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Lectores series at University of Tampa to feature National Book Award winner

 
Published Dec. 29, 2012

National Book Award winner Denis Johnson will be the star presence at the University of Tampa's 2013 Lectores series, which begins Thursday.

The free author reading series is the public element of UT's low-residency program for a master of fine arts degree in creative writing. The program, now in its second year, combines two intensive 10-day sessions on campus each year with individual long-distance mentoring to allow students to earn an MFA in about two years.

The program has drawn an impressive faculty, and the eight-day Lectores series offers the larger community a way to connect with those writers.

Johnson won the National Book Award in 2007 for his Vietnam War-era novel Tree of Smoke, and his 2011 novella Train Dreams was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He will give the official opening reading of the series on Friday, and a staged reading of his play Psychos Never Dream on Saturday will be followed by a discussion.

Other authors reading in the series include Jessica Anthony (Chopsticks), Amy Hill Hearth (Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society), Ben Lerner (Leaving the Atocha Station), Tony D'Souza (Mule) and Enid Shomer (The Twelve Rooms of the Nile). A publishing panel will feature Eli Horowitz, a literary new media producer, and Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker.