Sally Wen Mao Reads April 24 in the JMM Reading Series

Poet Sally Wen Mao
Reads April 24

Poet Sally Wen Mao treats words like clay.  She molds them into new ideas, even as they retain their  original meaning. Language is shaped and adapted in her hands.  She also plays with a variety of forms, including field notes, and travelogues. The results are original, ironic and fresh.   Her debut work, Mad Honey Symposium was described by Publishers Weekly as "linguistically dexterous and formally astute" with a strong connection to varied sources including "news clippings, Greek and Roman history, and Chinese myths" and maintains a "rich, deliberate emotionality and musicality."

Mao was born in Wuhan, China and raised in Boston. Her work has been featured in Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Third Coast, West Branch, Washington Square, Poetry, The Missouri Review, Black Warrior Review and other publications.  She is the winner of the 2012 Kinereth Gensler Award and a Publishers Weekly Top Ten  Pick of Fall 2014.  Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013 and she has received fellowships from Kundiman, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Hedgebrook, and Saltonstall Foundation.  She is currently a professor of Asian American Poetics at Hunter College.

Mao is the Jenny McKean Moore author for April.  The GW English Department will be hosting a reading by her in Gelman, Room 702 on Friday, April 24 at 7:30 pm. 

 Here is an example of her work:

Lessons on Lessening

In the rigmarole of lucky living, you tire

of the daily lessons: Sewing, Yoga, Captivity.

Push the lesson inside the microwave.

Watch it plump and pop and grow larval

with losses. Watch it shrink like shrikes

when they dodge out of this palatial

doom.  On the sky's torn hemline, this horizon,

make a wish on Buddha's foot.  How to halve,

but not to have--how to spare someone

of suffering, how to throw away the spare

key saved for a lover that you don't
have, save yourself from the burning turret

with the wind of your own smitten hip.

Do you remember how girlhood was--a bore

born inside you, powerless?  How you made

yourself winner by capturing grasshoppers

and skewering them?  You washed a family

of newts in the dry husked summer, wetted

them with cotton swabs before the vivisection.

That's playing God: to spare or not to spare.

In the end you chose mercy, and dropped

each live body into the slime-dark moat.

Today is a study in being a loser.  The boyfriend

you carved out of lard and left in the refrigerator

overnight between the milk and chicken breasts.

Butcher a bed, sleep in its wet suet for a night.

Joke with a strumpet, save the watermelon

rinds for the maids to fry in their hot saucepans.

Open your blouse and find the ladybugs

sleeping in your navel.  Open your novel

to the chapter where the floe cracks and kills

the cynget.  Study hard, refute your slayer.

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Trey Ellis at GW: Friday, March 27

Trey Ellis

The GW English Department is pleased to welcome Trey Ellis as part of the Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series. Ellis, currently an associate professor in the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University, is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and essayist. He is the author of several novels, Platitudes, Home Repairs, Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood, and Right Here, Right Now, which received an American Book Award. His work with films includes the 1995 film The Tuskegee Airmen, which won the Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy, and the 2003 TV movie Good Fences, which was shortlisted for the PEN award and nominated for a Black Reel award. Ellis is a prolific essayist, primarily known for his piece titled New Black Aesthetic in which he coined the term “cultural mulatto” and discussed racial characterizations and their relationship to a new aesthetic movement. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post. The discussion will be held on Friday, March 27 in Gelman Library, Room 702 beginning at 7:30pm.

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Teddy Wayne Reads This Thursday in JMM Reading Series

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Creative Writing in GW Today

"For lessons in literature," GW Today reminds readers,

"George Washington University students do not have to rely on just books—they can meet authors in person through the English Department’s campus lecture series and public readings this semester. Several writers will come to campus through the Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series, led by Lisa Page, acting director of creative writing, and Jewish Lit Live, a class taught by English Professor Faye Moskowitz."

See the full GW Today calendar here.  And we'll see you all semester at these great Creative Writing events!

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November 13: Jericho Brown Reading

Poet Jericho Brown will be giving at reading at GWU on
November 17

A cursory look through some of Jericho Brown’s poetry such as “Heart Condition” or “Langston Blue” reveals a straightforward poetic style that conveys not-so-straightforward themes and emotions. There is an undeniable force behind the words of Brown’s poetry.

In a recent interview with the Poetry Society of America, Jericho Brown outlined some of the guiding principles he keeps in mind while writing a poem, stating: “I strive to be clear – not obvious. I am neither afraid of nor married to difficult or accessibility. I mean to write poems that are felt before they are understood.” And that is exactly what he does in his most recent book of poetry, The New Testament.

