A monthly prose reading series hosted by English department faculty Vikram Chandra and Melanie Abrams, and featuring distinguished prose writers from the Bay Area and beyond.
Second Thursdays 5 - 6 p.m. Note our new time!
All readings take place in Morrison Library unless otherwise indicated.
Free and open to the public
Rebecca Solnit, 09.13.12 | Pam Houston, 10.11.12 | Peter Orner, 11.08.12 | Michelle Tea, 12.06.12 | Joyce Carol Oates, 02.14.13 | Namwali Serpell 03.14.13 | David Shields, 04.11.13 | Student Reading, 05.02.13
September 13, 2012
Rebecca Solnit
Morrison Library, 5 –6 pm
Solnit is the author of thirteen books, most recently the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she recently received an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a contributing editor to Harper's and regular contributor to the political site Tomdispatch.com.
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This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
Adam Karsten photo
October 11, 2012
Pam Houston
Morrison Library, 5 –6 pm
Houston’s latest novel is Contents May Have Shifted. Her stories have been selected for The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA award for contemporary fiction, and The Evil Companions Literary Award and multiple teaching awards. She is the Director of Creative Writing at U.C. Davis and teaches in the Pacific University MFA program. She lives on a ranch in Colorado.
Watch on YouTube
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
November 8, 2012
Peter Orner
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Orner's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, The Forward, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ploughshares. His first two novels received numerous awards. He is also the editor of two non-fiction books. His third book of fiction, Love and Shame and Love was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) He is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State.
Watch on YouTube
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
Lydia Daniller photo
December 6, 2012
Michelle Tea
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Tea has written memoirs, poetry and the novel Rose of No Man's Land. She is founder and Executive Director of RADAR Productions, a non-profit which oversees monthly readings at the San Francisco Public Library, the Sister Spit international literary performance tours, a poetry contest and the Radar LAB retreat for writers and artists. Tea is Editor at Sister Spit Books, an imprint of City Lights. In 2013 McSweeney's will publish the first in her series of Young Adult fantasy novels, A Mermaid in Chelsea Creek. Tea's hybrid memoir, Black Wave, will be published on Sister Spit Books in 2014.
Watch on YouTube
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
February 14, 2013
Joyce Carol Oates
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time. She is a recipient of the National Book Award and many others including the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Watch on YouTube
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
March 14, 2013
Namwali Serpell
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Namwali Serpell is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Believer and Bidoun; her fiction in Callaloo and Tin House. Her first short story, “Muzungu,” was selected to appear in The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Literature. In 2011, she was one of six recipients of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers.
April 11, 2013
David Shields
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Shields is the author of fourteen books, including How Literature Saved My Life; Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications; The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, a New York Times bestseller; Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Utne Reader; he’s written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
Shields has received a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. Since 1996 he has also been a member of the faculty in Warren Wilson College’s low-residency MFA Program for Writers, in Asheville, North Carolina.
May 2, 2013
Student Reading
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Story Hour in the Library celebrates the writers in our campus community with an annual student reading. The event will feature short excerpts of work by winners of the year’s biggest prose prizes, Story Hour in the Library interns, and faculty nominees.