DePaul Visiting Writers Series Upcoming Events

Robyn Schiff

Monday, November 3 at 6:30 p.m.
Richardson Library 300

Robyn Schiff is the author of Revolver (Iowa, 2008) and Worth (Iowa, 2002). She is an associate professor at the
University of Iowa, where she directs undergraduate creative writing. She also coedits The Canary and Canarium
Books, a new publisher of finely wrought and adventurous poetry volumes.

Publisher's Weekly had this to say about Revolver:

"The scope is dizzingly wide, yet each shift in these poems feels necessary, and Schiff’s long, beautiful sentences and relentless attention to the language, history and mystery of the human heart make these poems both thrillingly daunting and compulsively readable. This book springs from an imagination and vocabulary so surprising and intriguing that, in many poems, every line is a revelation."

Charles Baxter

Thursday, January 15 at 6:30 p.m.
Richardson Library

Charles Baxter is the author, most recently, of The Soul Thief, published in February, 2008, by Pantheon, and of Saul and Patsy, published in 2003 by Pantheon. His previous novel, The Feast of Love (Pantheon/Vintage), was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2000 and has been made into a film by Robert Benton, starring Morgan Freeman. He has published two other novels, First Light and Shadow Play, and four books of stories, most recently Believers, published by Pantheon in hardback and Vintage in paperback. He has also published essays on fiction collected in Burning Down the House (Graywolf) and Beyond Plot, and has edited or co-edited three books of essays, The Business of Memory, published by Graywolf, Bringing the Devil to His Knees (The University of Michigan Press), and A William Maxwell Portrait, published in 2004 by W. W. Norton. His book of poems, Imaginary Paintings, was published by Paris Review Editions. He also edited Best New American Voices 2001 (Harcourt) and was the judge for the Bakeless Prize in Fiction in 2004. He has received the Award of Merit in the Short Story and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Prix St. Valentine in France, and the Catalan Booksellers’ Association Award for book of the year in Spain.

He was born in Minneapolis in 1947, graduated from Macalester College with a B. A. degree in 1969, and the State University of New York at Buffalo with a Ph.D. in 1974, and lived for many years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he taught at the University of Michigan. He now lives in Minneapolis and is currently the Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s, among other journals and magazines. His fiction has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages.

Dan Beachy-Quick

Thursday, February 19 at 6:30
Richardson Library

Dan Beachy-Quick is one of the most acclaimed young poets in America today. He is the author of three collections of poems: Mulberry (Tupelo Press, 2006), Spell (Ahsata Press, 2004), and North True South Bright (Alice James Books, 2003). Mulberry was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry. His poems, criticism, and essays have been widely published in magazines and reviews, and frequently anthologized. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Dan Beachy-Quick is an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife and daughter.

A recent review of A Whaler's Dictionary:

Taking its inspiration—and, for that matter, its form—from Ishmael’s abandoned “Cetological Dictionary” in Moby-Dick, this extraordinary, highly original work brings meditations on myth, representation, language, nature, consciousness, and notions of spiritual quest into constantly new relations. From “Accuracy” to “Wound,” from “Adam” to “Void,” and from “Babel” to “Silence,” the cross-referential, highly associative entries make up an utterly singular work of art. For fans of Beachy-Quick’s acclaimed collections of poems, for the legions of Melville fanatics among us, and indeed for anyone who regards reading as an unconditional, encompassing obsession, A Whaler’s Dictionary is absolutely essential.