All events are free, wheelchair accessible, and open to the public. All readings occur in Memorial Hall.
Visiting Writers Series events are sponsored by the MFA Program for Poets and Writer, the Juniper Initiative, the Umass Arts Council, the Mass Cultural Council and the UMass Alumni Associaion, Vice Provost of Research, the English Department and the Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts.
*Special Event, February 17th, 8 pm, Amherst Books: In partnership with the
Massachusetts Cultural Council and jubilat, the Juniper Initiative is pleased to
sponsor a Commonwealth Reading Series event with Noy Holland, Elizabeth Porto,
Caroline Klocksiem, and Susie Patlove.
 Tomaz Salamun is a Slovenian poet, born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and
considered to be one of the great postwar Central European poets. Salamun has
taught at the Universities of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Massachusetts,
Pittsburgh and Richmond, and was invited to be a member of the International
Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1971. He spent several years as
Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Consulate in New York. Already nine of his 37
books of poetry have been published in English, the last ones are The Book for
My Brother (Harcourt, 2006), Poker (Ugly Duckling Press, 2003, 2008, translated
by Joshua Beckman), Row (ARCpublications, 2006, translated by Joshua Beckman),
and Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008, translated by Brian Henry). His books
have been translated in nineteen languages. In 2007, Salamun received the
European Prize in Münster in Germany. His There's the Hand and There's the Arid
Chair, translated by Thomas Kane is due by Counterpath Press in 2009.
 Stanley Crawford was born in 1937 and was educated at the University of Chicago,
the Sorbonne, and the University of California, Berkely. He is the author of
five novels, including Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine (First published in
1972 by Knopf and reissued by Dalkey Archive in 2008), Travel Notes (Simon and
Schuster, 1967), Gascoyne (first published in 1966 and reissued by Overlook
Press in 2006), and Some Instructions (American Literary Series, 1985), a
classic satire on all the sanctimonious marriage manuals ever produced. He is
also the author of two memoirs: A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small Farm in
New Mexico and Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico. His
essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
Smithsonian Magazine, and High Country News, and his work has been written about
in The New Yorker. Currently he writes a monthly column, “Back on the Farm,” for
the Santa Fe edition of The Albuquerque Journal. He lives in Dixon, New Mexico
where he is co-proprietor of El Bosque Farm with his wife Rose Mary Crawford.
A native of Princeton, WV, Kevin Stewart is the author of The Way Things Always
Happen Here: Eight Stories and a Novella (Vandalia Press 2007) and Margot (Texas
Review Press 2000). The collection was nominated for Foreword Magazine's Book
of the Year Award for Fiction/Short Stories and the Weatherford Award for
Appalachian Fiction/Poetry. Stewart has also been awarded Appalachian
Heritage's Plattner Award in Fiction, the Texas Review Novella Prize, and state
arts fellowships from West Virginia and Louisiana. Stories from his collection-in-progress, Tales from North Gates, related short stories and shorts set in the
post-Katrina North Gates neighborhood adjacent to LSU in Baton Rouge, appear in
the Southeast Review and are forthcoming in the online journal The Hamilton
Review. Other work has appeared in Shenandoah, Louisiana Literature,
Connecticut Review, and more. After stints at WVU and LSU, Stewart now teaches
in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown.
A graduate of the UMass Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers, James Haug is the
author of Walking Liberty (Northeaster University Press, 1999) winner of the
Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize; The Stolen Car (University of Massachusetts
Press, 1989); and the chapbooks Fox Luck (New York Center For Book Arts, 1998),
and A Plan To Catch Amanda (Factory Hollow Press, 2007). He has been published
by The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Field, and
American Commentary & Letters. He lives in Northampton, MA with his family and
is currently a guest poet on the UMass Amherst MFA faculty.
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