September 04, 2008

Lineup set for Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- You don’t have to be a writer to want to see what’s cooking at the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The annual festival brings established and up-and-coming writers to a weekend-long festival that includes readings, question and answer panels, and book signings. This year, the festival is Oct. 23-Oct. 25.

Here is a schedule of readings and events followed by brief biographies of the visiting writers.

Oct. 23

8-9 p.m. -- Readings by Jim Tomlinson and Janice N. Harrington, Student Center Auditorium

9-10 p.m. -- Festival reception (sponsored by the Department of English), Student Center J.W. Corker Lounge

Oct. 24

10-10:50 a.m. -- Poetry Panel, featuring Janice N. Harrington, Richard Jones, Sean Nevin and Jennifer Perrine, Student Center Auditorium

11-11:50 a.m. -- Fiction Panel, featuring Amy Knox Brown, Josh Goldfaden, Anne Panning and Jim Tomlinson, Student Center Auditorium

2-3 p.m. -- Readings by Sean Nevin and Anne Panning, Student Center Auditorium

3:15-4:30 p.m. -- Reception and book signing featuring all festival readers, Student Center Old Main Lounge

5-6 p.m. -- Readings by Jennifer Perrine and Josh Goldfaden, Student Center Auditorium

Oct. 25

2-3 p.m. -- Readings from Amy Knox Brown and Richard Jones, Student Center Auditorium

Amy Knox Brown teaches creative writing at Salem College in Winston-Salem, N.C., but she is a native of Lincoln, Neb. In addition to holding a doctoral degree in English and creative writing, Brown earned a juris doctorate from the University of Nebraska College of Law. She writes both fiction and poetry. He work appears in such publications as Shenandoah, Missouri Review, Other Voices and in various anthologies and other literary magazines. She has a poetry chapbook, “Advice from Household Gods,” and a collection of stories, “Three Versions of the Truth.” Brown’s awards include the Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Prize for Fiction, the Brenda Smart Prize for Short-Short Fiction, the Brenda Smart Prize for Fiction and a Henfield/Transatlantic Review Award.

Josh Goldfaden is the recipient of a 2008 Civitella Banjeri Fellowship. His stories earned such awards as the 2007 Lytle Fiction Prize from The Sewanee Review and the 2006 Sherwood Anderson Award from Mid American Review. His stories appear in journals including Meridian, New England Review, Salmagundi, Washington Square and ZYZZYVA, and his first novel appeared in April 2007. His current project is turning one of his stories, optioned for film, into a screenplay, and working on a novel. His career path includes widely divergent jobs in several different countries. At present, he lives in Oceanside, Calif., and operates a Web site design and management company with his wife, a poet.

Janice N. Harrington is a poet and the author of children’s books, winning awards for both. Her first book of poetry, “Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone,” published in 2007, won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts’ Literature Fellowship for Poetry recipient. For her children’s books, Harrington won an Ezra Jack Keats Award, and appeared in Time Magazine’s “Top 10 Children’s Books of 2007” for her book, “The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County.” A native of Alabama now teaching in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Harrington’s career includes work as a librarian and a professional storyteller.

Richard Jones is the director of the creative writing program at DePaul University in Chicago, and the editor of the literary journal Poetry East. He won the Midland Authors Award for Poetry in 2000. His publications include three books of poetry -- “Country of Air,” “At Last We Enter Paradise,” and “A Perfect Time,” two critical anthologies, and a CD recording, “Body and Soul,” which is a discussion of poetry.

Sean Nevin won the 2007 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award with “Oblivio Gate.” His chapbook, “A House That Falls,” won the 2005 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Prize. He also has work in such journals and anthologies as Blackbird, Poet Lore, The Gettysburg Review, Cuthroat, North American Review, Runes: A Review of Poetry, and Family Matters: Poems of our Families. He also edited the volume “22 Across: A Review of Young Writers.” He is a recipient of a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Nevin teaches creative writing at Arizona State University, and serves as assistant director of the Young Writer’s Program there.

Anne Panning teaches creative writing at the State University of New York Brockport, and co-directs the Brockport Writers Forum. Her book of short stories, “Super America,” won the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Other publications include the book of short stories, “The Price of Eggs,” and appearances in such journals as Kenyon Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Passages North, Black Warrior Review and more. Panning also wins awards for her essay writing. In both 2006 and 2007, Panning had an essay included as a Notable Essay in “Best American Essays.”

Jennifer Perrine’s first collection of poems, “The Body is No Machine,” won the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. New Issues Poetry and Prose published the collection in 2007. Perrine is part of the English faculty at Drake University, where she counts poetry, gender studies, queer theory, Holocaust studies and translation among her interests. She holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and art from Susquehanna University, a master’s degree in English from Bucknell University and a doctorate in creative writing from Florida State University. Her poetry appears in such journals as Quarterly West, Rhino Magazine, Passages North, Bellingham Review, Nimrod, River Styx, Inkwell, Green Mountains Review and Spoon River Poetry Review, to name a few.

Jim Tomlinson is an Illinois native relocated to rural Kentucky. He received a 2008 National Endowment for the Art Literature Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to the 2006 Sewanee Writers Conference and a 2005 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, among other awards. His first collection of stories, “Things Kept, Things Left Behind,” won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He has a second collection of stories expected in 2009 from University Press of Kentucky.

Grassroots, the undergraduate literary magazine published through the Department of English, organizes and sponsor the Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival.