The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series of Hope College will feature E.J. Levy and Joe Wilkins on Thursday, March 5, at 7 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.
There will also be a question-and-answer session in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium of the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication earlier in the day, at 3:30 p.m.
The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.
E.J. Levy’s debut story collection, “Love, In Theory,” won the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Award, a 2013 ForeWord Book of the Year Award and a 2013 Best Indie Book of the Year from Kirkus, and received the 2014 Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award (recognition previously awarded to Alice Munro and Louise Erdrich for their first books). Her anthology, “Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction by New American Writers,” received a Lambda Literary Award.
Levy has taught courses at Colorado College, University of Missouri-Columbia, and American University. Currently, she teaches in the MFA Program at Colorado State University. She is on the editorial staffs for “Fourth Genre” and “Kenyon Review.”
Joe Wilkins was recently awarded the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award in Non Fiction for his memoir “The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry,” which was previously named an Orion Book Award finalist and a Montana Book Award Honor Book.
Wilkins is the author of two collections of poetry, including “Killing the Murnion Dogs,” a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; and “Notes from the Journey Westward,” winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize and the Plains Book Award. As the winner of the Wilderness Writing Residency from PEN Northwest, Wilkins, with his family, will spend the summer and fall of 2015 living in a remote cabin along the Rogue River in southwest Oregon.
His stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in many magazines and journals including “The Southern Review,” “Harvard Review,” “Montana Review,” “The Sun,” “Mid-American Review,” “Cave Wall” and “Slate.”
Wilkins lives with his wife, son, and daughter in western Oregon and teaches at Linfield College.
Additional information about the series is available online at jrvws.org.
Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.
The Martha Miller Center for Global Communication is located at 257 Columbia Ave., at the corner of Columbia Avenue and 10th Street.