The third annual Arkansas Literary Festival will be March 8-12 at UCA.
Each year, the festival brings noted Arkansas writers in various genres to campus for public readings and workshops.
This year, the festival will feature Jennifer Christman (journalism), Jo McDougall (poetry), and David Jauss (fiction). A student reading and a faculty reading also will be held.
A complete schedule for the festival follows:
Monday, March 8
Student Reading, Student Center 214, 2-4 p.m.
Tuesday, March 9
Jennifer Christman, journalist
Craft Talk, Student Center 214, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Public Reading, Student Center 214, 2-3 p.m.
Wednesday, March 10
Faculty Reading, Main Hall 205, 2-4 p.m.
Thursday, March 11
Jo McDougall, poet
Craft Talk, Student Center 214, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Public Reading, Student Center 214, 2-3 p.m.
Friday, March 12
David Jauss, fiction writer
Craft Talk, Main 112, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Public Reading, Main 205, 2-3 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public.
About the writers:
Jennifer Christman is an award-winning columnist and editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She studied journalism at the University of Maryland and started her writing career at the college daily, The Diamondback, and several small newspapers. During college, she served as a legislative assistant to the minority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates, a job that led to her writing speeches when the delegate ran for governor.
After graduating with a journalism degree and three minors in women’s studies, criminology and political science, Christman reported hard news for the Virginian Pilot and the Providence Journal-Bulletin.
She quickly realized that she wanted to write about ?the stuff that really matters in life … like The Sex Pistols and The Brady Bunch.? In 1996, she joined the features staff of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and at age 23, she became the newspaper’s youngest columnist with her bi-weekly 20ish Century. No longer 20ish, Christman now writes two weekly columns about pop culture and women’s issues, as well as edits the newspaper’s Weekend and Dining Out sections.
Jo McDougall is the author of “Towns Facing Railroads,” “From Darkening Porches,” and “The Woman in the Next Booth.” Her most recent book, “Dirt,” was published by Autumn House Press.
“Emerson County Shaping Dream,” a short dramatic film scripted by her poems, was co-produced by McDougall and director Don Maxwell and released in 2001.
Among her awards are a DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest Award, an Academy of American Poets Award, MacDowell Colony fellowships, and Arkansas’s Porter Fund Literary Prize.
Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, The New Orleans Review, and others, and in numerous anthologies. She was Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. She lives in Little Rock.
David Jauss is the author of two short story collections, “Crimes of Passion” and “Black Maps,” and two collections of poetry, “Improvising Rivers” and “You Are Not Here,” and he has edited “The Best of Crazyhorse: Thirty Years of Poetry and Prose” and co-edited (with Philip Dacey) “Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms.”
His stories have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Award and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His awards include the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, the Fleur-de-Lis Poetry Prize, a James Michener Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship.
He teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. He lives in Little Rock.
The Arkansas Literary Festival is part of the Central Arkansas Writing Arts Series and is sponsored by UCA’s Department of Writing and Speech.
It also is part of UCA’s Artists in Residence program coordinated by the College of Fine Arts and Communication. While on campus, the writers will be meeting with UCA writing students in a workshop and discussion setting.
This festival is not to be confused with the ?Arkansas Literary Festival? to be held in Little Rock?s Riverfront Park in April and sponsored by the Arkansas Literacy Council, Inc.
For more information, contact Terry Wright, associate dean, College of Fine Arts and Communication, University of Central Arkansas, at (501)450-3295 or email terryw@uca.edu.
