholar Jerry Kennedy gives a talk on Edgar Allen Poe and lauded poet and LSU newcomer Lara Glenum reads from her new book. To celebrate Poe we turn to who knows how to throw him the best party. J. Gerald Kennedy is William A. Read Professor of English and former chair of the Department of English at LSU. He is known internationally for his extensive publications on Poe. With the support of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH, as well as a Louisiana ATLAS grant, he has been working on a major book called Illusions of National Destiny. He first presented his lecture," Homeland Insecurity : Poe's War on Terror," as a Taylor Fellow at the University of Virginia in March 2009. Together with LSU's new poet Lara Glenum, this dynamic duo could indeed fight crime, but if saving Gotham City and giving it to Poe as a present proves to be too pricey, he will no doubt receive some poems he's sure to squirm out of his grave to hear! Master of the new grotesque, Lara Glenum is the author of two books of poetry: The Hounds of No (Action Books, 2005) and Maximum Gaga (Action Books, 2008). She is now collaborating with a group of sound, digital, and visual artists on Meat Out of the Eater, a multi-media installation piece based on the second half of Maximum Gaga . Her poems have appeared in New American Writing , Fence, Conjunctions , Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at LSU. Plan to kick of the event at 5pm and stick around after the reading for a reception (open to the public) and help us celebrate Poe, poetry, and those who love to see them both thrive in our community!
C.D. Wright   Slam Team	On November 15, 2009: Invisible Populations! Readers and Writers and The LSU School of Art bring poet C.D. Wright* to the Old State Capitol. With thirteen collections under her belt, Wright is no lightweight in the poetry arena. Her thirteenth collection, Rising, Falling, Hovering, was the international winner of the ninth annual Griffin Poetry Prize, and has been aptly described as poetry that “reminds us what poetry is for.” As first-hand listeners we may indeed be reminded of what the title suggests: that poetry can show us that we are at once risers, fallers and hoverers. Wright's collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster, One Big Self, received a Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies. Wright has also received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors. C. D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Wright is currently the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University, and lives outside Providence, Rhode Island. http://invisiblepopulations.com/index2.html Opening for Wright is the the 2009 ALL CITY All Star Poetry Slam Team: DeAndre Hill, Daniel Richard, Taylor James, Christin Rankins, Chase Chenevert, and Myeshia Carter. The 2009 ALL CITY All Star Poetry Slam Team is comprised of the top 6 individually ranked poets who competed at the 2009 ALL CITY Poetry Slam Festival. The annual event is produced by The WordPlay Teen Writing Project, which is part of the teen service unit of the Big Buddy Program. Four of the team members (Daniel Richard, Christin Rankins, Chase Chenevert, and DeAndre Hill) graduated from high school last May and the two other members (Taylor James and Myeshia Carter) have recently begun their senior year.  Last July,  BREC tranported the team to Chicago to represent Baton Rouge at the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam Festival . WordPlay has been participating in that yearly event since 2006. This year, for the first time ever, the slam team progressed on to the semi-final round and also missed making it into the finals round by 7 tenths of a point! These young writers and readers are the vanguard of the youth poetry slam movement here in Baton Rouge . They have served us well abroad and continue to seize opportunities to showcase their intense and vibrant performances at home.     Join us at 5pm for an unforgettable reading and come to the show of Deborah Luster's photographs at the Glassell gallery after!  *Wright's reading is the  Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. School of Art Endowed Lecture for 2009.
Clarence Nero       Ethan Gilsdorf	On March 21, 2010: New fiction and non-fiction by LSU Alums! In celebration of the University's Sesquicentennial and the MFA program's first 25 years, novelist Clarence Nero brings his bold urban fiction (praised by Maya Angelou) to the Dodson Auditorium. In New Orleans, Nero grew up in the infamous Desire Housing Project surrounded by drugs, violence and poverty. His first novel, Cheekie: A Child Out of the Desire, is loosely based on his childhood experiences. The book was selected as “One of the Best First Novels of 1998,” by Library Journal. His screenplay “Temptations of Desire” was recommended to Sundance Lab by Jonathan Demme, Academy Award Winning Director of “Silence of the Lambs” and “Beloved.” Nero's second novel, “Three Sides To Every Story” was endorsed by the late E. Lynn Harris, who the author credits for jump starting his career in mainstream publishing. Nero has an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. He teaches at the Baton Rouge Community College. Visit www.clarencenero.com . Joining Nero is Ethan Gilsdorf, whose gaming memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, has been called “poignant and hilarious…disturbing and entertaining.” After playing Dungeons & Dragons religiously in the 1970s and 1980s, and getting an MFA in poetry from LSU, Ethan Gilsdorf went on to become a poet, teacher, and journalist. He's worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film and restaurant reviewer. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, his travel, arts, and pop culture stories appear regularly in the New York Times , Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor, and have been published in other magazines and newspapers including National Geographic Traveler , Psychology Today,and the Washington Post.  You can follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com. Join us at 5 pm at the Dodson Auditorium for this terrific event!
David Kirby	On April 23, 2010: Celebrate LSU with poet David Kirby! 6:30 pm! A local kid makes good, as David Kirby returns to his hometown for this thrilling literary event. Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University, and winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance prize for 2008, Kirby is the author of 20 books of poetry. His work is “amazing and thought-provoking, funny in places you would never expect, and wise and humble.” He has also published hundreds of articles, reviews, and individual poems. His poems have won four Pushcart Prizes and have twice been included in Best American Poetry. Besides successfully mentoring dozens of students, he has also received various awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Locally, LSU Press published Kirby's two books My Twentieth Century and The House of Blue Light as part of the Southern Messenger Poets series. he is the author of The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems , which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award in Poetry. His latest book is a pop culture study called Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n' Roll , and with Barbara Hamby he is co-editing Seriously Funny: Poems About Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else. See also www.davidkirby.com . This evening offers a rare treat to see a legend of literati in Baton Rouge. This event takes place at the Old President's House at 6:30.

 

Please remember that when you contribute to Readers & Writers, you benefit the entire community of readers by allowing us to invite world-class writers to BatonRouge. Admission to all R&W events is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Laura Mullen at (225)578-3023. Or visit our website.