Morgan, Quiñónez kick off spring reading series Feb. 7

Faculty writers Robert Morgan and Ernesto Quiñónez will read from their work in the annual Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading, Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, G70 Klarman Hall.

Robert Morgan

Ernesto Quiñónez

Free and open to the public, the reading is the first event in the Spring 2019 Barbara & David Zalaznick Creative Writing Reading Series. A free catered reception and book signing will follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. Books will be available for purchase from Buffalo Street Books.

Morgan, the Kappa Alpha Professor of English, has taught at Cornell since 1971. He is the author of 15 volumes of poetry and 11 works of fiction and nonfiction works. His books include the national best-sellers “Boone: A Biography” (2007) and “Gap Creek” (1999). He is the recipient of a 2007 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the 2008 Thomas Wolfe Prize from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the alma mater of both Wolfe and Morgan, who also share a birthday, Oct. 3.

Quiñónez is an associate professor of English and the author of the novels “Bodega Dreams” (2000) and “Chango’s Fire” (2004). He has written for The New York Times, Newsweek and Esquire and is a product of public education, from kindergarten through his master’s degree at the City College of New York.

The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading was created in 2002 by family and friends of Richard Cleaveland ’74.

American Sign Language interpretation will be provided at the reading. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology.

The spring reading series also features:

  • Nonfiction writer Elissa Washuta, March 14, 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium.
  • The Robert Chasen Memorial Poetry Reading with Claudia Rankine, April 18, 5 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium, Statler Hall.
  • “Shop Talk” with Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, April 25, 4:30 p.m. in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.
  • “In a Word: Ishion Hutchinson and Carole Boyce Davies in Conversation,” May 1, 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium. Hutchinson is a poet and associate professor of English and Davies is a professor of Africana studies and English.
  • The Creative Writing MFA Graduation Reading, May 11, 3 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, featuring graduate student writers Remy Barnes, Christopher Hewitt, Nneoma Ike-Njoku, Alice Mercier, Charlotte Pattison, Frances Revel, Sasha Smith and Alice Turski.

The Department of English also has announced two academic lectures this semester, both open to the public:

Suzanne Conklin Akbari will lecture on “Chaucer’s Periodization” in the 40th Anniversary Paul Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, Feb. 28 at 4:30 p.m. in the Guerlac Room of the A.D. White House. Akbari is a professor of English and Medieval studies at the University of Toronto, where she directs the Centre for Medieval Studies. Her books include “Seeing Through the Veil” and (as editor) “The Oxford Handbook to Chaucer.”

Hortense Spillers, the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor in English at Cornell, will present “The Family: Our Beloved Crisis,” March 21 at 4:30 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, G76 Goldwin Smith Hall. Spillers is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Black, White and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture” (2003). Her scholarly work encompasses philosophical literary theory, black culture and feminist theory. She taught at Cornell from 1987 to 2006 and has served as a period editor of the “Norton Anthology of African-American Literature.”

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Gillian Smith