Summer in Hong Kong offers many interesting events, among these is City University’s Pulitzer Writer Series which this month presents two free lectures from poet Rae Armantrout and novelist Adam Johnson who will give readings, speak in conversation and sign books. Both events will be introduced by Xu Xi, Writer in Residence, on behalf of the Department of English.
Biographies:
Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics. On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetryVersed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout’s most recent collection, Just Saying, was published in February 2013. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry, including an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.
Adam Johnson was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, where he was a classmate of the writer Neil Connelly, in 1996; and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000. Johnson is currently a San Francisco writer and associate professor in creative writing at Stanford University. He founded the Stanford Graphic Novel Project and was named ‘one of the nation’s most influential and imaginative college professors’ by Playboy Magazine. Johnson is the author of the novel The Orphan Master’s Son (2012), which Michiko Kakutani, writing in The New York Times, has called, ‘a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.’ Johnson also wrote the short-story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award in 2003. His work has been published in Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, Tin House and The Paris Review, as well as Best New American Voices and The Best American Short Stories.
What: Rae Armantrout in conversation with poet Ravi Shankar
When: 7pm, 20 July, 2013
Where: Lecture Theatre M3017, Level 3, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, City University of Hong Kong.
How Much: Free with registration www.english.cityu.edu.hk/pulitzer
What: Adam Johnson in conversation with novelist Sybil Baker
When: 7pm, 26 July, 2013
Where: Lecture Theatre M3017, Level 3, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, City University of Hong Kong.
How Much: Free with registration www.english.cityu.edu.hk/pulitzer
