Both events will take place on April 3, with one reading at the DMACC Ankeny Campus and a second reading at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines
The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts is celebrating its 20th Anniversary during the 2022-23 academic year.
The Celebration features monthly events with local, regional and nationally known authors; all events are free and open to the public.
In April, the Celebration will host two award-winning authors: Traci Brimhall (above, left) and Chigozie Obioma (above, right).
The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts will host two FREE events on Mon., April 3, featuring an exciting duo of award-winning authors: Traci Brimhall, who was recently named the Poet Laureate of Kansas, and Chigozie Obioma, whose novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into more than two dozen languages.
The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, which is celebrating its 20th Anniversary during the 2022-23 academic year, spotlights a variety of local, regional and nationally known authors throughout the year. Brimhall and Obioma will both read from their work and participate in a Q&A with audience members at the April 3 events, which are open to the public. There is no cost to attend.
The events are scheduled as follows:
Mon., April 3, 12-1 p.m. CT, DMACC Ankeny Campus (Building 2, Room 25B)
Mon., April 3, 7 p.m. CT, Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines; of note, the winners of this year’s DMACC Creative Writing Contest and the Beaverdale Books Scholarship will read from their work from 6:30-7 p.m. before Brimhall and Obioma take the stage
“We are so pleased to be able to host two events with Traci Brimhall and Chigozie Obioma during this year’s DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts,” said Marc Dickinson, DMACC English Professor and Coordinator of the DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts. “Traci and Chigozie are both inspired writers with unique and powerful voices, and are excellent teachers as well. I would encourage all DMACC students and members of the general public to attend one or both of our free events featuring these two authors on April 3.”
About the authors: Traci Brimhall and Chigozie Obioma
Traci Brimhall, who was recently selected as the Poet Laureate of Kansas and teaches at Kansas State University, is the author of four collections of poetry: “Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod” (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); “Saudade” (Copper Canyon Press, 2017); “Our Lady of the Ruins” (W.W. Norton, 2012), which was selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize; and “Rookery” (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), which was selected for the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her children’s book, “Sophia & The Boy Who Fell,” was published by SeedStar Books in 2017.
Brimhall’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares and New York Times Magazine, and her essays have appeared in Georgia Review, The Southern Review and Gulf Coast. Her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best of the Net, PBS Newshour and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014. She has also received the Just Desserts Short Fiction Prize (selected by Roxane Gay), the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Jane Geske Award for poetry (selected by Kwame Dawes) and a Pushcart Prize. Brimhall’s poetry comic collaborations with Eryn Cruft can be found in Guernica, The Poetry Comics, and Nashville Review, and she is also a co-author of two collaborative chapbooks with Brynn Saito: “Bright Power, Dark Peace” (Diode Editions, 2013) and “Wild Recovery” (Tupelo Press, 2020). Brimhall received a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry and the Karnes Fellowship from Purdue Libraries to research Amelia Earhart’s unpublished poems.
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria, and currently serves as the E. Ryan Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His two novels, “The Fishermen” (2015) and “An Orchestra of Minorities” (2019), were shortlisted for The Booker Prize and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Obioma’s novels have won a variety of awards, including the inaugural FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Award, the Internationaler Literaturpreis and the LA Times Book Prize. “The Fishermen” was also adapted into an award-winning stage play by Gbolahan Obisesan that played in the United Kingdom and South Africa in 2018-2019.
Obioma, who was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015, is the Program Director and a mentor at Oxbelly Writers Retreat in addition to his associate professorship at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He divides his time between the United States and Nigeria.
For more information about the DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, visit cla.dmacc.edu or contact Marc Dickinson, DMACC English Professor and Coordinator of the DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, at (515) 964-6221 or madickinson@dmacc.edu.
Select writings by Traci Brimhall:
Select writings by Chigozie Obioma:
