CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A yearlong series of conversations with some of the nation’s leading authors begins this week at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “A Year of Creative Writers” will bring a dozen authors – including a U.S. poet laureate, the publisher of McSweeney’s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and an actor and playwright – to campus to talk about their work. All events are free and open to the public.
“There is a soul-nurturing and mind-bending opportunity that writers and artists always offer to people who are willing to be touched and moved,” said Antoinette Burton, the director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, which is a co-organizer of the series along with the Creative Writing Program in the English department.
“In an age of high tech and social media, we’ve got a lot of noise in our heads. This is a chance to engage, listen and learn, and leave changed,” Burton said. “That’s the power of creative writing and arts. They are about transformation. That is really valuable, and it needs to be cultivated and enjoyed and made publicly available.”
Janice Harrington, an English professor who teaches in the Creative Writing Program, said she is thrilled with the caliber of artists who are participating.
“These are some of the most exciting, accessible writers in the country and we want to expose our community to them,” she said.
Most have Illinois connections, including writers from the University of Illinois campuses in Chicago and Springfield.
“Illinois is rich in writers,” Harrington said. “There is incredible talent in our own state, but people don’t know about it.”
Writers will meet with students while on campus, and many of the program’s events will allow community members to listen to them in an intimate setting.
The authors represent a diversity of form in their work, and also a diversity of perspective, Burton said.
“Having a new vocabulary, new imagery, new shared experiences – that’s what transforms communities,” she said. “In times of crisis and difficulty, artists and writers are really important touchstones for people as solace, as inspiration, as a reminder of the capacity of human imagination and spirit. We all are enhanced by thinking through other people’s ways of seeing things.”
The series begins with actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, whose work blends theater, social commentary and journalism. She will present a CultureTalk, “The Artist’s Voice in Times of Crisis,” at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe, and with Illinois theatre professor Lisa Gaye Dixon as moderator. The talk will follow a one-woman documentary theater performance Tuesday by Smith at Krannert Center.
Other spring events on the Urbana-Champaign campus include readings by authors Luis Alberto Urrea, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Meagan Cass, a fiction writer and editor who teaches creative writing and publishing at the University of Illinois at Springfield; at 7 p.m. March 10 at the Urbana Free Library and at 4:30 p.m. March 11 at the Illini Union Bookstore.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess will be on campus in April as a poet-in-residence. Jess will read from “Olio,” his book of poetry that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, at 7:30 p.m. April 9 at Levis Center. He’ll also give a reading at 7 p.m. April 7 at the Champaign Public Library. He is a former professor with the Creative Writing Program at Illinois.
Fall events begin with Sept. 12 appearances by novelist and essayist Cris Mazza and poet and editor Christina Pugh, both of whom are professors in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Poet and translator Daniel Borzutzky, who teaches English and Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and fiction writer Christopher Grimes, who teaches in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago; will give readings Oct. 13-14.
Dave Eggers, an Illinois alumnus and the author of 12 books, will be a writer-in-residence on campus Oct. 4-8. Eggers is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house, and co-founder of 826 National, a network of tutoring centers; ScholarMatch, which matches college students with financial resources; and Voice of Witness, a book series that illuminates human rights crises through oral history.
“A Year of Creative Writers” will conclude Nov. 13-14 with a Festival of Writers, featuring Roxane Gay, Tracy K. Smith and Jericho Brown. Gay is a bestselling author, a writer for television and film projects and a contributing opinion editor for The New York Times. Smith served as the U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and she teaches creative writing at Princeton University. Brown is an award-winning author and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.