Jesse Lee Kercheval Featured by UA’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series welcomes Jesse Lee Kercheval to The University of Alabama on Feb. 3 for a reading from her latest work at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall.

She will serve as a Coal Royalty Chairholder and be in residence Jan. 31-Feb.2, teaching a one-hour class, “The Whole Truth and Nothing But?”

Kercheval is the author of six books. Her work includes two collections of poems, “World as Dictionary” and “Dog Angel;” a novel, “The Museum of Happiness;” a short story collection, “The Dogeater;” and a textbook on writing, “Building Fiction.” Her memoir “Space” won the 1999 Alex Award from the American Library Association.

She is a recipient of the Richard Hugo Prize, the James Michener Fellowship for the First Novel and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared in “Ploughshares,” “Poetry Northwest,” and “Iowa Review” and has been widely acquired in literary collections.

Kercheval was born in Fontainbleau, France and raised in Florida. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Florida State University, where she studied writing with Janet Burroway, David Kirby and Jerome Stern, among others. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a teaching-writing fellow.

After teaching a year as an assistant professor at DePauw University, she joined the writing faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is currently the Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English and the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Her current projects include a third collection of poems, “Cinema Muto,” about silent film, and a novel, “Mosjoukine’s Eyes,” about the Russian silent film actor Ivan Mosjoukine.

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