The Rose O’ Neill Literary House, known for its themed semesters of programming such as “Queer Voices” and “The Verbal & the Visual,” will this spring be presenting “The Personal and the Political.” This semester will feature readings by well-known established authors Brian Turner, Christine Wade, Carolyn Forché, and Chris Abani. Each reading, held at the Lit House, starts at 4:30 p.m., and the public is welcome.

February 21, Brian Turner: A poet and memoirist who served seven years in the U.S. Army, he is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (Alice James, 2010) and Here, Bullet (Alice James, 2005), which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, the 2006 PEN Center USA “Best in the West” award, the 2007 Poets Prize, and others. Turner’s work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, Poetry Daily, Harper’s Magazine, and other fine journals. Turner has been awarded a United States Artists Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and more. His recent memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), has been called, “achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful.” This event is made possible in part by generous sponsorship from Dr. Jude M. and Mrs. Miriam R. Pfister M ’93.

February 28, Christine Wade: She is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies and the Curator of the Louis L. Goldstein Program in Public Affairs at Washington College, where she teaches classes on Latin American politics, comparative peace processes, human rights, U.S.-Latin American Relations, and the politics of development. She is an expert in the politics of Central America, and has conducted field research in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. She is the author of Captured Peace: Elites and Peacebuilding in El Salvador (Ohio University Press, 2016), and co-author of Nicaragua: Emerging from the Shadow of the Eagle (Westview Press, 2016), Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion and Change (Westview Press, 2014), and A Revolução Salvadorenha (The Salvadoran Revolution) (Fundação Editora Da UNESP, 2006). She is the co-author and co-editor of Latin American Politics and Development, which will appear in its 9th edition in July 2017. She is also the author of other scholarly works dealing with revolutions, post-war violence, and peacebuilding. Her current events commentaries regularly appear in World Politics Review, the Latin American Advisor, and other venues.

March 30, Carolyn Forché: Her first volume, Gathering the Tribes (Yale University

Press, 1975), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was followed by The Country Between Us (Harper & Row, 1981), The Angel of History (HarperCollins, 1994), and Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2003). She has translated Mahmoud Darwish, Claribel Alegría, and Robert Desnos. Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting (W.W. Norton, 1983), has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice,” and is followed by the 2014 anthology The Poetry of Witness (W.W. Norton). In 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award for her human rights advocacy and the preservation of memory and culture. She is currently at work on a memoir.

April 6, Chris Abani: His books of fiction include The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin, 2014), Song For Night (Akashic Books, 2007), The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007), Becoming Abigail (Akashic Books, 2006), GraceLand (FSG, 2004/Picador 2005), and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry collections are There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen Press, 2010), Feed Me The Sun: Collected Long Poems (Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2010), Sanctificum (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen Press, 2004), Daphne’s Lot (Red Hen Press, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Romanian, Hebrew, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch, Bosnian, and Serbian.

All four readings are free and open to the public. Each event will be followed by a book sale and signing. For more information on these events or the Literary House, visit the website at www.washcoll.edu/centers/lithouse, or view the event calendar here at www.washcoll.edu/live/files/6323-literary-events-calendar-2016-2017-brochure