Eastern Visiting Writers Series presented Michael Sheehan reading on Wednesday, March 6, at 7 p.m. in Science Building Room 301.  He read from Proposals for the Recovery of the Apparently Drowned published by Colony Collapse Press in 2012.

Michael Sheehan’s fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, Sakura Review, Heavy Feather Review, DIAGRAM, Necessary Fiction, The Quarterly Conversation, and The Rumpus. He is a former fellow of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the Vermont Studio Center as well as a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Arizona. Sheehan was editor in chief of Sonora Review, and currently he is the reviews editor and assistant fiction editor for DIAGRAM.

Lesléa Newman's three-day residency included meeting with the LGTBQA campus community, consulting with student writers, and visiting multisiciplinary classes from November 6 - November 8, 2012.

Lesléa Newman is the author of sixty books, nine of which have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. She has received many literary awards including Poetry Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award, the James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, and three Pushcart Prize Nominations. Some topics that her books deal with include lesbian identity, Jewish identity and the intersection and collision between the two. Other topics Ms. Newman explores include AIDS, eating disorders, butch/femme relationships and sexual abuse. In addition to being an author, Ms. Newman is a popular guest lecturer and has spoken on college campuses.

The Eastern Visiting Writers Series and the Department of English presented Geraldine Mills and Lisa C. Taylor reading from their international collaborative collection of poetry, The Other Side of Longing, and newer work on March 12 in the Science Building Room 301 at 7 p.m. Introduced by Connecticut poet, Charlie Chase

Geraldine Mills is an award-winning Irish poet and short fiction writer, author of two publications of fiction and four collections of poetry, most recently An Urgency of Stars. She has won the OKI Award, the Moore Medallion, and was the Millennium winner of the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer Award. She was chosen, along with Lisa C. Taylor for for the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Lecture at UConn in 2011.

Lisa C. Taylor is an award-winning poet and the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Insufficient Thanks (2012). Lisa'swork has been included in two anthologies, and she's been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the L.L. Winship PEN New England Award. She has taught part-time at Eastern for over five years.

M. T. Anderson will read from his work and conduct a master class for students in English 309, Writing for Children and Young Adults, on Monday, November 28, 2011 at 4 p.m. in Science Building Room 301. Members of the university community are invited to attend. Light refreshments anda book signing will follow the discussion.

M. T. Anderson, a popular speaker on college campuses, has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical book Feed was a Finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L. A. Times Book Prize. The first volume of his Octavian Nothing saga won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe / Horn Book Prize. Both the first and second volumes of that two-part series were Printz Honor Books. He has published stories for adults in literary journals like The Northwest Review, The Colorado Review, and Conjunctions.

Eastern Visiting Writers Series and the Department of English presented Lisa C. Taylor and Geraldine Mills reading from their newly released international collaborative collection The Other Side of Longing. The reading was held on Monday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in the Student Center Theater.

Geraldine Mills is the author of two published collections of short fiction and four collections of poetry, including Toil the Dark Harvest (2004) and an Urgency of Stars (2009). Her writing has earned her the OKI Award, the Moore Medallion, the RTÉ/Penguin Short Story Competition, and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship. She was named the Millennium winner of the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer Award.

Lisa C. Taylor is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Talking to Trees (2007). In 2009, Lisa was awarded a Surdna Arts Teaching Fellowship to travel to Ireland to explore landscape, culture, and folklore with Geraldine. The result is a co-authored book, The Other Side of Longing (Arlen House/Syracuse University Press, 2011).

The Visiting Writers Series presented children's book author, Gail Carson Levine, in a reading on Monday, March 15, 2010. Gail Carson Levine grew up in New York City and has been writing all her life. Her first book for children, Ella Enchanted, was a 1998 Newbery Honor Book. Levine's other books include Fairest; Dave at Night, an ALA Notable Book and Best Book for Young Adults; The Wish; The Two Princesses of Bamarre; and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction book Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly and the picture book Betsy Who Cried Wolf, illustrated by Scott Nash.

The ECSU Visiting Writers Series and the Department of English presented a reading by Patrick Rosal on Thursday, March 11, 2010.

Patrick Rosal is the author of two full-length poetry collections, including My American Kundiman, which won the Association of Asian American Studies 2006 Book Award in Poetry as well as the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award.  Hisbook Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive won the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop. He was recently awarded a Fulbright grant as a U.S. Scholar to the Philippines.  The son of immigrants from the Ilocosregion of the Philippines, Rosal is a New Jersey native, a life-long amateur musician, an old-school b-boy and DJ. He can still uprock and do baby swipes.

Author Joan Seliger Sidney read selections of her poetry on Tuesday, November 17, 2009. Ms. Sidney’s presentation is part of the Eastern Visiting Writers Series.

Sidney’s “Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir” was published by CavanKerry Press. Her poems have appeared in Connecticut Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Louisville Review, and many other magazines and anthologies. She has received poetry fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is Writer-in-Residence at UConn’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. Sidney also facilitates Writing for Your Life, an adult workshop. She has taught writing at Eastern, UConn, and the Universite de Grenoble, France.

Curbstone Press, the Department of English, and the Women’s Studies Program presented writer Aracelis Girmay in a writing workshop and reading on Tuesday, April 7, 2009.

