FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 16, 2004

CONTACT:
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

JOHNSON TO LEAD OFF DRAKE’S WRITERS AND CRITICS SERIES MONDAY

Drake University’s Writers and Critics Series will open its series on Monday, Sept. 20, with a reading by Dana Johnson, a native of Los Angeles and the author of “Break Any Woman Down.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will start at 8:00 p.m. in Cowles Library Reading Room.

Johnson’s book “Break Any Woman” received the 2000 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Patterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories have appeared in Missouri Review and American Literary Review and can be found in the anthologies “Shaking the Tree: A Collection of Fiction and Memoir by Black Women” (W. W. Norton) and “The Dictionary of Failed Relationships: 26 Stories of Love Gone Wrong” (Three Rivers Press).

Here is the schedule for the remainder of the fall series:

• Benjamin Barber will continue the series with his lecture, "Can America Be a Democracy and an Empire Too?" at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in Sheslow Auditorium. It will be followed by a reception and book-signing. Barber is the author of “Jihad vs. McWorld" and "Fear's Empire.”
  
• Catherine Taylor, assistant professor of English, will host the Drake Writers’ Night at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, in Medbury Honors Lounge. Students, faculty, staff and alumni are invited to bring and read a poem, a piece of short fiction or an essay. Participants are asked to limit their readings to a maximum of 10 minutes.
  
• Emily Wilson, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and author of “The Keep,” which was published in the Kuhl House Poets Series in 2001, will read and discuss her work at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5, in Cowles Library Reading Room. Poet James Galvin describes Wilson’s writing this way: “Without being precious, decorative or over-wrought, these poems are engaged with language in a way that is as strenuous as the thinking they freight, as un-resolvable as their passions.” Wilson is the proprietor of Spurwink Press, which publishes letterpress editions of poetry books. She teaches at the University of Iowa Center for the Book.
  
• Visiting Assistant Professor of English Stephen Cope will host the Drake Writers’ Night at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 26, in Medbury Honors Lounge. Students, faculty, staff and alumni are invited to bring and read a poem, a piece of short fiction, or an essay. Participants are asked to limit their readings to a maximum of 10 minutes.
  
• Authors Tom Pickard and Devin Johnston will discuss their works at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, in Cowles Library Reading Room.
  
  Pickard lives on the edge of Fiend's Fell in the Northern Pennine Hills on the English-Scottish border. He is the author of 10 books of poetry and prose, including “The Dark Months of May” (Flood Editions, 2004), “Hole in the Wall: New and Selected Poems” (Flood Editions, 2002) and “We Make Ships” (Secker & Warburg, 1989). He also has directed and produced a number of documentary films for British television. Pickard is writing a libretto, “The Ballad Of Jamie Allan,” for composer John Harle.
  
  Johnston is the author of two books of poetry: “Aversions” (Omnidawn, 2004) and “Telepathy” (Paper Bark, 2001), as well as a book of criticism, “Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice” (Wesleyan University Press, 2002). From 1995-2000, Johnston served as poetry editor for Chicago Review and he now directs a small press called Flood Editions with Michael O’Leary. Raised in North Carolina, he now lives in Saint Louis.
  
• Eula Biss, a poet, a nonfiction writer and the author of “The Balloonists,” will explore poetry and prose at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29, in Cowles Library Reading Room. Her essays have recently appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Jubilat and Harper's Magazine. She is working on a book about happy, unconventional marriages.

For more information about the Drake Writers and Critics Series, contact Graham Foust at (515) 271-2880 or graham.foust@drake.edu.