Writers Series to feature faculty

The Grand Valley Writers Series continues with readings by Writing Department faculty members Amorak Huey and Caitlin Horrocks, Tuesday, January 28, at 7 p.m. in Cook De-Witt Center, on the Allendale Campus. The series is open to the public. Free admission.

Huey, a longtime newspaper editor and reporter, is in his third year as an assistant professor of writing. His chapbook, The Insomniac Circus, is forthcoming in 2014 from Hyacinth Girl Press. Huey’s poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, Poet’s Market 2014, The Southern Review, Rattle, Menacing Hedge, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poet Lore, The Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review and many other print and online journals. He will read poems from two manuscripts-in-progress and from a forthcoming chapbook.

“Events like this offer our students a chance to see us outside the classroom context, as writers in addition to as their teachers,” said Huey. “It’s always fun for us to get to share our work with the campus community, and I’m excited to hear Caitlin read her work; I’m a big fan of her writing.”

Horrocks is the author of the story collection, This Is Not Your City. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories 2011, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, The Pushcart Prize XXXV, The Paris Review, Tin House, One Story and elsewhere. Her work has won awards including the Plimpton Prize, and fellowships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences. She was formerly the 2006-2007 Theresa A. Wilhoit Fellow at Arizona State University. Currently, she is an associate professor of writing at Grand Valley and the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review.

“I’m going to read an excerpt from a novel I’m working on,” said Horrocks. “The novel is based on the life of an eccentric French composer, Erik Satie (1866-1925). “I’m also going to play one of his easier pieces on the piano during the event, but it will be the first time I’ve played piano in public in literally a decade.”

For more information about the Writers Series, contact Oindrila Mukherjee in the Writing Department, at [email protected], or (616) 331-3411.