In partnership with the College of Liberal Arts and Colorado State University Libraries, the Department of English is hosting authors Paisley Rekdal and Lauren Groff on Feb. 24. They will both be reading from their own works in the Griffin Concert Hall at the University Center for the Arts at 7:30 p.m.
The event will also be live-streamed on Zoom, and the link will be available the week of the event at the Creative Writing Reading Series program website.
Before the main event, Lauren Groff will be in the Morgan Library Event Hall from 3:30-4:30 p.m. for an author salon where CSU students, staff and the greater Fort Collins community can come and speak with Groff in a smaller setting.
Groff will have a writing prompt ready for those writers looking for inspiration from an expert.
Groff’s new novel, Matrix, was published last September and revisits historical and medieval author Marie de France. As a newly-placed prioress, Marie navigates the tempestuous world in which she finds herself and of which she writes. Through Marie, Groff brings readers the intersections where women and their power cross paths with history.
On Friday, Feb. 25, Paisley Rekdal will be in Morgan Library conference room 110A for an intimate fireside chat about nonfiction, poetry and her creative process.
In her latest collection of poetry, 2019’s Nightingale, Rekdal rewrites the myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the imprint of memory, pain and transformation has readers ask how one is changed and how that change is recognized.
From writing about the past, to interrogating the meaning of language, to travelogue and cross-genre writing on discovering the self, Rekdal’s salon will give readers and authors a chance to ask about so many things. Those who come will also be able to write alongside Rekdal as she brings a writing prompt of her own.
CSU’s Department of English annually hosts the Creative Writing Reading Series that sees authors of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and hybrid works come to campus and interact with the Fort Collins community on all things literary. The reading series provides students, staff and community members the opportunity to listen to, meet and speak with published authors.
For some, it’s a matter of networking or a chance to meet their favorite writer, and for others, these reading events offer a unique experience of discovering something brilliantly new.
About Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is the award-winning and bestselling author of the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida, a finalist for the National Book Award. She’s also written four novels: Matrix and The Monsters of Templeton were shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers; Arcadia won the Medici Book Club Prize; and Fates and Furies was a finalist for the National Book Award and Amazon’s pick for Best Book of the Year.
Author Lauren Groff. Photo courtesy of Eli Sinkus
About Paisley Rekdal
Paisley Rekdal is the author of Appropriate: A Provocation, published in 2021, which examines cultural appropriation. She’s also written six books of poetry, including Nightingale and Imaginary Vessels; a book-length essay, “The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam”; the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee. She is the guest editor for Best American Poetry 2020. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative’s Poetry Prize and the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Utah.
Author Paisley Rekdal
