April 06, 2015
Little Grassy Literary Festival is April 15-17
The seventh annual Little Grassy Literary Festival is next week in Morris Library’s John C. Guyon Auditorium.
The Graduate Writers Forum presents the festival, one of two hosted at SIU Carbondale, as a way to bring authors together and share up-and-coming writers with the community. Admission is free.
“We look for writers from the region whose work we enjoy, especially writers who seem to be up-and-comers,” K. Battin, graduate writers forum president, said. “We also look for aesthetic diversity. For instance, one of our fiction writers, Lania Knight, has a realistic novel about a gay teenager figuring out his life, while the other, Phong Nguyen, published a book of alternate history short stores, imagining how the world might have changed had various historical figures made different choices. We look for talented writers, like Jamaal May, who we know to be dynamic behind the podium.”
Diversity is an important factor when it comes to selecting guest authors, as well. Brattin said SIU is a diverse community, and the guest writers ought to be as well.
This year’s Little Grassy Literary Festival will include from Noel Crook, the 2013 winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and SIU Press First Book Award competition, and Amy Fleury, the judge for the 2013 competition and a 2003 winner.
Here is the schedule:
April 15
8 p.m. -- Phong Nguyen reading
April 16
11 a.m. -- Panel Q-&-A format
2 p.m. -- Jamaal May reading
3:30 p.m. -- Book signing and reception
5 p.m. -- Lania Knight reading
April 17
11 a.m. -- Amy Fleury and Noel Crook reading
2 p.m. -- Crab Orchard Review 20th anniversary event