John Gorka
Folk Singer/ Songwriter
Date: November 18, 2009
1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Performance
2:15 - 2:45 p.m. CD. Signing
East Campus
Performing Arts Center

John Gorka is an honored icon of folk tradition. Energetic acoustic music that is not a trend, not a fad, but an expression of everyday life, is his trademark. His songs are multi-faceted – full of depth, beauty and emotion. John’s rich baritone voice and unique songcraft weave a magical spell that can only be described as “Gorka.”

His material is championed by many – to date more than a score of artists have recorded and/or performed John Gorka songs, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Mary Black and Maura O’Connell. His music video for the single “When She Kisses Me” found a long-term rotation on VH-1’s “Current Country,” as well as on CMT and the Nashville Network. John has also graced the stage of Austin City Limits, appeared on CNN, and has been the subject of other national programming.

Stephen Dunn
Poet
January 28, 2010
1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Reading
2:15 - 2:45 p.m. Book Signing
Winter Park Campus
Room 224

Dunn was born in Forest Hills, NY in 1939, and earned his BA in History from Hofstra University in 1962. He attended the New School 1964 to 1966 and received his Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Syracuse University in 1970. He's the author of sixteen books, including Different Hours, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Since 1974 he has taught at Richard Stockton College of NJ, where he is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing. He's also been a Visiting Professor at The University of Washington, NYU, Columbia, and The University of Michigan.

In addition to his books, his work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, the New Republic, the New Yorker, The Georgia Review, and the American Poetry Review, to name just a few.

Beth Ann Fennelly & Tom Franklin
Poet & Author
Feburary 25, 2010
West Campus
Library - 1st Floor

Beth Ann Fennelly obtained her B.A. magna cum laude in 1993 from the University Of Notre Dame. After graduation, Fennelly taught English in a coal mining village on the Czech/Polish border. When she returned to the States, she earned the M.F.A. degree in poetry from the University of Arkansas. She then received the 1999 Diane Middlebrook Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin. She was also the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She became an Assistant Professor of English and taught poetry at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Her chapbook A Different Kind of Hunger, won the 1997Texas Review Breakthrough Award. Her poems have been anthologized in Poets of the New Century, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The BestAmerican Poetry 1996, The Pushcart Prize 2001, Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother and in April 2008 Unmentionables: Poems. Fennelly's book of poems, Open House, has won numerous awards; including the2001 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry for a First Book and in 2002 Fennelly received the National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Currently,Beth Ann Fennelly resides in Oxford, Mississippi, with her husband Tom Franklin and their children Claire and Thomas. Beth Ann is the Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi.

Author Tom Franklin was raised in rural southwest Alabama (Clarke County), a dozen miles from the setting of his new novel, Hell at the Breech. He was educated at the University of South Alabama and the University of Arkansas. His first book was a highly regarded short story collection, Poachers. He has been published in The Black Warrior Review, The Southern Review, and The Oxford American, among others. His stories have been included in Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, New Stories from The South, 1999 and Stories from the Blue Moon Café. Tom Franklin has received a number of fellowships and is currently at the University of Mississippi at Oxford.