Adam Johnson, author of the acclaimed new novel The Orphan Master’s Son, will read at UT’s Writers in the Library, 7 p.m., Monday, October 29, in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

Dystopian views of the future dominate Johnson’s short stories and his first novel, Parasites Like Us. In The Orphan Master’s Son Johnson portrays the very real, nightmarish kingdom of present-day North Korea. Through the narration of Jun Do (John Doe?) and the ubiquitous loudspeakers constantly blaring propaganda, the reader is immersed in a totalitarian culture in which the state directs the very thoughts of its citizens.

Adam Johnson on The Orphan Master’s Son and his trip to North Korea:

“…[W]hen Kim Jong Il comes to power, all is strength, happiness and prosperity. It didn’t matter that the story was a complete fiction — every citizen was forced to become a character whose motivations, desires and fears were dictated by this script. The labor camps were filled with those who hadn’t played their parts, who’d spoken of deprivation instead of plenitude and the purest democracy.…Traveling to North Korea filled me with a sense that every person there, from the lowliest laborer to military leaders, had to surrender a rich private life in order to enact one pre-written by the Party. To capture this on the page, I created characters across all levels of society, from the orphan soldier to the Party leaders. And since Kim Jong Il had written the script for all of North Korea, my novel didn’t make sense without writing his role as well.” [from an amazon.com interview]

Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. He received a Whiting Writers’ Award for emerging writers in 2009 and was named Debut Writer of the Year in 2002 by amazon.com. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, Paris Review, Tin House and Best American Short Stories. Johnson is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award. His books have been translated into French, Dutch, Japanese, Catalan, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese and Serbian.

Johnson is one of the founders of Stanford’s Graphic Novel Project, which each year brings together a team of student writers and artists to create graphic novels that draw on real-world situations, often involving society’s dispossessed. GNP’s projects have featured stories of human-rights abuses, touching on issues such as rape as a weapon of war, child soldiers, and human trafficking. (Read more about comics produced by the Stanford Graphic Novel Project in The Comics Journal.)

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

Novelist Natalie Bakopoulos will be the featured author at Writers in the Library on Monday, October 15, at 7 p.m. in UT’s Hodges Library Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

The Green Shore, published in 2012 by Simon & Schuster, is Bakopoulos’ first published novel. The narrative paints a finely etched portrait of one family set against the backdrop of the late 1960s Greek military dictatorship. The Green Shore has received glowing reviews: “Bakopoulos’s juxtaposition of a historic conflict with the joys and trials of motherhood, the heedlessness of youth, and the durability of family ties is poignant and effective,” says Publishers Weekly; “an astute accounting of the way political climates shift inner lives,” according to Time Out Chicago.

Bakopoulos holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan, where she now teaches. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Ninth Letter, and Granta Online and has received an O. Henry Award, a Hopwood Award, and a Platsis Prize for Work in the Greek Legacy. She is a contributing editor for the online journal Fiction Writers Review. Each summer she teaches creative writing at the Aegean Arts Circle in Andros, Greece.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the UT Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. Natalie Bakopoulos’ reading received additional support from UT’s Ready For The World Initiative.

For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

Award-winning poet Alice Friman will be on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus on Monday, October 8. She will read at Writers in the Library, 7 p.m., in the Hodges Library Auditorium. A reception will follow the reading. Earlier in the day, 3-4 p.m., she will hold an Author Chat in 1210-1211 McClung Tower.

Alice Friman’s new book of poems, Vinculum, was released in March 2011 by LSU Press. Friman is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently The Book of the Rotten Daughter and Zoo, winner of the Ezra Pound Poetry Award from Truman State University and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club. Her poems appear in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Shenandoah, which awarded Friman the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry in 2001.

Friman has received fellowships from the Indiana Arts Commission, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bernheim Foundation. Among her prizes are a 2012 Pushcart Prize, the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry, and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America.

Anthologized widely and published in thirteen countries, she was Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Indianapolis from 1973 to 1993 and is now Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College & State University. Her new poetry podcast series is Ask Alice.

Writers in the Library events are free and open to the public.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

UT’s Writers in the Library begins the fall semester with a flourish! Bobbie Ann Mason will lead off the visiting writers series with a reading on Wednesday, September 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of five short story collections, five novels, a memoir, and three works of nonfiction. Her first book of fiction, Shiloh & Other Stories (1982), won the PEN/ Hemingway Award and was nominated for the American Book Award, the PEN/ Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her memoir, Clear Springs, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Mason has also received an Arts and Letters Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The New York Times has praised Mason’s books for having “delineated a New South reeling from the dislocations of contemporary life” and for her “radar-sharp knowledge of her characters’ inner lives, [and] her interest in the longings for emotional connection.”

Mason’s most recent book, the novel The Girl in the Blue Beret, was one of last summer’s three “hot literary books” recommended by USA Today.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

The final Writers in the Library event of the academic year will feature readings by student winners of the John C. Hodges Graduate Writing Prizes. Readings from the winning works will take place in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium on Monday, April 16, at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Prizes are made possible by the English Department through the John C. Hodges Better English Fund, endowed by the same long-time UT English professor for whom UT’s main library is named. This year’s judges were humanities librarian Christopher Caldwell (Poetry) and award-winning novelist Jeanne McDonald (Fiction).

2012 winners of the John C. Hodges Graduate Writing Prizes:

FICTION
First prize: Adam Prince, for “Bruises and Baby Teeth”
Second prize: Tawnysha Greene, “A House Made of Stars”
Third prize: Michael Levan, for “Stara Baba”

POETRY
First prize: Michael Levan, for “I Lose More Each Day I Spend in This Town”
Second prize: Joshua Robbins, “Ars Poetica”
Third prize: Darren Jackson, “We Are Late to Love”
Honorable Mention: Anna Laura Reeve, “Another One of My Poems Bears”

Both first-place winners are already published and well-regarded authors.

Adam Prince’s first collection of stories, The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, will be published in May 2012 with Black Lawrence Press. Stories from the collection have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Narrative Magazine among others. Prince will receive his doctoral degree at the end of this school year and then serve as the 2012-2013 Tickner Fellow at the Gilman School in Baltimore.

Michael Levan earned his MA from the University of North Texas and MFA in poetry from Western Michigan University. In May, he will receive his PhD in English and Creative Writing from UT. His work can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Mid-American Review, Fifth Wednesday, Southern Indiana Review, New South, Harpur Palate, and Third Coast.

The public is invited to join the university community for readings by these accomplished, up-and-coming writers.