The Zell Visiting Writers Series returns this fall with two of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers worth watching, Daniel Alarcon and ZZ Packer.
The series, hosted by the MFA Program in Creative Writing, was inaugurated in 1983. The presentations are at 5:10 p.m. in the Helmut Stern Auditorium of the U-M Museum of Art. Writers scheduled to appear are:
• Danielle Evans, Sept. 30. Her work has appeared in magazines including The Paris Review, and her stories were anthologized in “The Best American Short Stories 2008.”
• Kazim Ali, Oct. 7. Ali is the author of two books of poetry, “The Far Mosque” and “The Fortieth Day,” in addition to “Orange Alert: essays on poetry, art, and the architecture of silence,” published as part of the U-M Press’s Poets on Poetry series.
• Adonis, Oct. 11. His honors include the first ever International Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels.
• Daniel Alarcon, Oct. 21. He is the author of two story collections and the novel “Lost City Radio,” winner of the 2009 International Literature Prize given by the House of World Cultures in Berlin.
• Yusef Komunyakaa, Oct. 25. His books of poems include “Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989,” for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Komunyakaa also presents the Zell Distinguished Writer in Residence Lecture: “Time + Space = Individuality,” Oct. 28.
• Marilyn Hacker, Nov. 4. She is the author of 12 books of poems and has won the National Book Award.
• Robert Boswell with the Janey Lack Fiction Reading, Nov. 11. Boswell — author of “The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards,” one of Oprah’s 25 Books You Can’t Put Down — has received the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction and the PEN West Award for Fiction.
• Packer, Nov. 18. Packer is the author of the short story collection, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” a PEN/Faulkner finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. She was recently named one of America’s Young Innovators by Smithsonian Magazine.
— Submitted by Megan Levad, MFA Program in Creative Writing
