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English Reading Series
Fridays at Noon in the HBLL Auditorium

Fiction

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Fiction

Emily Ruskovich — April 2, 2021

April 02, 2021 12:00 AM
Emily Ruskovich grew up on Hoodoo Mountain in the Idaho Panhandle. She is the author of the novel IDAHO, which won the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the Idaho Book Award. She is also the recipient of an O. Henry Award for her short fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Zoetrope: All Story, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Lithub, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Boise with her husband and her two small daughters, but will be joining the faculty at the University of Montana in Fall of 2021.
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Fiction

Paul Harding — February 12, 2021

February 12, 2021 12:00 AM
Paul Harding is the author of two novels, Tinkers, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Enon. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and PEN America. He was a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA, and has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, The Michener Center for Writers, and Harvard University. He is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook University. His third novel, This Other Eden, will be published by Random House in 2021.
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Fiction

Douglas Stuart — February 5, 2021

February 05, 2021 12:00 AM
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize. It was a finalist for the National Book award, for the Kirkus Prize, and is to be translated into over twenty- four languages. His short stories, Found Wanting, and The Englishman, were published in The New Yorker magazine. His essay, Poverty, Anxiety, and Gender in Scottish Working-Class Literature was published by Lit Hub. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and since 2000 he has lived and worked in New York City.
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Fiction

Yamile Saied Méndez — October 16, 2020

September 28, 2020 12:00 AM
Yamile (sha-MEE-lay) Saied Méndez is a fútbol-obsessed Argentine-American who loves meteor showers, summer, astrology, and pizza. She lives in Utah with her Puerto Rican husband and their five kids, two adorable dogs, and one majestic cat. An inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she’s also a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children’s and Young Adult program. She’s a PB, MG, and YA author. Yamile is also part of Las Musas, the first collective of women and nonbinary Latinx MG and YA authors. She’s represented by Linda Camacho at Gallt & Zacker Literary.
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Fiction

Kristen Chandler — November 6, 2020

September 28, 2020 12:00 AM
Kristen Chandler is the author of Thief of Happy Endings and the award-winning Girls Don’t Fly and Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me. She was nominated for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. She thrives on making readers laugh, cry, and worry about what will happen next, so she isn't the nicest person in the world. She teaches Creative Writing and Composition at Brigham Young University.
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Fiction

Jack Harrell — October 9, 2020

September 28, 2020 12:00 AM
Jack Harrell grew up in southeastern Illinois and moved west to Utah in 1981, where he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 21. His first book, Vernal Promises, won the Marilyn Brown Novel Award. He is the author of A Sense of Order and Other Stories, and Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism. His latest book is the novel Caldera Ridge.
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Fiction

Allison K. Hymas - February 28, 2020

February 28, 2020 12:00 AM
Allison K. Hymas received both her Bachelors of Arts in English and her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from BYU. She writes poems and short stories that have been published in Rivet, FLARE, Sassafras and Dark Matter. She has also published two middle grade novels with Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, Under Locker and Key and Arts and Thefts, both about a 12-year-old boy who works as a retrieval specialist at his middle school, returning what others steal. Her next novel, The Explorer’s Code, a puzzle story about three kids who solve the mystery of an old manor house, will be released in September with Imprint/Macmillan. When she’s not writing, Allison enjoys reading, cooking, and running long distances.
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Fiction

Matt Mendez – November 15, 2020

February 16, 2020 12:00 AM
Matt Mendez is the author of Barely Missing Everything, his YA debut novel, and the short story collection Twitching Heart. Barely Missing Everything has been called a “searing portrait of two Mexican-American families” by Publishers Weekly and “accessible and artful” in a starred review by Kirkus. The New York Times says “has an uncanny ability to capture the aimless bluster of young boys posturing at confidence.” He earned his MFA from the University of Arizona and lives with his wife and two daughters in Tucson, Arizona. You can visit him at mattmendez.com.
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Fiction

