Acclaimed authors to discuss their craft during GVSU Writers Series winter events

Two Grand Valley State University writing faculty members will discuss the inner workings of their creativity and craft during the annual Grand Valley Writers Series.

Chris Haven, associate professor of writing, and Gale Thompson, visiting professor, will present a faculty reading on February 5, from 6-7:30 p.m. in the Mary Idema Pew Library Multi-Purpose Room, located on the Allendale Campus.

Haven teaches courses in intermediate and advanced fiction, beginning creative writing, style and techniques, and composition among other topics. His short fiction and flash fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Threepenny Review, New Orleans Review, Arts & Letters, Massachusetts Review, Electric Literature, and Kenyon Review Online. His poems can be read in Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Mid-American Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and prose poems from his Terrible Emmanuel series have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Sycamore Review, North America Review, and Seneca Review. He has been teaching writing at Grand Valley since 2002.

Thompson is the author of Soldier On (2015) and two chapbooks. Throughout her career, Thompson has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work has appeared in or is scheduled to appear in Gulf Coast, American Poetry Review, Guernica, jubilat , Bennington Review, and Colorado Review. She is also the founding editor of Jellyfish Magazine.

The Grand Valley Writers Series will offer two additional events this winter season:

Poetry Craft Talk and Reading with Janine Joseph and Oliver Baez Bendorf
Thursday, March 14
Craft talk: 6:15-7:15 p.m., DeVos Center, room 121E, Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Reading: 7:30-8:30 p.m., University Club, DeVos Center, Pew Grand Rapids Campus

Nonfiction Craft Talk and Reading with Sarah Einstein
Monday, April 8
Craft talk: 3-4:15 p.m., Kirkhof Center, room 2270, Allendale Campus
Reading: 6-7:30 p.m., Mary Idema Pew Library Multi-Purpose Room, Allendale Campus

For more information, contact Todd Kaneko, series coordinator, at [email protected], or visit gvsu.edu/writing.