A three day event hosted by the English Major in Writing.

Writers-in-Residence Maureen McLane (poetry), Nami Mun (fiction), and David Shields (creative nonfiction) will give master classes, readings and participate in a guided conversation about their craft.

Reading for Tuesday, April 12 will be by Nami Mun

Nami Mun grew up in Seoul, South Korea and Bronx, New York. For her first book, Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize, and was shortlisted for the Orange Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Miles From Nowhere became a national bestseller within first weeks of publication and was selected as “Editors’ Choice” and “Top Ten First Novels” by Booklist, “Best Fiction of 2009 So Far” by Amazon, and as an Indie Next Pick. Chicago Magazine named her “Best New Novelist of 2009.”

Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. After earning a GED, she went on to get a BA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA from University of Michigan, and has garnered fellowships from organizations such as Yaddo, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. Her stories have been published in Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Evergreen Review, Witness, and elsewhere. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in Chicago.

A three day event hosted by the English Major in Writing.

Writers-in-Residence Maureen McLane (poetry), Nami Mun (fiction), and David Shields (creative nonfiction) will give master classes, readings and participate in a guided conversation about their craft.

Wednesday's reading will be by Maureen McLane

Maureen N. McLane grew up in upstate New York and was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Chicago. She is the author of two books of poems, World Enough (2010) and Same Life (2008), and a poetry chapbook, This Carrying Life (2005). She has also published two books of literary criticism: Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (2008) and Romanticism and the Human Sciences (2000, 2006); she co-edited The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry (2008). A contributing editor at Boston Review, she was for years the chief poetry critic of the Chicago Tribune; her articles on poetry, contemporary fiction, and sexuality have appeared widely, including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, the Washington Post, American Poet, and on the Poetry Foundation website.

In 2003 McLane won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing; she was elected in 2007 for a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the NBCC.  Currently an Associate Professor in the English Department at NYU, she has taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, MIT, and the East Harlem Poetry Project. 

A three day event hosted by the English Major in Writing.

Writers-in-Residence Maureen McLane (poetry), Nami Mun (fiction), and David Shields (creative nonfiction) will give master classes, readings and participate in a guided conversation about their craft.

Thursday's reading will be by David Shields

David Shields’s new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, was published by Knopf in February 2010. His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. He is the author of eight other books, including Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Utne Reader; he’s written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Shields has received a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor in the English department at the University of Washington. Since 1996 he has also been a member of the faculty in Warren Wilson College’s low-residency MFA Program for Writers, in Asheville, North Carolina. His work has been translated into twenty languages.