Kirstin Chen – January 31, 2020

January 31, 2020 12:00 AM
Kirstin Chen‘s second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of the year by Entropy, Popsugar, and Book Bub, and a top pick of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners, an Amazon bestseller. She has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Toji Cultural Foundation, and the National Arts Council of Singapore. Her writing has appeared in Real Simple, Literary Hub, Writer’s Digest, Manrepeller, Zyzzyva, and the Best New Singaporean Short Stories. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and in Ashland University’s Low-Residency MFA Program.
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Fiction

Courtney Craggett - January 24, 2020

January 24, 2020 12:00 AM
Courtney Craggett holds a PhD in English with specializations in creative writing and multi-ethnic American literature from the University of North Texas, where she taught English and served as the American Literary Review’s Assistant Fiction Editor. Her short stories appear in The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, Booth, Juked, Word Riot, and Monkeybicycle, among others, and were featured on Ploughshares’ blog. Her reviews appear in American Microreviews and Interviews. Twice nominated for a Pushcart, Courtney is the editors’ choice winner of the 2014 Sherwood Anderson Award and the winner of The Pinch’s Spring 2017 Featured Contributor Award. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Weber State University.
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Fiction

Peter Turchi – November 8, 2019

November 08, 2019 12:00 AM
Peter Turchi is the author of six books and the co-editor of three anthologies. His books include the New York Times bestseller A Muse and A Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic; Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer; and The Girls Next Door. His work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Colorado Review, among others. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Houston Chronicle has called him “One of the country’s foremost thinkers on the art of writing.” Born in Baltimore, Turchi earned his BA at Washington College in Cherstertown, Maryland, and his MFA at the University of Arizona. He currently teaches fiction in Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. His wife, Laura, is a professor of Teacher Education; their son is the musician Reed Turchi.
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Fiction

John Bennion – October 25, 2019

October 25, 2019 12:00 AM
John Bennion is a fifth-generation native of Utah’s western desert. He has published a collection of short fiction, Breeding Leah and other Stories (1991), and three novels—Falling Toward Heaven (2000), An Unarmed Woman (2019), and Ezekiel’s Third Wife (2019). He has published short stories and essays in Hotel Amerika, Southwest Review, Hobart, Utah Historical Quarterly, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Best of the West II, Journal of Mormon History, High Country News, English Journal, and others. He is an associate professor in the English Department at Brigham Young University, where he teaches creative writing.
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Fiction

Tony Earley – October 4, 2019

October 04, 2019 12:00 AM
Tony Earley is the Samuel Milton Fleming Chair in English at Vanderbilt. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and has taught at Vanderbilt since 1997. He has been named one of the 'twenty best young fiction writers in America' by The New Yorker and one of the 'Best of Young American Novelists' by Granta. His books include a collection of short stores, Here We Are in Paradise: Stories (1994); a novel, Jim the Boy (2002); and a collection of personal essays, Somehow Form a Family: Stories That Are Mostly True (2001). His stories have also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Best American Short Stores. His work has been widely anthologized as well as translated into a number of different languages.
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Ryan Ridge – April 5, 2019

April 05, 2019 12:00 AM
RYAN RIDGE is the author of four chapbooks as well as four full-lengths, including the hybrid novel, American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2015). His next story collection, New Bad News, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2020. Past work has appeared in American Book Review, The Collagist, DIAGRAM, Los Angeles Review, Lumina, Passages North, Salt Hill, Santa Monica Review, and elsewhere. In 2016, he received the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction judged by Jonathan Lethem. An assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he co-directs the Creative Writing Program. In addition to his work as a writer and teacher, he edits the literary magazine, Juked. He lives in Salt Lake City with the writer Ashley Farmer.
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Fiction

Spencer Hyde – March 8, 2019

March 08, 2019 12:00 AM
Spencer Hyde worked at a therapeutic boarding school before earning his MFA at Brigham Young University and his PhD at University of North Texas. He wrote his debut novel, Waiting for Fitz, while working as a Teaching Fellow in Denton, Texas. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Bellevue Literary Review, Five Points, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor of Fiction at Brigham Young University. Spencer and his wife, Brittany, are the parents of four children.
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