Sherman Alexie and Bob Hershon poetry reading October 5 at Macalester

Sherman Alexie
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Sherman Alexie and Bob Hershon poetry reading October 5 at Macalester

Bob Hershon
Download

St. Paul, Minn. – Sherman Alexie and Bob Hershon will be reading poetry at 7 p.m., at Macalester College on Monday, October 5, in the Alexander G. Hill Ballroom, Kagin Commons.  The reading is free and open to the public.  For more information call 651-696-6387.

Both authors will read their own poetry. In the Q&A after the reading, they’ll talk about their life-long relationship – Hershon published Alexie’s first book of poetry, launching his career as a poet and writer.

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is an American poet, writer, and filmmaker. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American with ancestry of several tribes, growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He lives in Seattle, Wash.

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer.

He has read his work to great acclaim throughout the United States and in Europe.

Alexie has published 24 books including What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press; Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, from Grove Press; and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel from Little, Brown Books for Children.

He has also recently published the 20th Anniversary edition of his classic book of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Smoke Signals, the movie he wrote and co-produced, won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Wash., on the Spokane Indian Reservation. 

Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.

Hershon, born and raised in Brooklyn, is a poet and the author of 13 books of poetry. Most recently, “Goldfish and Rose” (2013), Into the Punch Line: Poems 1984-1994 (1994), The German Lunatic (2000), and Calls from the Outside World (2006). His work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, the World, Michigan Quarterly, Ploughshares, and The Nation, among many others.

He is also the recipient of various awards, including two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He worked as the executive director of the Print Center and is a co-editor of Hanging Loose Press and Hanging Loose magazine in Brooklyn. He has edited various collections, including Smart Like Me and Shooting the Rat, collections of High School writing.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and has two grown children.

This reading is sponsored and organized by Macalester College’s English Department which has thriving programs in both creative writing and literature, with prominent writers and poets and scholars from the nation and the world.

Founded in 1874, Macalester is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 2,045 students, nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism, and civic engagement. Learn more at macalester.edu.

September 11 2015

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