Authors Offer Readings, Advice, Panels During UA Creative Campus Event

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama’s Creative Campus will host a reading and several events centered on writing called “Writing &” Monday, Sept. 13, and Tuesday, Sept. 14 on the campus.

Authors Dr. Yunte Huang, Jeanne Leiby and Glenn Mott will present a reading of their newest works as well as offer insight through speaking engagements and panel discussions on topics ranging from new media to “What to do with a degree in the humanities?”

“Writing &” is presented jointly by UA’s Creative Campus, the creative writing program’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series and the department of journalism.  All “Writing &” events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.creativecampus.ua.edu or phone 205/348-7884.

Critically acclaimed author Huang will kick off a national tour at UA in support of his new book, “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History.”

Huang, whose book has been reviewed in Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The New Republic and NPR, received a master’s degree in English from UA, during which time he co-founded the Chinese restaurant Swen. He has been a professor at Harvard and U.C. Santa Barbara. Glenn Mott, a poet and Fulbright scholar, is managing editor with the Hearst Corp. and former editor of the Black Warrior Review. Jeanne Leiby is the editor of The Southern Review and a graduate of the UA Master of Fine Arts program.

Events

Monday, Sept. 13

Writing & Getting Published: noon, 301 Morgan Hall

Join Jeanne Leiby, editor of The Southern Review, as she gives advice to young writers about how to be competitive in the publishing world. All students with an interest in writing and publishing, and most especially Master of Fine Arts students in Creative Writing, are invited to attend. Participants are welcome to bring a brown-bag lunch.

Writing & Panel Discussion: 4 p.m., Ferguson 300

What to do with a degree in the Humanities? Yunte Huang, Jeanne Leiby and Glenn Mott will join Pam Penick, recently retired director of the Tuscaloosa Arts and Humanities Council, and Dan Waterman, editor-in-chief of the UA Press, in discussing how to follow their passions post-graduation. The panel will present how their degrees in the arts and humanities led them along paths in addition to teaching.

Writing & Reading: 8:30 p.m., Ferguson Theater

The three visiting authors — Huang, Leiby and Mott — will read from their works. Huang will be reading from “Charlie Chan. ” (Books will be available for sale and signing.)

Tuesday, Sept. 14

Writing & China and New Media– 11:45 a.m., 338 Reese Phifer

Mott will speak to journalism students about new media in China and his experience with the Hearst Corp. Huang will also speak on his extensive writing,  teaching and life experiences as they relate to Chinese culture. (Non-Journalism students need to RSVP with Creative Campus, 205/348-7884, to attend, as space is limited.)

Biographies

Yunte Huang came to the United States in 1991 after graduating from Peking University with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He received his doctorate from the poetics program at SUNY-Buffalo in 1999 and taught as an assistant professor of English at Harvard from 1999 to 2003. He is the author of “Transpacific Imaginations: History, Literature, Counterpoetics” (2008), “CRIBS” (2005), “Transpacific Displacement: Ethnography, Translation, and Intertextual Travel in Twentieth-Century American Literature” (2002) and  “Shi: A Radical Reading of Chinese Poetry” (1997). He also translated Ezra Pound’s “The Pisan Cantos” into Chinese. His new book, “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History,” was published by W. W. Norton in August 2010.

Jeanne Leiby grew up in Downriver Detroit. She graduated from the University of Michigan, earned her Master of Arts from the Bread Loaf School of English/Middlebury College and her Master of Fine Arts from The University of Alabama. Her stories have appeared in Fiction, New Orleans Review, Greensboro Review and Indiana Review among other magazines. Her collection of short stories, titled “Downriver,” won the Doris Bakwin Prize from Carolina Wren Press and was published in fall 2007.  Jeanne is the editor of The Southern Review and associate professor of English at Louisiana State University. For more on Leiby and The Southern Review, visit http://www.lsu.edu/tsr/

Glenn Mott is managing editor of Hearst’s King Features Syndicate in New York, whose columnists include Amy Goodman, Stanley Crouch, Rich Lowry and more than 70 feature writers. For the 2008-2009 academic year, he was a Fulbright lecturer in journalism at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In 2006 he was part of the fact-finding delegation for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, meeting with some of China’s top leadership, including a meeting with officials in Zhongnanhai. He is author of the book “Analects on a Chinese Screen.”

Under the auspices of UA’s Office of Academic Affairs, The Creative Campus is a collaborative system connecting students, faculty and community to nurture innovative thinkers who “turn ideas into action.”  Creative Campus seeks to serve as a hub of collaboration and creative activity at The University of Alabama.  At the heart of Creative Campus is the undergraduate and graduate intern program.  For more information on Creative Campus visit www.creativecampus.ua.edu.