Writers Harvest reading to benefit local food bank

November 5, 2015  


WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Writers Harvest, the Purdue University Creative Writing Program's annual benefit reading, will be 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19 at the Wells Center, 638 North St., in Lafayette.

This year's event will feature readings from Purdue creative writing professor Sharon Solwitz, English literature professor Daniel Morris, second-year MFA poet Anthony Sutton and second-year MFA fiction writer Samantha Atkins.

The event is open to the public, and each person is asked to bring five non-perishable food items. All proceeds will go directly to Food Finders Food Bank. The food bank annually distributes 1.4 million pounds of food and dry goods to more than 160 nonprofit agencies in 16 Indiana counties.

Solwitz has published the novel "Bloody Mary" and a collection of stories, "Blood and Milk," the latter of which won the Carl Sandburg Prize from Friends of the Chicago Public Library, the prize for adult fiction from the Society of Midland Authors, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Awards for her individual stories, published in such magazines as TriQuarterly, Mademoiselle, and Ploughshares, include the Pushcart Prize, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, and grants and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council. Her stories and essays can be found in numerous anthologies and creative writing textbooks, and in "Best American Short Stories 2012." Her novel "Once, in Lourdes," is scheduled for publication by Random House in 2016.

Morris is an English professor at Purdue, where he has taught literature classes since 1994. Over the years he has published poems in various print and online journals. He has also collected them in three books, most recently "Hit Play."

Sutton is a poet, editor and translator. He has received fellowships and scholarships from The Poetry at Round Top Festival, The New Harmony Writers' Workshop and Gemini Ink. His work has appeared in Connotation Press, Cider Press Review, Identity Theory and elsewhere. With "Glass Mountain," he received the AWP National Program Directors' Prize and he currently serves as editor-in-chief of Sycamore Review.

Atkins, an Indiana native, is in her second year of Purdue University's MFA program. Her focus is fiction, although she also writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She is coordinator of the English department's visiting writers series and is creative nonfiction editor of Sycamore Review. Her work appears in Humanize Magazine, and her short story "Momma Puss" was recently shortlisted for Glimmer Train's 2015 New Writers Contest.

News Service contact: John Hughey, 765-494-2432, hugheyj@purdue.edu

Source: Lauren Mallett, assistant director of Creative Writing, lmallett@purdue.edu

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