Early Look at Next Year’s Visiting Writers

Butler has some big names in writing confirmed for next year’s Visiting Writing Series.

Denis Johnson and Dean Young are the writers in residence for fall 2015. Writers in Residence typically extend their stay on Butler’s campus and provide outstanding experiences for the MFA students: Q & A sessions, class visits, dinners, and workshops. MFA students will also have an opportunity to meet award winning poet Claudia Rankine and best selling novelist Lev Grossman.

Unknown-2Denis Johnson touches all genres with his creative work. He writes novels, poetry, plays and non-fiction. He is well known for his short-story collection Jesus’ Son (1992), his novel Tree of Smoke (2007), which won the National Book Award, his pulitzer-prize finalist novella, Train Dreams (2011), and The Laughing Monsters (2014). He holds an MFA degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he has also returned to teach. He received a Whiting Writer’s Award in 1986 and a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction in 1993.

DeanYoung_NewBioImage_Credit-LaurieSaurbornYoungDean Young is named one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today by the Poetry Foundation. His numerous collections of poetry have won the Colorado Prize for Poetry, been named finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize.  He has been presented the Academy Award in Literature and been awarded a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Unknown-1Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry including the best selling Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Rankine has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation. In 2013, she was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2014 she received a Lannan Literary Award. Read an interview with Ms. Rankine by Butler MFA Kaveh Akbar.

UnknownLev Grossman is the author of the best selling The Magicians trilogy. The Magicians was named one of the New Yorker’s best books of the year. The Magicians books have been published in twenty-three countries and have garnered praise from George R.R. Martin, John Green, Audrey Niffenegger, Erin Morgenstern, Joe Hill, William Gibson, Gregory Maguire, Junot Diaz and many others. Grossman is the book critic for Time Magazine and has also written for Believer, the Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, the New York TimesSalonWiredEntertainment Weekly,  Lingua Franca, and more.