Brown’s second book of poetry, The New Testament, infuses myth, fable, elegy and fairy tale to explore themes of race, masculinity and sexuality. Brown’s reconceptualization of the New Testament has received an array of advance praise from authors and publishers alike. A reviewpublished by NPR aptly identifies the muted power present in Brown’s new book: “What’s most remarkable in these poems is that, while they never stop speaking through gritted teeth, never quite make the choice between hope and fear, they are always beautiful, full of a music.”

Jericho Brown's forthcoming book of
poetry

Prior to The New Testament, Brown published another well-received book of poetry entitled Please, which examines the intersection of love and violence. In addition, his work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Oxford American, The Nation, and Nikki Giovanni’s 100 Best African American Poets. 

Brown was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. He earned his undergraduate degree from Dillard University, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and his Ph.D. from the University of Houston. He has previously taught at the University of San Diego. He is now an assistant professor in Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta. 

For his first work of poetry, Please, Brown was awarded the American Book Award. Additionally, for his work in creative writing, Brown has been honored with the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and a Whiting Writer’s Award.

Please join the GWU community in welcoming Jericho Brown to campus on November 13, during which time he will be reading selections from his work at 7:30pm in Gelman Library.

We encourage you to explore some of Jericho Brown’s poetry, which is available on his website, as well as here and here.

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October 15: Jose Dalisay Reading

To say Jose Dalisay has had a productive career is an understatement. The Philippines-born writer has published over 20 works in fiction and nonfiction since 1983 and also has an extensive background as a dramatist, columnist and film writer.

Born in the Philippine island province Romblon in 1954, Dalisay spent his formative years in Manila, the country's capital city. While attending high school at the Philippine Science High School, Dalisay trained with PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association). It was through his work with PETA that Dalisay published and sold his first teleplay to "Balintataw," which opened the door for many more opportunities.

After a brief imprisonment as a political detainee, Dalisay obtained his B.A. in English from the University of the Philippines in 1984 and went on to get an MFA from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

He has since written the fictional novels, Killing Time in a Warm Place and Soledad's Sister, as well as the nonfiction works The Best of Barfly, The Lavas: A Filipino Family and Man Overboard. Additionally, he's written over twenty produced screenplays and several plays. Throughout his career as a writer, Dalisay has accumulated several honors and awards. For his work, Dalisay has been honored as a Fulbright, Hawthornden, British Council, David TK Wong, Rockefeller, and Civitella Ranieri fellow. Additionally, six of his books have won National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle. In 2007, his novel Soledad's Sister was shortlisted for the first-ever Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong. Besides being an accomplished writer, Dalisay is also an accomplished lecturer, giving guest-lectures to universities around the world on the topics of Philippine culture and politics.

Please join GW English in warmly welcoming Jose Dalisay at his reading on October 15 from 7:30-9:00pm in the Honors Townhouse (714 21st St). Dalisay's reading is a part of the Jenny McKean Moore Writers' Series. This series is funded by a trust left by the late Jenny Moore who studied playwriting at GWU, additional information about the fund can be found here.

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Amy Bloom Reads Thursday, September 18

Writer Amy Bloom is know for the complexity of her work.  Her characters are complicated and full of surprises.  Bloom got an early start in her craft. As a child growing up in New York, she remembers composing poems that she described in an interview with the fiction and poetry website Phoughshares as"Derivative, I fear—influenced by Dr. Seuss.”  Her enthusiasm continued into adolescence, but Bloom eventually found herself deviating from fiction. She studied Clinical Social Work at Smith College, and eventually starting a private therapy practice.  But in the early days of her psychology career, Bloom was again driven to write.

In 1993 she published Come to Me, her first short story collection, which was met with strong critical reviews, and went on to be nominated for the National Book Award. Three additional short story collections and three novels followed the success of her first publication. Her latest release,  the novel, Lucky Us, was described by The New York Times as “sparsely beautiful.”

Bloom’s work is often noted for being intensely personal, rooted in an exploration of the hearts and minds of her characters. But she insists that her fiction isn’t a product of psychoanalytic training, but rather the opposite. "I think I became a therapist because I love people's stories,” she said, “the things that happen, or might have happened, or could have happened, the stories they—meaning we—construct and invent.”

Whatever its source, Bloom’s approach to prose has attracted a great deal of attention, with her work appearing in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is also a recipient of the National Magazine Award.  Bloom currently lives in Connecticut with her partner, editor Joy Johannessen, and is serving as Wesleyan College’s latest Writer In Residence.  

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