Poet and Author to Give Readings as Part of UA’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Poet Quan Barry and author Kellie Wells will give readings Thursday, Oct. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall on The University of Alabama campus, as part of the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series.

Barry has published two books of poetry and is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the recipient of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, the 2003 Pushcart Prize, and she has received fellowships from Stanford University, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Wells is the author of a collection of short fiction, “Compression Scars,” the winner of both the 2001 Flannery O’Connor Award and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writer’s Award in fiction, and a novel, “Skin.” In 2002 she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She teaches in the writing program at Washington University and is at work on a second novel, “Fat Girl, Terrestrial.”

The readings are free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

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, contact UA’s creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the “USA Today” Academic All American Team.