Jazzman’s Readers series announced

The Jazzman’s Readers Series 2005 roster of events was recently announced by Stephanie Powell Watts, assistant professor of English, who directs the newly formed Creative Writing Program at Lehigh.
The Jazzman’s series, which debuted in the Spring of 2004, is part of an “ongoing effort by Lehigh to bring professional writers to the attention of our students,” Powell Watts says. All of the events are free and open to the public.
The series will open on Thursday, Feb. 17, with a 4:15 p.m. reading at Jazzman’s by Daphne Kalotay, who teaches literature and writing at Boston University. Her short fiction has appeared in the Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Agni and other journals. Her short story collection, “Calamity and Other Stories (Doubleday 2005)” is a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, as well as a Borders Original Voices pick.
Other scheduled events, which will all take place in Jazzman’s Coffeehouse in Campus Square, include the following:
--7 p.m. Thursday, March 17: Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with playwright Honour Kane and poet Ken Fifer.
Kane will read from a work in progress. Her plays have been produced by the Public Theater’s New Work Now, Sydney’s Annual Mardi Gras Arts Festival, Actors Theater of Louisville, BACA Downtown, New Georges, The Theater Outlet in Allentown, and Irelenad Inishbofin Arts Festival. Her works have also been developed by A.S.K. at Lincoln Center Theater, London’s Royal Court Theater, Oregon’s Portland Center Stage, Irish Repertory Theater and City Theater in Pittsburgh. She holds fellowships from the NEA, NYFA (2002, 1990), a NYSA Individual Theater Artist Commission, a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard/Radcliffe, a Pew Fellowhsip in the Arts, MacDowell and Yaddo Residencies, and a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Award.
Fifer, who holds a Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Michigan, has had his work published in several prestigious literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Partisan Review and New Letters. He has also published two books of poetry and edited three anthologies of poems by children. He will read from his recent chapbook publication, Water Presents.
- 7 p.m. Thursday, April 14: Celebrate National Poetry Month with a reading by award-winning writers Lee Upton and Lehigh’s Ruth Knaffo Setton.
Upton’s poems, which were praised by the New York Times Book Review for their ability to “transform the often mundane quality of life in an overly materialistic America into something imaginative and spiritual,” have appeared in such prestigious journals as Poetry, Plougshares, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and The Harvard Review. Her fourth book of poetry, “Civilian Histories” (University of Georgia Press), was published in 2000. Her third book of literary criticism, “The Muse of Abandonment,” was recently published by Bucknell University Press.
Setton, who teaches creative writing at Lehigh and serves as visiting writer-in-residence for Lehigh’s Berman Center for Jewish Studies, is the recipient of literary fellowships from the NEA, the Pennsylvannia Council on the Arts, the Sewanne Writers Conference, PEN, VCCA and the MacDowell Writers Colony, among others. She has published fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction in several journals and anthologies, including Best Contemporary Jewish Writing, The North American Review, Nimrod, Tikkum, and Another Chicago Magazine. Her first novel, “The Road to Fez,” was published by Counterpoint Press in March 2001.
- 7 p.m. Thursday, April 21: Readings from Amaranth
Contributors to Amaranth, Lehigh’s only literary journal, will read selected passages.
For more information about the Jazzman’s Readers Series 2005, contact Stephanie Powell Watts at 610-758-4057.
--Linda Harbrecht