Tonight, members of the SIU-E creative writing faculty, including Adrian Matejka, Stacey Lynn Brown,Valerie Vogrin, Geoff Schmidt, and Allison Funk, read from their work at the Regional Arts Commission (that's 6128 Delmar Boulevard, or across from the Pageant, if you're feeling too lazy to click on the link). After the reading, the profs discuss SUI-E's M.A.program in Creative Writing and real live grad students will be on hand to answer questions and talk about their experiences in the program. All five of these folks are brilliant writers (and out-loud-readers), so if you like to listen to fiction and poetry, go even if you're not shopping around for a grad program in creative writing; the reading starts at 6pm.
Speaking of SUI-E's creative writing program, alum Julie Dill (a brilliant writer and reader in her own right) appears on Saturday at Stirrup Pants (for the lazies, that's 2122 Cherokee), for "One Hot Night," a reading co-hosted by Fayetteville's The Burning Chair. Joining her will be a busload of out-of-town poets, namely Cannibal Books authors Stephanie Anderson, Tom Andes, Adam Clay, MC Hyland, Alison Palmer, Nate Slawson, and Joseph Wood. Stirrup Pants is a Saturday-only, chapbook-only poetry storefront (Dana Crozier profiled 'em for us, here), and they're doing some interesting stuff with readings, not to mention sound and soup. --Stefene Russell
