UAB Writers' Series Spring 2010 Calendar

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Writers' Series is an annual offering of the UAB Department of English Program in Creative Writing. For more information, call 205-934-4250.


Jan. 20

The UAB Writers' Series presents the novelist Erin McGraw at 4 p.m. in the UAB Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. The event is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4250 for more details. McGraw is the author of five books of fiction, most recently The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (Houghton-Mifflin, 2008). Her stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, STORY, Allure, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Good Housekeeping, The Gettysburg Review and other magazines and journals. She teaches at Ohio State University.

Feb. 17

The UAB Writers' Series presents the poet Wyatt Prunty, director of the Sewanee Writers' Conference, at 4 p.m. in the Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. The event is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4250 for more details. Prunty has taught at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, Louisiana State University, Washington and Lee University and Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English and Writers' Conference. He is the author of eight collections of poetry. The Lover's Guide to Trapping (Johns Hopkins University Press), his most recent collection, was released in April 2009.

Feb. 24

The UAB Writers' Series presents the novelist Jack Pendarvis at 4 p.m. in the Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. The event is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4250 for more details. Pendarvis has written four novels, Awesome, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure, Your Body is Changing and the latest Shut Up, Ugly. He writes a bi-monthly column for The Believer and a quarterly column for Oxford American. He was the 2007-2008 John and Renee Grisham Visiting Writer-In-Residence at the University of Mississippi. This event is co-sponsored by the Birmingham Area Consortium of Higher Education.

March 24

The UAB Writers' Series presents the annual Mersmann Awards at 4 p.m. in the UAB Spencer Honors House, 1190 10th Ave. South. The event is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4250 for more details. The Mersmann Awards are given annually for the best reading or rendition by a student of a poem written by another author and a best original poem. Traditionally, this event is an opportunity for students to read aloud from their favorite works and give voice to words they may often read though seldom hear.

April 14

The UAB Writers' Series presents a reading by UAB English professors Robert J. Collins, Ph.D., and Lawrence Wharton, Ph.D., at 4 p.m. in the UAB Spencer Honors House, 1190 10th Ave. South. The event is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4250 for more details. Collins and Wharton will read from their works. A reception will follow. Collins specializes in poetry and American literature. His books include The Inventor Poems, Lives We Have Chosen, Greatest Hits and Occasions of Sin. He is founder and editor of the Birmingham Poetry Review. Wharton teaches American literature and writes fiction. His short stories have been published in magazines such as CutBank, Carolina Quarterly and Mundus Artium.