reading

Butler’s bountiful harvest

Posted by MS

After months of preparation, planning, and a venue upgrade, on Tuesday Butler’s first annual Writer’s Harvest came and went without a hitch. It was, in the words of one of our attendees, “One of the coolest, most amazing things I’ve ever gotten to see.” Hopefully you managed to hear about it from a friend, read about it in the paper (or on this very blog), or maybe you saw one of its beautiful posters– and hopefully you attended.

butler writer's harvest john green second helpings community kitchenIf you did, you saw eight (8!) tall boxes of donated rice and dried pasta filled to the brim, and you saw 761 spectators of all ages fill Clowes Hall. Considering the capacity of our original venue – Atherton Hall’s Reilly Room – is 400, and those eight boxes of donations added up to over 900 pounds of food (1.2 pounds of food per attendee), I’d say this harvest was a resounding success. Not bad for our first, eh? Continue reading →

Butler to become Russellandia!

Posted by MS

swamplandia vampires lemon grove pulitzer butler mfaThe penultimate member of this fall’s Visiting Writers Series is Karen Russell, author of two collections of short stories and the Pulitzer-nominated, Orange Prize-long-listed novel Swamplandia! On Monday, November 4, Russell will be reading in the Krannert room of Clowes Hall at 7:30 PM. Currently serving as Bard College’s writer-in-residence, Russell has been published in Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, and Zoetrope. Not to mention her debut short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves won the Bard Fiction Prize in 2011. Not to mention that, just recently, Russell became one of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur grant. Continue reading →

Butler to become Russellandia!

Posted by MS

swamplandia vampires lemon grove pulitzer butler mfaThe penultimate member of this fall’s Visiting Writers Series is Karen Russell, author of two collections of short stories and the Pulitzer-nominated, Orange Prize-long-listed novel Swamplandia! On Monday, November 4, Russell will be reading in the Krannert room of Clowes Hall at 7:30 PM. Currently serving as Bard College’s writer-in-residence, Russell has been published in Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, and Zoetrope. Not to mention her debut short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves won the Bard Fiction Prize in 2011. Not to mention that, just recently, Russell became one of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur grant. Continue reading →

Zuravleff next visiting writer

Posted by MS

Mary Kay Zuravleff visits Butler University as part of the Vivian Delbrook Visiting Writer's series.Butler’s next visiting writer is author Mary Kay Zuravleff. She’ll be giving a reading Wednesday, October 23 at 7:30 PM in the Eidson-Duckwall recital hall. Zuravleff has taught at Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and American University, and serves on the PEN/Faulkner Foundation board. She has been nominated for an Orange Prize, received the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award, and won the James Jones First Novel Award for The Frequency of Souls.

Yeah, that’s all impressive, but I’m really here to tell you about how awesome Zuravleff’s new novel Man Alive! is. Ready for it? It’s a novel about a struggling family. Are you sold? Continue reading →

Butler’s first annual Writer’s Harvest

Posted by MS

Slim profile version of Writer's Harvest promo flyer, which will appear in Nuvo.The third event in our Conversations@Efroymson series, which also happens to be our most exciting yet, is Butler’s first annual Writer’s Harvest. On Tuesday October 29, 7:30 PM at Clowes Memorial Hall, Indiana-based fiction powerhouses John Green, Ben Winters and Susan Neville will be giving readings– but that’s just the “writer” part. The “harvest” part is where you come in. We will be collecting your donations of dried pasta and white rice on behalf of Indy non-profit community kitchen Second Helpings. The event is, as always, free and open to the public.

While they do cook and deliver about 3,500 meals (about 150 pounds of pasta and rice!) every day, eliminating hunger is only one half of what Second Helpings does. The company also provides culinary job training to unemployed and underemployed adults. Their mission statement reads: “We’re not just teaching people to cook – we’re providing an avenue for people to transform their own lives. We don’t just collect food – we rescue food because we can’t stand to see it go to waste when others have none.” Naturally, your donation will be much appreciated. But we plan to make it worth your while; allow me to introduce our readers: Continue reading →

Women’s poetry unites Butler community

Posted by MS

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During A Celebration of Women’s Poetry, the first open-mic reading in the short history of the Conversations @ Efroymson series, the forum matched the content. As much as the words off the page were empowering, so too was the sight of tenured professors trading notes with undergrads about which poetry collection to pick up next. Continue reading →