September 12:

Campbell McGrath has received many of America's top literary honors for his poetry, including a MacArthur "genius" grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Kingsley Tufts Prize. He has published six books of poetry, most recently Florida Poems (2002) and Pax Atomica (2004). A new book, Seven Notebooks, will be out in January, 2008. McGrath's poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, and in most of the country's significant literary journals. He has taught the last fifteen years at Florida International University, where he is the Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing.

Lauren Slater was a practicing psychologist for 11 years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She is the author of six books, including Prozac Diary, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, and Blue Beyond Blue, a collection of short stories. Her recent book, Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Kirsch Award for science writing, and won the 2005 Bild Der Wissenschaft Award in Germany for the most groundbreaking science book of the year. Slater was awarded a 2004 NEA Fellowship, and her work has been included in many Best American volumes.

October 11:

7:30 pm, Auditorium Center
875 Main Street
Rochester, NY 14605
The 2007 Writers Voice visiting writer, Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China, in 1956. As a teenager he served in the Chinese People's Army, . He is the author of two short story collections, Ocean of Words, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag , which received the Flannery O'Connor Award. His novels include Waiting, winner of the 1999 National Book Award, The Crazed, and War Trash. His newest novel, A Free Life, is forthcoming from Random House. Currently a professor of English at Boston University, Ha Jin is also the author of two volumes of poetry, Between Silences and Facing Shadows*.

October 18:

RochesterInk Poetry Festival
On Thursday, Oct. 18, Steve Fellner and Brockport Alum, Mike Dockinswill give a reading on campus as part of the RochesterInk Poetry Festival. Their reading is co-sponsored by the Writers Forum. For detailed information, go to: http://rochesterink.net/festival_overview.html

October 24:

James Longenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester, is a widely published poet and critic. His collections of poetry include Threshold, Fleet River, and, most recently, Draft of a Letter, all from the University of Chicago Press. Among his many books of criticism are The Art of the Poetic Line, and The Resistance to Poetry. His poems and reviews appear regularly in the Boston Review, Slate, the New Yorker, TriQuarterly, and the Paris Review.

November 14:

Steve Fellner was born and raised in Chicago, and teaches in the English Department at SUNY Brockport. His poems and essays have appeared in Doubletake, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. His first book of poems, Blind Date with Cavafy, was chosen by Denise Duhamel as the winner of the 2006 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize

Anne Panning is an associate professor of English at SUNY Brockport, where she codirects the Writers Forum. She is the author of a collection of short stories, The Price of Eggs. Her creative nonfiction and short stories have appeared in such publications as the Beloit Fiction Journal, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, and In Short. Her newest book, Super America, is the winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction.