NEXT WEEK: Creative Writing Double Header!

Above: A double-header. In this case, a two-headed turtle of some sort. Work with me, people. It's an analogy.

Next week's a big one here at The UW-Madison Program in Creative Writing. We've got two excellent events for you, featuring writers from our very own Helen C. White Hall.

First:

Tuesday, Dec. 4th
7:30 p.m.
Avol's Books

MFA students Emma Straub and Ben Thompson will read their fiction in this year's final installment of The Blue Ox Reading Series. Please note that this reading it TUESDAY evening and that it will begin at 7:30 p.m.


Secondly:

Thursday, Dec. 6th
7:00 p.m.
6191 Helen C. White Hall

Professor and Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Jesse Lee Kercheval will read from her Prairie Schooner Book Prize-winning collection The Alice Stories. Please note that this is going to be awesome.

Mark Your Calendars: December 6th: Jesse Lee Kercheval

Above: The Jacket for Jesse Lee Kercheval's award-winning new story collection, The Alice Stories.

The Program in Creative Writing invites you to join us on Thusday, December 6th at 7 p.m. in 6191 Helen C. White Hall as our very own Jesse Lee Kercheval reads from her award-winning new story collection The Alice Stories.


What People Are Saying:

“Jesse Lee Kercheval performs some much-needed surgery on the human heart in this stunning new collection of stories by an author whose wry and touching perceptions make her one of the foremost chroniclers of our times.”—Jonis Agee, author of the novel The River Wife

“Daily life has never seemed more remarkable, or more fraught, or more ultimately plenteous than in these seductively readable Alice Stories. Like her literary namesake, Kercheval''s Alice is the ideal companion—witty, warm, and, above all, clear-sighted—to this book''s tour through a wonderland of surprise and ineradicable hope.”—Erin McGraw, author of the story collection The Good Life

“By turns hilarious and devastating, The Alice Stories form a tender and poetic chronicle of one woman''s journey through time, love, motherhood, and Wisconsin. It is a marvelous example of how connected stories can, even more effectively than a novel, evoke a life in all its ranging, episodic, and emotional complexity.”—Anthony Doerr, author of the novel About Grace

“In these lucid, keenly intelligent stories, Jesse Lee Kercheval’s witty, tender, and bewildered Alice navigates the unpredictable landscape of adulthood—its irreplaceable gifts and stunning losses—and illuminates what it means to love. Kercheval is a deft, generous storyteller, her fiction mapping the confluence of profound experience, daily rhythms, and small, perfect absurdities. The Alice Stories is a beautiful, arresting collection.”—Nancy Reisman, author of the novel The First Desire

"Over the course of 10 beautifully shaped, deeply moving, funny, and utterly surprising linked stories, Kercheval, in prose as sparkling as snow in sunlight, considers how quickly things can stop making sense and how sustaining goodness truly is."—Donna Seaman, Booklist

Blue Ox Part 3: Emma Straub & Ben Thompson

Above: Michael Fusco has done it again with this beautiful poster of the third Blue Ox reading..

We, the official first-person plural consciousness of the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, are pleased as punch to announce the third and final Blue Ox Reading for the 2007-2008 academic year. And we've saved some doozies for last.

Join us on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:30 p.m. at Avol's Books as MFA fiction writers Emma Straub and Ben Thompson read.

There will be laughter and tears, gasp-enducing moments of tension and guffaw-causing jocularity. There will also be a gigantic fireworks display following the reading. Seriously, we have purchased (perhaps frivilously) tens of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks, and we're going to set them off in celebration shortly after the final sentence is read . We'll also have kittens. And a dinosaur. A real one.*





* note: the fireworks/kittens/dinosaur stuff is untrue. Also, dinosaurs are extinct.

Mark Your Calendars: NOV. 15th is Blue Ox II, Featuring Phil Sandick and Emma Snyder

Above: Another incredible poster from Michael Fusco over at Michael Fusco Design. Do yourself a favor and go check out his brand-spaking new and shiny website here.


That's right, it's just about time for another Blue Ox Reading, which features work by MFA candidates from UW-Madison's Program in Creative Writing.

This round will see fiction writers Phil Sandick and Emma Snyder step up to the microphone to share some work with you.

This all goes down on Thursday, November 15th at 7 p.m. at Avol's Books in downtown Madison. 315 West Gorham Street.