Thursday May 17 2012

Overview, About the Authors, About the Producer

About the Authors

Beth Lordan. Photo: Provided.

Beth Lordan
Lordan teaches fiction writing at SIUC and is the author of the novel August Heat, the short-story collection And Both Shall Row, and a novel-in-stories, But Come Ye Back. She will read “Digging” from But Come Ye Back, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, and included in Best American Short Stories in 2002.

Lordan’s short fiction has appeared in  Best American Short Stories, the The Atlantic Monthly, and the Gettysburg Review. It has also been featured on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts.

Lordan received her B.A. and M.F.A. from Cornell University. She is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an O. Henry Award for short fiction.

Alberta Skaggs. Photo: Danyel Paige.

Alberta Skaggs
A Southern Illinois native, Skaggs teaches beginning and intermediate fiction, and intermediate analytical writing at SIUC. She is the author of the poem “Brothers”, published in The Drunken Boat, as well as the novels Listen for the Trumpet and Catering an Affair. Skaggs is currently working on a collection of short stories entitled It’s in the Water. Prior to her collaboration with Jay Needham for In the Author’s Voice, she worked with Needham to put a poem entitled “Confessor” to sound.

Skaggs will read from “Pleasing Papa,” a finalist in a 2005 short fiction contest sponsored by Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts.

Skaggs received an Associate’s Degree in 1994 from Southeastern Illinois College, and both a B.A. (1997) and M.F.A. (2001) from SIUC. She was the recipient of the University’s top teaching honor for term faculty in 2005.

Georgia Wessel. Photo: Danyel Paige.

Georgia Wessel
Wessel is a writer living in Carbondale. She will read two chapters from her first novel, River Bells, which tells the story of racism and human resiliency from two different perspectives: a young woman near Greenville, Mississippi during the great floods of the lower Mississippi River in 1927 and her ten-year-old granddaughter in southern Illinois, some thirty years later in 1959. 

These two voices are woven together to tell how innocence leads to tragedy, and how resilient the human spirit can be in moving beyond tragic events. Christianity is examined and used as a device, both in structure and in metaphor, with the hope that readers might recognize just how unchristian it can be sometimes. Through the use of fictionalized versions of real events, pieces of our sordid history of racism are brought to light.

Wessel received a B.A. from SIUC in 1979. She was the winner of the Service to Southern Illinois Award in 2004.

Tim Westmoreland. Photo: Lilian Kravitz.

Tim Westmoreland
A visiting assistant professor, Westmoreland teaches beginning and intermediate fiction at SIUC. He is the author of the acclaimed short story collection Good as Any and is currently working on a novel entitled Gathering. Westmoreland will read “Near to Gone” from Good as Any.

Westmoreland received a B.A. from the University of Texas-Arlington and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. Westmoreland’s work was featured in the 1998 anthology of Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops and in Best American Short Stories in 2001. He is also a winner of the Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship for 2005-06.