Authors Andrew Farkas and M.O. Walsh to read at UT Hodges Library

Writers Andrew Farkas and M.O. Walsh will open the year’s series of authors reading from their works in UT’s John C. Hodges Library. Farkas and Walsh will read from their recently published collections of short stories at 7 p.m., Monday, September 13, in the Hodges Library auditorium. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Andrew Farkas’ first collection of short stories, Self-Titled Debut, won the 2008 Subito Press Prize for Experimental Fiction. His work has appeared in such journals as The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Pank, New Orleans Review, and Harpur Palate among others, and he appears regularly in The Brooklyn Rail. He holds an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama and is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

M.O. Walsh is a writer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His first book, the story collection The Prospect of Magic, won the 2009 Tartt’s First Fiction Award. His work has appeared in publications such as Oxford American, American Short Fiction, and Epoch and has been anthologized in Best New American Voices. He currently teaches at LSU where he lives with his wife Sarah, daughter Magnolia, and dog Gus.

Both Farkas and Walsh earned M.A.s in English as part of the Creative Writing Program at UT.

The September 13 event is the first reading in the 2010-2011 John C. Hodges Distinguished Creative Writers Series. The series honors the same UT English professor of 40 years, author of the Harbrace College Handbook, for whom the Hodges Library is named.

Readings will be emceed by Jeff Daniel Marion, the UT Libraries’ new Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence, a poet and longtime creative writing teacher. The full schedule for this year’s readings is available at www.lib.utk.edu/writersinthelibrary/.

Additional University of Tennessee sponsors for the 2010-2011 series are Writers in the Library, the Better English Fund, Ready for the World, the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Judaic Studies Program, and the Commission for Women.

For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).