W&L’s Glasgow Endowment will Sponsor a Reading Featuring Authors Evie Shockley, Asali Solomon and Helena Maria Viramontes
Washington and Lee University’s Glasgow Endowment will sponsor a reading featuring authors Evie Shockley, Asali Solomon and Helena Maria Viramontes on March 5 at 4:30 p.m. in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.
Each author will read from her recent works. This event is free and open to the public and books will be for sale.
Also on March 5, Glasgow is sponsoring a lunch and panel discussion at 11:50 a.m. in Evans Hall. Shockley, Solomon and Viramontes will be discussing “Literature, History and Race.” Space is limited, so those who’d like to participate should contact Sandy O’Connell at oconnells@wlu.edu by Feb. 25.
Shockley is the author of two books of poetry—”the new black” (Wesleyan, 2011), winner of the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry; and “a half-red sea” (Carolina Wren Press, 2006); and a critical study, “Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry” (Iowa, 2011).
Her poetry and essays appear in journals and anthologies, with recent or forthcoming work included in “The Best American Poetry,” “FENCE,” “Obsidian” and “The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry,” among others. Her work has been honored and supported with the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize, fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and residencies at Hedgebrook, MacDowell and the Millay Colony for the Arts.
Currently serving as creative editor on the “Feminist Studies” editorial collective, Shockley is associate professor of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Solomon received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for the stories later collected in “Get Down,” her first book, which was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. In 2007, she was named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” Solomon’s work has been featured in “Vibe,” “Essence” and the anthology “Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts.”
Solomon has a Ph.D. in English from University of California, Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in fiction. She teaches English literature and creative writing at Haverford College and is a former W&L professor.
Viramontes is the author of “The Moths and Other Stories” and two novels, “Under the Feet of Jesus” and “Their Dogs Came with Them.” She has also co-edited two collections “Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film” and “Chicana Creativity and Criticism.” She is completing a draft of her third novel, “The Cemetery Boys.”
A recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the John Dos Passos Award for Literature and a United States Artist fellowship, her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and her writings have been adopted for classroom use and university study. Her work is the subject of a critical reader titled “Rebozos De Palabras” (ed. Gabrielle Gutierrez y Muhs, University of Arizona Press).
