The Department of English & Comparative Literature at University of Cincinnati will host its sixth biennial Emerging Fiction Writers Festival, featuring former CR contributors and crime-fighters Dean Bakopoulos and Alissa Nutting, as well as corruption-crushing magnificoes Ed Park and Nelly Reifler. Read on for a full schedule of events, including a seminar concerning tricks and tips on nuclear disarmament.
For the sake of our country—Nay, our world!—we hope to see you there.
Fiction Reading: Dean Bakopoulos & Nelly Reifler
►March 11, 2015; 7:00 pm
►McMicken 127
Panel Discussion: “The Engines of Fiction” (moderated by Gwen Kirby and Dario Sulzman)
This panel will focus on the propulsive elements of narrative, in both the short story and the novel. The most obvious topics include plot, event, structure, and suspense, but panelists might also discuss elements such character, language, tone, form, and atmosphere.
►March 12, 2015; 11:00 am
►Tangeman University Center, Room 400B
Fiction Reading: Alissa Nutting & Ed Park
►March 12, 2015; 7:00 pm
►McMicken 127
Panel Discussion: “Realism and Fabulism” (moderated by Dan Paul and Brenda Peynado)
This panel will address issues and implications of various modes of representation in both the story and the novel. Possible topics for discussion include premise, genre, logic, world-building, credibility, authority, and the utility of a central distinction between realist and non-realist fiction.
►March 13, 2015; 10:00 am
►Tangeman University Center, Room 400B
Participant Bios:
Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novels Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon and My American Unhappiness, both published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His new novel, Summerlong, will be published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2015. The winner of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, he is writer-in-residence at Grinnell College and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Alissa Nutting is the author of the novel Tampa and the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as The Norton Introduction to Literature, Tin House, Bomb, and Conduit; her essays have appeared in Fence, The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, and other venues. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at John Carroll University.
Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and other honors, and was named one of the top ten fiction books of the year by Time. He was a founding editor of The Believer, the editor of The Voice Literary Supplement, and an editor at The Poetry Foundation and Little A. From 2008 to 2011, he taught in Columbia’s M.F.A. program. He is currently executive editor at Penguin Press. His next two books, the novel Same Bed, Different Dreams and the story collection An Oral History of Atlantis, are forthcoming from Random House.
Nelly Reifler is the author of the story collection See Through and the novel Elect H. Mouse State Judge. Her work has been published most recently in Story, Tweed’s, The Atlas Review, The Weeklings, and Lucky Peach, among others, and has been aired on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She currently teaches in the M.F.A. programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia. She was the Writer-in-Residence at Western Michigan University in 2014, and she has been an editor at Post Road since 2008.
