UA’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series Welcomes Robin Hemley and Shona Ramaya

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Robin Hemley and Shona Ramaya will read selections from their latest works on Nov. 6 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Mortar Board Room, 300, of Ferguson Center on the campus of The University of Alabama as part of the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series.

Hemley is the author of several works of nonfiction and fiction, including “The Last Studebaker.” He authored two collections of short stories, “The Big Ear” and “All You Can Eat.” His work also includes a guide to writing creative non-fiction entitled “Turning Life Into Fiction,” as well as a memoir about his sister, “Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art & Madness.”

His most recent work, “Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday,” is an anthropological detective story about the so-called lost Tasaday tribe in the Philippine Mindanao rain forests, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2003).

Hemley’s numerous awards include the Governor’s State Award for Washington State in 1999; the 1998 Independent Publisher’s Book Award; and the 1998 Book of the Year Award in Biography/Memoir from ForeWord Magazine. Hemley received his master of fine arts from the University of Iowa’s Iowa Writers Workshop and teaches creative non-fiction at the University of Utah, as well as chairs the master of fine arts writing program at Vermont College.

Ramaya will read from her new book of short stories, “Operation Monsoon” (Graywolf Press, Sept. 2003), a book set in India where Hindu epics are broadcast as soap operas and kidney donations have supplanted reincarnation. Her stories relate cultural experiences that embody life in a globalized India. Ramaya was born in Calcutta, India, and she has broken ranks with many Indian writers as she is not interested in promoting the exotic appeal of India or the immigrant experience. Instead of the clash of cultures, she focuses on the merging of cultures.

She is the author of two other books, “Flute,” which was short-listed for the SHE Novel Idea Prize and “Beloved Mother, Queen of the Night,” a short story collection.

Ramaya has taught literature and creative writing at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., has served as writer-in-residence at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. and currently is the co-founder and executive editor of a new literary magazine called Catamaran: South Asian American Writing. Today she lives in Massachusetts where she is at work on a novel.

In addition to Thursday’s reading, Hemley and Ramaya will lead an informal question and answer session at noon on Friday, Nov. 7 in 301 Morgan Hall.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, The University of Alabama’s creative writing program, the department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, please contact UA’s creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.