Writers Harvest supports local food bank

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Writers Harvest, the Purdue University Creative Writing Program's annual benefit reading, will be 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Wells Center, 638 North Street in Lafayette.

Voluntary donations of five canned goods or $8 for the general public and $5 for students are requested for this event. All proceeds will go directly to Food Finders Food Bank. This year's featured writers will be poets Dana Roeser and Mark Neely and Creative Writing Program faculty members Porter Shreve and Bich Minh Nguyen.

Food Finders Food Bank annually distributes three million pounds of food and dry goods to 175 nonprofit agencies in 18 Indiana counties, reaching thousands of hungry Hoosiers and their families. Donating to Food Finders allows contributions to be shared equally among all agencies and their clients.

Roeser has published two books of poetry: "In the Truth Room" and "Beautiful Motion," both of which were awarded the Samuel French Morse Prize. Her poems have been published in Massachusetts Review, Harvard Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and other organizations. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Butler University.

Mark Neely is the author of a chapbook, "Four of a Kind," and a book of poetry, "Beasts of the Hill," which was awarded the FIELD Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in Indiana Review, North American Review and Columbia Poetry Review. A previous editor of the "Black Warrior Review," he teaches at Ball State University and edits "The Broken Plate."

Shreve is the author of the novels "The Obituary Writer," "Drives Like a Dream," and "When the White House Was Ours." His fiction, nonfiction, and opinion pieces have been published in journals, magazines and newspapers, including the Northwest Review, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times. Both "Drives Like a Dream" and "When the White House Was Ours" were named Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune. Shreve has co-edited six anthologies, and he is director of Purdue's Creative Writing Program.

Nguyen's debut memoir, "Stealing Buddha's Dinner," was a 2007 Chicago Tribune Book of the Year, a finalist for the Asian American Literature Award, and winner of the PEN/Jerard Award, in addition to receiving other honors. Nguyen's first novel, "Short Girls," was published in 2009. Her writing has been published in Gourmet, the Chicago Tribune, and Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America. Nguyen has co-edited three anthologies of fiction and nonfiction, and she teaches creative nonfiction and fiction writing as well as Asian American literature at Purdue.