Earth, Animal, Oracle: Readings by Ven Begamudre and Sheryl St. Germain

18 Feb 2008

8:00 PM

Sun Room, Memorial Union

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Ven Begamudré, a short story writer and novelist, was born in Bangalore, India, and immigrated to Canada with his family when he was six. He has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC, and has completed six writer-in-residence programs, including the Canada-Scotland Exchange. His most recent works include The Lightness Which Is Our World, Seen from Afar and a biography of Isaac Brock for young adults. He splits his time between Regina, Saskatchewan, and the island of Bali. Sheryl St. Germain, a native of New Orleans, currently directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham College, where she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has received several awards, including two NEA Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship and the William Faulkner Award for the personal essay. Her books include The Mask of Medusa, How Heavy the Breath of God, Swamp Songs and Let It Be a Dark Roux. Part of the 4th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

Fiddle music by Ken Waldman and a slide show of photographs by writer and naturalist Paul Brooke will precede the readings at 7:30 p.m.

This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.