Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series

From its inception, the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series has had two charges. The first: to make central to the intellectual endeavors of the university the study and writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. It is not our belief creative writing is simply an attractive addition to the main body of intellectual work that is undertaken by the university. The writing of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction is itself intellectual work. The writers who read in our series aren't just artists/performers. They are artist/teachers/thinkers. Their work is read by our students; they meet with our classes, have lunch, and talk with graduates and undergraduate.  They are here to demonstrate the connection between art and thinking.

The PCWS brings notable writers to Pitt's main campus every year. Thanks to funding from the office of the Dean of Arts & Sciences, the series is free and open to the public and features contemporary writers with extraordinary talent in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Writers who have come in the past include George Saunders, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gay Talese, Richard Ford, John Edgar Wideman, John McPhee, Dan Chaon, Lucille Clifton, Anne Carson, Mark Doty, and Michael Ondaatje, among others.

The series is free and open to the public because the connection between the public—and the University of Pittsburgh and the writers and teachers within it—is fundamental. Though the PCWS events take place on Pitt's campus, many members of the greater Pittsburgh community attend the readings and the audiences routinely number 200-250.

2009-2010 Season Schedule

Foreseeable Futures:   
The Future of Fiction, The Future of Poetry, The Future of the Book

Fall

Aleksandar Hemon
winner of the 2009-2010 Fred R. Brown Literary Award
The Future of Fiction: Interview with Irina Reyn
8:30 pm, Thursday, September 24th
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Aleksandar Hemon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004. The author of four books of fiction, most recently Love and Obstacles (Riverhead, 2009) and The Lazarus Project (Riverhead, 2008), which was nominated for the United States National Book Award, Hemon’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2000, Hemon published his first book, The Question of Bruno (Vintage), a collection of stories, and in 2004, his first novel, Nowhere Man (Vintage).

C.D. Wright
The Future of Poetry I: Interview with Dawn Lundy Martin
8:30 pm, Thursday, November 5th
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

C.D. Wright has published numerous collections of poetry and prose, most recently Steal Away, Selected and New Poems (Copper Canyon, 2003).  Among her numerous honors are fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as an award from the Lannan Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Prize. Wright’s recent collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (Twin Palms, 2004), earned them the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. C.D. Wright currently teaches at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professsor of English.

Spring

Sven Birkerts and Maud Newton
The Future of the Book: a discussion moderated by Cathy Day
8:30 pm, Thursday, Feb 11th
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Over the years, Maud Newton’s blog has become known among publishers, writers, and agents for its smart literary talk and her devotion to reading and writing.  She has been cited in a range of publications including New York magazine, The Scotsman, The Guardian, the New York Times, and Poets & Writers. Newton is particularly skilled at finding and posting links to lit bits that other sources miss, such as a previously untranslated Roberto Bolano story. Newton has written for The American Prospect, and contributed book reviews to The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Book World, the New York Times Book Review, and Newsday.  Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared various journals including StoryQuarterly, Maisonneuve, and Swink.

Sven Birkerts is the author of several collections of essays, including The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Faber and Faber, 2002). He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and most recently at Mount Holyoke College. Presently, Birkerts is the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Birkerts reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. His other works include An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on Twentieth Century Literature (William Morrow, 1987), The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry (William Morrow, 1989) and My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Viking, 2002).

Nathaniel Mackey
The Future of Poetry II: Interview with Ben Lerner
8:30 pm, Thursday, March 25th
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Nathaniel Mackey is Professor of Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz, and has served as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. He is the author of five chapbooks and four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), won the National Book Award for poetry.  He is the editor of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century (2000, with Carolyn Kizer, John Hollander, Robert Hass, and Marjorie Perloff). A critic and literary theorist, Mackey is also the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993) and author of an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which four volumes have been published.