Aracelis Girmay’s first collection, Teeth, has been called “one of the best debuts by any poet in recent memory.”  Her poems explore love, war, violence, defiance, and hope.  Her children’s art book, Changing Changing, was published by George Braziller in 2005.  She is a former Watson and Cave Canem fellow whose work has been published in numerous journals and literary magazines.

The ECSU Visiting Writers Series and the Department of English presented Mari L’Esperance reading her award winning poetry on Monday, March 30, 2009.

Mari L’Esperance’s first full-length collection The Darkened Temple was awarded the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and published by University of Nebraska Press in September 2008. She has also published an award-winning chapbook titled Begin Here (2000, Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press). L'Esperance's poems have appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Pequod, Salamander, and elsewhere and her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

Born in Kobe, Japan and raised in California, Guam, and Japan, Mari L’Esperance is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program and a recipient of grants from the New York Times Company Foundation, Hedgebrook, and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, L’Esperance lives in Oakland, California.

Acclaimed novelist and short story writer ZZ Packer was at ECSU on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 24 and 25 as part of the Eastern Visiting Writers Series.

ZZ Packer’s debut collection of short stories, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (Riverhead Books) was a New York Times Notable Book, winner of a Commonwealth Club Fiction Award and an Alex Award and a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.  The book was personally selected by John Updike for the Today Show Book Club. Kirkus Reviews calls Drinking Coffee Elsewhere “highly personal yet socio-politically acute: a debut collection that cuts to the bone of human experience and packs a lasting wallop.”

Packer’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Zoetrope, and the Best American Short Stories Anthology, and she was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. Her non-fiction has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review and Salon. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Dr. York gave two presentations.  During the University Hour (3-4 p.m.), he spoke about the craft of poetry writing and the challenges of writing poetry inspired by history.  At 7 p.m., he gave a poetry reading.

Jake Adam York is the author of Murder Ballads (Winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize and published in 2005), The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry (Routledge, 2005), and, most recently, A Murmuration of Starlings (Southern Illinois Press, 2008), the second in a projected series of volumes that elegize the martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. York has an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University and is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado-Denver, where he serves as a faculty advisor and editor for Copper Nickel, an impressive new literary journal.

Kim Addonizio is the author of four books of poetry (The Philosopher's Club, Jimmy & Rita, Tell Me (2000 National Book Award Finalist), and What Is This Thing Called Love) and two novels, Little Beauties and My Dreams Out in the Street.

In addition, she has published a book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, and is also co-author, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. With Cheryl Dumesnil she co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.

Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award.

Eastern Connecticut State University hosted a reading featuring, young award-winning Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap on Thursday, November 29, 2007.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s debut collection of short stories, Sightseeing, was published in 2005 (Grove Press) and has been translated into many languages.  It was selected for the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” program, won the Asian American Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.  Granta Magazine recently included Lapcharoensap in its “Best of Young American Novelists” issue.  His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines as well as in Best New American Voices 2005 (Harvest Books) and Best American Non-required Reading 2005 (Houghton Mifflin).

Born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok, Lapcharoensap resides in New York City where he teaches creative writing and literature.

Richard Bausch is one of the premier fiction writers in America today. He is the author of ten highly acclaimed novels and seven volumes of short stories.  His most recent novel is Thanksgiving Night (HarperCollins 2006) and in 1996 The Modern Library published an edition entitled The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch.

He also is the editor of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, GQ, and other publications, and has been featured in numerous best-of collections, including the O. Henry Awards, The Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and New Stories from the South. Two of Mr. Bausch’s novels were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and in 2004 he won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

He taught for many years at George Mason University in Virginia and currently holds the Moss Chair of Excellence in English at the University of Memphis.

Dr. Weigl’s first full-length collection of poems, A Romance, was published in 1979. Two more poetry collections, The Monkey Wars and Song of Napalm, quickly followed, with his most recent collections being Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems and After the Others (1999). He received a Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1979, and taught at the University of Arkansas, Old Dominion University, Penn State, and is now distinguished professor at Lorain County Community College.

Weigl has contributed various well-renowned poems for over 25 years. Many of his poems are inspired by the time he spent in the U.S. Army and Vietnam. Weigl has also translated poems of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers captured during war with Thanh T. Nguyen of the Joiner Research Center. Weigl has received the American Academy of Poets prize, two Pushcart Prizes, a Patterson Poetry Prize, and a Yaddo Foundation Fellowship. Weigl was awarded the Bread Loaf Fellowship in Poetry in 1981 and was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 for Arts and Creative Writing. He was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Song of Napalm.

Mark Winegardner published his first book at age 26 while still in graduate school. He has taught at Miami, George Mason, George Washington, and John Carroll Universities, and is now a professor in the creative writing program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Winegardner has won grants, fellowships and residencies from the Ohio Arts Council, the Lilly Endowment, the Ragdale Foundation, the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Corporation of Yaddo. His books have been chosen as among the best of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, the New York Public Library, and USA Today. His work has appeared in GQ, Playboy, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, Family Circle, The Sporting News, Witness, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ladies Home Journal, Parents and The New York Times Magazine. Several of his stories have been chosen as Distinguished Stories of the Year in The Best American Short Stories.