Monday, September 24, 2007

REMINDER: Antoine Wilson Reads This Thursday



Above: Author Antoine Wilson looks like a happy person, which makes sense seeing as everybody (see below) totally loved his first novel, The Interloper.

Glass Bookcase Reading Series: Antoine Wilson. Thursday, September 27th, 7 p.m., 6191 Helen C. White Hall


As assured and sumptuously written as any first novel I've encountered--Antoine Wilson's prose sings and the story he tells here is both clever and compelling. This is writing at its very best.
-- T.C. Boyle

Antoine Wilson’s novel snuck up on me: deceptively normal prose, a tightening plot, a quickening read, and then before long I was up late all scared and sad and freaked out. Who is this guy? I’m keeping my eye on him and you should too.
-- Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs

The Interloper is tautly written, suspenseful, and abidingly strange, a first novel that defies expectations in the most delightful way. Antoine Wilson delves into the dark corners of the human psyche and we readily follow, guided by his keen intelligence, wry humor, and razor-sharp prose. At once horrifying and oddly affecting, this book makes for compulsive reading.
-- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeleine Is Sleeping

His novel might be named for altogether different reasons, yet it's author Wilson who has proven to be the true interloper.
Although his pedigree is impressive (Iowa Writer's Workshop, the Paris Review, Best New American Voices), Wilson has come seemingly out of nowhere to deliver a novel that is confident, well-paced and very, very creepy. Were he to meddle in literary affairs again and again, the world would be the better for it.
-- Tiffany Lee-Youngren, San Diego Union-Tribune

[A] pleasantly creepy debut novel... the pathos, delusion and hope festering within Owen will carry readers through.
-- Publishers Weekly

The pleasures of this wry debut novel lie not in wondering if things will turn out badly for Owen but in how badly they will go and how unreliable his narrative really is.
-- Booklist

Wilson’s vivid first-person portrayal of Owen’s slow crescendo into obsession—despite its effect on the world he wants to restore—is disturbingly powerful...Wilson takes his readers down a dark spiraling path with an ever-increasing tempo where past childhood memories and hatred collide with resounding tragedy.
-- Nelly Heitman, ForeWord Magazine

OH, what thrilling dread, falling in with a character as twisted as the narrator of Antoine Wilson's terrific first novel, The Interloper. It's like leaving a party with a designated driver, only to discover as you swerve down the driveway that your new friend is drunker than you are. Or worse, completely insane.
-- Jess Walter, LA Times Sunday Book Review

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Unrelated to Readings, but Worth a Look

Patrick Somerville, who was an undergraduate here at UW-Madison, went on to some very good things, including and MFA program at Cornell and the publishing of his excellent first collection of fiction, Trouble, which came out last year. Now, apparently, he's making movies (sort of).


Monday, September 17, 2007

Cole Swensen & Eric Baus Kick Off '07-'08 FELIX Readings


Above: Swenson and Baus FELIX reading announcement

FELIX = A SERIES OF NEW WRITING

Cole Swensen & Eric Baus

Thursday, September 20, 4:30 p.m.
Memorial Library, Room 126

+ COLE SWENSEN's most recent book is The Glass Age (Alice James Books, 2007). Her earlier collections have won numerous awards, including The San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award and Sun & Moon’s New America Writing Award. She is the editor of La Presse, a very small press that publishes French poetry in English translation.
A recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, she divides her time between Washington DC, Paris, and Iowa, where she teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

+ ERIC BAUS is the author of The To Sound, selected by Forrest Gander for the 2002 Verse Prize, and Tuned Droves, forthcoming in January of 2008 from Octopus Books. He has published poems in Verse, Hambone, First Intensity, Colorado Review, and other journals. He currently lives in Denver where he edits Minus House chapbooks.

A public reception will follow the reading. This event is co-sponsored by: the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries, the General Library System of UW-Madison, the UW Lectures Committee, the Program in Creative Writing, the English Department, and the French and Italian Department.


More on Cole Swenson, including biographical information and examples of her work:

Cole Swenson on Poets.org

More on Eric Baus, including biographical information and links to some poems that have appeared in journals and online:

Eric Buas author page from Wave Books

Friday, September 14, 2007

The Glass Bookcase Reading Series: Antoine Wilson



Above: The book jacket for former Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fiction Fellow Antoine Wilson's debut novel, The Interloper. It's a kind of visual pun wherein the red jacket is an intruding garment -- an "interloper" if you will -- among several jackets and garments that are decidedly more conservative and, well, drab.


So, there's this fellowship program called the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and it's kind of a big deal (the website is linked on the right-hand side of this page). It's a one-year fellowship for writers who have earned their MFA degrees but who have not yet published a book. It's kind of like the Stegner fellowship at Stanford, except it pays better and you don't have to live in crusty ol' Palo Alto.

Anywho, the beauty of the thing is that given the time and money to write for a year, a good many of these Fellow types go on to publish great books and, now and again, UW-Madison gets the pleasure of having them back for a reading. The Glass Bookcase Reading Series features work by former fellows. The name of the reading series is reference to the lovely and prestigious glass bookcase in Helen C. White Hall's Creative Writing Suite where books written by former fellows are proudly displayed.

Kicking off the Glass Bookcase Reading Series for 2007-2008 is fiction writer Antoine Wilson, author of the novel The Interloper (Handsel Books / Other Press, 2007). Of course, you may also know him because his work has been featured in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, and Best New American Voices, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of A Public Space. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, he currently lives in Los Angeles.

Of The Interloper, Wilson's debut novel, T.C. Boyle said: "As assured and sumptuously written as any first novel I've encountered--Antoine Wilson's prose sings and the story he tells here is both clever and compelling. This is writing at its very best."

In short, dude rocks and it's going to be a sweet reading: More at www.antoinewilson.com

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

MMoCA + Lynn Keller + Jess + Robert Duncan = Friday Night Fun


Above: Jess, Emblems for Robert Duncan I, 1989, 1 of 7 collages, 6 1/4 x 5 5/8 inches. Courtesy Odyssia Gallery, New York. Image used with permission from MMoCA

This Friday, UW Professor Lynn Keller will give a free gallery talk at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art that will address the intersection of the work of California artist Jess with literature and poetry, as well Jess' long collaboration with his partner, the late, great poet Robert Duncan.

MMoCA is located at 227 State Street.

More Info:

http://www.mmoca.org/
(608) 257-0158, ext. 227


Monday, September 10, 2007

In Which Our Events Calendar Goes Live


Above: The fabled Aztec Calendar


Yes, that's right, this humble little blog now has a calendar feature, which makes a lot of sense actually seeing as this is a blog that's supposed to promote and publicize events. You'll notice that you can link directly to our Google Calendar from the button located in the sidebar to the right, or you can scroll to the bottom of the page to see a miniature version.

Is it as accurate as the Aztec Calendar? Probably not.

Then again, the Aztec Calendar abruptly stops in the year 2012, which according to some may or may not predict the coming apocalypse, in which case we need to seriously schedule a ton of readings between now and then.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Madison : Readings :: Gin : Tonic


Above: The Wisconsin state capital building on an uncharacteristically beautiful and temperate day.

This blog is maintained by MFA students working in UW-Madison's Creative Writing Program, and will be used to announce and publicize readings taking place in Madison, WI, primarily those events sponsored and run by the UW-Madison's Program in Creative Writing, though we'll do our best to post about community-sponsored events as well.

While maintained and updated by UW Madison grad students, this blog is not an official University of Wisconsin publication, so please contact us directly with any concerns, complaints, updates or other information.

Calendar (Click on an event for details)