Special Events Sponsored and/or Recommended by the Department of English
All events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.
PAST EVENTS Matt Wagner, Graphic Novelist
Thursday, September 18, 2008
7:00pm Miller 105
Matt Wagner has enjoyed a career in comics for over twenty years. Born and educated in Pennsylvania, his first published work was a short story that would introduce one of comicdom's most respected creator-owned characters--the mastermind assassin, GRENDEL. Best known for this epic creation and his other, more personal, allegory, MAGE, Matt has also worked on a variety of established characters. These include his ground-breaking work on the character of Batman villain, Two-Face, in the graphic novel, FACES, as well as a five-year stint both developing and generating the stories for the fan-favorite Vertigo title, SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE. His more recent efforts in this vein have included writing the DR. MID-NITE mini-series for DC Comics and serving as the regular cover artist on the Kevin Smith-penned relaunch of GREEN ARROW.
Known for his character-driven stories and his obvious love of the world's mythologies, Matt has also enjoyed the distinction of being one of the only writer/artists allowed to team his own creation with one of DC’s flagship characters in two successive BATMAN/GRENDEL cross-overs.
In the past few years, Matt has also written and drawn several high profile projects for DC; a three-issue prestige series starring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman; titled TRINITY and a year-long, project which comprised two mini-series that chronicled some of the earliest aspects of Batman’s career, collectively titled DARK MOON RISING.
This year sees the 25th anniversary of GRENDEL and Matt is hard at work on a variety of projects to commemorate this significant milestone.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Megan Cahn at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 J.W. Marshall & Christine Deavel
Poetry Reading
Monday, October 13, 2008
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
J.W. Marshall is the author of "Meaning A Cloud," published by Oberlin College Press in 2008, the result of his winning the 2007 Field Poetry Prize. He is a co-owner, with Christine Deavel, of Open Books, a poetry-only bookstore located in Seattle and one of two such stores in the nation. His poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Cranky, Field, Golden Handcuffs Review,LitRag, Poetry, and other magazines. His two chapbooks, "Taken With" (2005) and "Blue Mouth" (2001), were finalists for Washington State Book Awards.
Christine Deavel, co-owner of Open Books, a poetry-only bookstore in Seattle, is the author of "Box of Little Spruce," a chapbook published in 2005 by LitRag Press. Her work has appeared in Fence, Golden Handcuffs Review, The Iowa Review, Volt, and other magazines. In 2009, her piece "Of the Bird's Wing There Are Tracts of Feathers" will be included in an anthology of artists and writers, to be published by the University of Washington Press. She is a graduate of Indiana University and of The Iowa Writers Workshop.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Hazard Adams
Lecture
Monday, October 27, 2008
7:30pm Miller 105
Hazard Adams will deliver a lecture on Blake's Annotations to Wordsworth.
Hazard Adams is professor emeritus of comparative literature, University of Washington, and founder and honorary senior fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory. His Critical Theory since Plato has served as a standard text in the field for more than three decades.
Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Hazard Adams Book Warming
October 28, 2008
3:30 pm Bookstore
Hazard Adams will read from his newest publications The Offense of Poetry and Academic Child. Copies of his books will be available for purchase and can be autographed.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Mark Sarvas
Fiction Reading
Friday, November 7, 2008
4:00pm Pamplin Room, Aubrey Watzek Library
Mark Sarvas's debut novel, HARRY, REVISED, has been published by Bloomsbury and will appear in a dozen languages around the world. He is the host of the acclaimed litblog "The Elegant Variation" (a Forbes Magazine Best of the Web pick and Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog) and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. His criticism has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Threepenny Review and elsewhere.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Johnny Stallings presents
"One Man Lear"
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
7:00pm Albany Quadrangle - Smith Hall
Johnny Stallings' one-man performance of King Lear is a no-frills version that will amaze and fascinate. Without trivial things like sets, props, costumes, and other actors cluttering up the stage, you'll find your brain forced to concentrate on nothing but the words themselves, which--according to Johnny--is not such a bad thing: "It's arguably the best poetry in any language," he says reverently. Johnny's disheveled quirkiness is charming, but don't let it deceive you. It takes great skill to make Shakespeare this approachable, and above all else, his grasp of the language is impeccable. Stallings glosses over sections of King Lear with summary asides, and handles the dialogue scenes by simply moving to different parts of the room, distinguishing the different characters with only the smallest variations in posture and tone. The result should be clumsy and awkward, but the precision of his line readings, combined with his quirky sense of humor, makes it fluid.
Last year his performance was standing room only. Don't be left in the wings this year.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 English Faculty Colloquium with Professors Kurt Fosso and Jerry Harp
J. Hillis Miller's Virtual Reality of Reading
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
3:30pm Miller Center for the Humanities, Room 102
In his recent book, ON LITERATURE (2002), J. Hillis Miller recounts his curious intuition, active in him since he was a young reader, that literary works precede their being written down; his perception or sense is that the text pre-exists in some Platonic realm. This idea is a curious one coming from one of our "arch-deconstructionist" critics, one of the leaders of a "movement" much devoted to critiquing the traditional metaphysics of presence typified by Plato's doctrine of Forms. In what sense might this Platonic realm or script "exist" for a deconstructonist like Miller? Our presentation will include several possible answers along with examples of their relevance to the reading and meaning of literary texts.
Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Mark Conway
Poetry Reading
Friday, December 5, 2008
3:00pm Library Classroom, Aubrey Watzek Library
Mark Conway’s book of poetry ANY HOLY CITY won the Gerald Cable Book Award and was short-listed for this year’s PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Slate, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Bomb, Prairie Schooner, the Boston Review, the Grolier Poetry Prize Annual and elsewhere. He has been awarded fellowships from the McKnight, Jerome and Bush Foundations, the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He's poetry editor of Post Road.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 John Milton's 400th Birthday Bash
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
3:30pm Miller 105
There will be a lecture by David Biespiel, the editor of Poetry Northwest and author of Wild Civility. He will provide a commentary on reading Milton's work. There will also be an image slide show, faculty and student readings from the works of Milton, and a birthday cake.
If you are interested in helping to plan this event, please speak with Jerry Harp, Will Pritchard, or Kurt Fosso.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 Endi Bogue Hartigan
Poetry Reading
Thursday, January 29, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
Endi Bogue Hartigan's first book, One Sun Storm, was selected for the 2008 Colorado Prize for Poetry by final judge Martha Ronk and will be available in November, 2008. Hartigan's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Free Verse, Quarterly West, TinFish, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, Insurance, LVNG, the Antioch Review, Northwest Review, as well as a number of other magazines and an anthology. She cofounded and edited Spectaculum, a magazine devoted to long poems and series, for several years. A graduate of Reed College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Hartigan has lived primarily on the West coast and Hawai'i, and now works and lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and son.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
Photo by Steven Bloch
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 Katherine Dunn
Fiction Reading
Thursday, February 19, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
Katherine Dunn is a Portland novelist and journalist. One Ring Circus, a collection of her essays on the sport of boxing will appear early in 2009. Dunn and photographer Jim Lommasson won the 2004 Lange-Taylor Documentary Prize for their collaboration on the book Shadow Boxers. Dunn’s third novel, Geek Love, was a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
Photo by Carole Delogu
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 D.A. Powell
Poetry Reading
Thursday, March 5, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
D. A. Powell's books of poetry include Tea (Wesleyan, 1998); Lunch (Wesleyan, 2000); and Cocktails (Graywolf, 2004). The latter was a finalist for the PEN West, Lambda, Publishers' Triangle and National Book Critics Circle Awards. Chronic, his fourth US collection, will appear in February of 2009.
The New York Times wrote of Powell's work, "No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no poet as original is this accessible." Among his many honors, Powell has received a Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Center, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including New England Review, the Washington Post, Poetry, the Norton anthology Hybrid Forms and Best American Poetry 2008.
D. A. Powell has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, New England College, Sonoma State University, and San Francisco State University; and for three years he served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University. Powell currently teaches in the English Department at the University of San Francisco.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
Photo by Trane DeVore
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 Mark Edmundson
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Lecture: Why Read?
7:30pm Council Chambers
A prize winning scholar, Mark Edmundson has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism including Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference, Why Read?, Nightmare on Main Street and Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida. He has written for Raritan, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's where he is a contributing editor. Mark Edmundson is NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia.
Co-sponsored by the Offices of the President, the Provost, and the Dean of the College, and by Exploration and Discovery.
Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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 John Isles & Kristen Hanlon
Poetry Reading
Thursday, April 16, 2009
3:00pm Pamplin Room
John Isles is the author of Inverse Sky (Iowa, 2008) and Ark (Iowa, 2003) and coeditor of the Baltics section of New European Poets. He received an award from the Los Angeles Review in 2004 and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. His poems have appeared in such journals as American Letters & Commentary, the Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Pleiades. He lives with his wife and son in Alameda, California.
 Kristen Hanlon’s chapbook, Proximity Talks, was published by Noemi Press in 2005. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Puerto del Sol, VOLT, and New Orleans Review, among others. She is a past recipient of the James D. Phelan Literary Award from the San Francisco Foundation/Intersection for the Arts. From 2002-2007 she edited XANTIPPE, an annual print journal for poems, poetics, interviews and reviews of small press/university press titles; it continues as a webzine. She works in an office at UC Berkeley and lives in Alameda with her husband and son.
Co-sponsored by Watzek Library Special Collections
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
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Senior Student Poetry Reading
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
Students in Mary Szybist's Advanced Poetry Writing courses will read from the poetry they wrote and developed during the semester. A limited number of broadsides will be available to those in attendance. This event is always popular and crowded, so plan to arrive early for a seat.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
_____________________________________________________________ Literary Review Reading
Monday, April 27, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
The editors of the 2008-2009 Lewis & Clark College Literary Review will choose selected contributors to the journal to read their works. Students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged to submit their work to the Literary Review.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
_____________________________________________________________ Student Fiction Reading
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
7:00pm Manor House, Armstrong Lounge
Students in Pauls Toutonghi's Advanced Fiction Writing courses will read from the short stories they wrote and developed during the semester. This event is always popular and crowded, so plan to arrive early for a seat.
Refreshments will be served. Please contact Dyann Alkire at 503-768-7405 for further information.
_____________________________________________________________  Senior Commencement Breakfast
Sunday, May 10, 2009
8:00am Miller 4th Floor Lobby
Graduating seniors, their families, and the English Department Faculty are invited to attend a breakfast honoring our graduates before commencement.
RSVP with number of attendees to dalkire@lclark.edu by April 24th.
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2007-2008 English Department Events To discover more about local literary events, visit the following sites:
Readings at Reed College
Powells Bookstore Calendar of Events
Readings at Annie Bloom's Books
Mountain Writers' Calendar of Events
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