Visiting Speaker Series

 

The Department of English Visiting Speaker Series, organized by the Division of Literature and Film, offers a regular series of invited lectures by leading scholars of literature, criticism and theory, and film studies. The events usually include a large public lecture and smaller group sessions with students.

Visiting Writers Series: Alumni Reading feat. Erika Simpson, Allegra Solomon, and Alfonso Zapata

Erika J. Simpson holds an MFA ('21) in creative writing from the University of Kentucky and is the recipient of the 2021 UK MFA Award in Nonfiction. Her essay, “If You Ever Find Yourself,” was published in Roxane Gay’s The Audacity and featured in Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee. This Is Your Mother is her debut memoir, and she also writes fiction for the page and screen.
 
Allegra Solomon received her MFA ('22) from the University of Kentucky. Her debut short story collection, There’s Nothing Left for You Here, won the Kimbilio National Fiction prize. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and has appeared in The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Lolwe, and more.
 
Alfonso Zapata received his MFA ('23) in poetry at the University of Kentucky. He is the recipient of the Jim Lawless IV Poetry Prize and the 2022 & 2023 UK MFA Poetry Awards. His work has appeared in Sho Poetry Journal, and he is the author of the chapbook, Together Now (Belle Point Press, 2024). His first full-length book, To Pay for Our Next Breath, won the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize.
Date:
Location:
Cornerstone - Esports Theater, 401 S Limestone, Lexington, KY 40508

Faculty WIP Workshop

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for a faculty WIP workshop with Gerónimo Sarmiento Cruz and Peter Kalliney as respondent, happening Friday, September 12, from noon to 1:15pm at Bingham Davis House. 

“A National Poetics: Frames of Containment” is a draft of the introduction to my monograph manuscript, titled Anational Poetics. The book presents a critical account of post-Civil Rights ethnic minority poetry oriented by different ways of understanding community and proposes the concept of the anational to recognize social practices incompatible with how the nation operates. I use the anational to analyze experimental forms as expressions of minoritarian belonging with political projects that achieve coherence through their own singular histories. The introduction delineates the conceptual and methodological parameters of the project, detailing the structural characteristics of the nation through its historical development, European origins, and entanglement with capitalism. It also explains the nation’s ubiquity as an aesthetic and political phenomenon, noting how the nation form historically occludes the divergent qualities of a vast set of dissimilar collectivities to establish their status as nations.

poster containing details of talk along with time, date, location, and a picture of the speaker

 

Date:
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Location:
Bingham Davis House

Poets of Kentucky: Frank X Walker

Frank X Walker is one of the most accomplished writers and poets to come out of Kentucky. Originally from Danville, Walker forged his own path and gained widespread recognition for his poetry, coining the term “Affrilachia” to highlight the importance of African Americans within the Appalachian Region. He would go on to become the Kentucky Poet Laureate in 2013, the first African American to hold the honor. Now, his influence can be heard through the generations of poets to come after him, and his impact on the Kentucky writing scene cannot be understated.

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