2010-2011 Academic Year
World Voices May 4, 2011
Hervé Le Tellier, David Bezmozgis, Kyung-sook Shin and Deborah Baker were the featured award-winning authors for this book reading event.
Card Making Event
Mary Bruno, owner of Bruno Press, taught 20 students how to make their own cards using a letterpress. They received 10 of their own own handmade cards, envelopes, and an inside look at printing from an expert.
Tiphanie Yanique Apr. 4, 2011
Tiphanie Yanique is a professor of Creative Writing at Drew University. She is from the Virgin Islands and lives most of the year in Brooklyn, New York. She joined us for a book reading of How to Escape from a Leper Colony on April 4.
Yanique is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She's the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Kore Press Fiction Prize, The Academy of American Poets Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship in writing, the Boston Review Fiction Prize, and the 2010 Rona Jaffe Prize in Fiction.
Her story collection How to Escape from a Leper Colony was published by Graywolf Press.
Sustainability and Publishing Feb. 16, 2011
Economics professor Dr. Ernie Diedrich moderated a panel with guests Don Leeper, the president of BookMobile, Keith Goetzman, from The Utne Reader, and Kelly Spitzner, Communications Coordinator at the Green Press Initiative. As they examined the impact of publishing on the environment and green practices at publishing companies, the audience engaged in asking questions about the controversial role of technology supporting sustainability.
Bryan Welch, a guest of the Sustainability and Publishing panel, has a book, Beautiful and Abundant, that focuses on starting fresh with the global environment and "building the world we want."
Peter Smith Jan. 26, 2011
SJU alum Peter Smith is the author of fiction, poetry, magazine, and op-ed articles, along with weekly appearances on Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Edition with Cathy Wurzer. Smith discussed his new collection of essays, A Porch Sofa Almanac, which portrays and reflects on everyday Minnesotan life. According to Smith, "The entire state comes across as some wonderful, slightly quirky treasure unearthed at a church basement rummage sale." Smith is currently a resident of Hopkins, MN.
Doreen Baingana Nov. 17, 2010
Doreen Baingana grew up in Uganda and currently works as an editor for a small literary press called Storymoja in Nairobi, Kenya.
Her collection of short stories, Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe, published in 2005, won the prestigious Association of Writer's and Writing Programs (AWP) prize for short fiction and the Commonwealth Writer's prize for best first book in the African region.
David Sedaris Oct. 1, 2010
"An Evening with David Sedaris" was co-sponsored by Fine Arts Programming and LAI.
David Sedaris is a master satirist with a penchant for the absurd and politically incorrect. With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, Sedaris has become one of America's pre-eminent humor writers.
Sedaris is the author of collections of personal essays, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and When You are Engulfed in Flames, each of which became a bestseller.
Bill Meissner Sept. 23, 2010
Bill Meissner, a creative writing teacher at St. Cloud State University, discussed the writing process at this event.
Book Lover's Night is a regular event sponsored by the CSB/SJU Libraries, LAI, and CSB College Relations.
Per Petterson Sept. 18, 2010
Per Petterson, Norwegian-born author of internationally-acclaimed novel, Out Stealing Horses, visited the College of Saint Benedict to read from his new novel, I Curse The River Of Time. This was one of only five public appearances he made in the United States in support of his new book.