Dr. William Olsen
The Ohio University Creative Writing program announces its three Writers in Residence for 2015-16, leading off with William Olsen on Thursday, Oct. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Walter Hall Rotunda.
Olsen has published five books of poetry, including Sand Theory (Northwestern, 2011). His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Breadloaf. Magazine awards include Poetry Northwest, Crazyhorse, and two Pushcart Prize awards. His poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Poetry, Poets of the New Millennium, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, Plume, and The New Republic. He is co-editor with Sharon Bryan of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande).
Olsen teaches in the MFA and Ph.D. Creative Writing programs at Western Michigan University. He edits New Issues Poetry and Prose. He lives in Kalamazoo.
2015-16 Writers in Residence
- William Olsen. Oct. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Walter Hall Rotunda
- Crystal Wilkinson. Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in Walter Hall Rotunda
- Steven Church. Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Walter Hall Rotunda
Crystal Wilkinson
Crystal Wilkinson is the “godmother of creative writing in Lexington,” KY, according to the writer Gurney Normal. A native of the Bluegrass state, Wilkinson has received wide recognition for her fiction and poetry, and her book of short stories, Blackberries, Blackberries, won the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been a finalist for both the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Currently the Appalachian Writer in Residence at Berea College, she is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a multicultural writing collective.
Wilkinson has taught writing courses at the University of Kentucky, Morehead State University, and Cumberland College. Her newest manuscript, The Birds of Opulence, is expected soon.
Steven Church
Steven Church is the author of The Guinness Book of Me: a Memoir of Record, Theoretical Killings: Essays and Accidents, The Day After The Day After: My Atomic Angst, and the collection of essays, Ultrasonic. A fifth book of nonfiction will be released in 2016 from Dzanc Books.
His essays have been published in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, AGNI, The Pinch, Salon.com, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor and nonfiction editor for The Normal School, and he teaches in the MFA Program at Fresno State.
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