The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series at Hope College will conclude its 2010-11 season with non-fiction writer Diana Joseph and poetry author Kevin McFadden on Thursday, April 14, at 7 p.m. at the Knickerbocker Theatre in downtown Holland.
Joseph and McFadden will also participate in a question-and-answer session on Thursday, April 14, at 3:30 p.m. in the DeWitt Center Herrick Room
The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.
° Diana Joseph has worked as a waitress, a short order cook, a typist and a teacher, but she is also the author of the memoir "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog."
The "Library Journal" has said of the memoir, "Despite the mouthful of a title, there isn't an excess word in this smart and tightly constructed debut. Fans of David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell will appreciate Joseph's portraits of the men in her life. From her young son's trench foot to her blue-collar father's attempt at a sex talk, these impeccably detailed stories are as heartfelt as they are trenchantly funny."
° Kevin McFadden is the author of "Hardscrabble," an inaugural selection of the "VQR Poetry Series" (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Winner of the Fellowship of Southern Writers George Garrett Award and the Erskine J. Poetry Prize, he has had poems appear in "Poetry," "American Letters & Commentary," "Denver Quarterly," "Fence" and "The Antioch Review." McFadden is currently the chief operating officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Of "Hardscrabble," David Kirby, author of "The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems," has said, "These limber, overcaffeinated poems spring off the page like Olympic athletes, their motto not 'Faster, Higher, Stronger' but 'Smarter, Funnier, Wiser.' The stadium in which they run and leap is plastered with road signs, biblical misprints, anagrams, McFaddenisms of every kind. And everywhere, cups of precious metal, ones from which the reader will drink again and again."
Additional information about the Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series may be obtained online by going to www.hope.edu/vws.
A performance by a Hope jazz group will precede the reading beginning at 6:30 p.m.
The DeWitt Center is located at 141 E. 12th St., facing Columbia Avenue at 12th Street. The Knickerbocker Theatre is located at 86 E. Eighth St., between College and Columbia avenues.