April 5 public reading to feature Nebraska writers

· 2 min read

April 5 public reading to feature Nebraska writers

The Department of English and its Creative Writing Program will host a public reading April 5 at UNL featuring Nebraska writers David Philip Mullins, Brent Spencer and Mary Helen Stefaniak.

The reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Bailey Library, located on the second floor of Andrews Hall. A reception will follow the reading and books will be available for sale.

Mullins, an assistant professor of creative writing at Creighton University, is the author of the collection of stories “Greetings from Below.” He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, Fiction, New England Review, among other magazines. He has won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and received awards from Yaddo, a well-known artists’ colony, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Stefaniak’s second novel, “The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia,” was chosen by independent booksellers around the country as an Indie-Next “Great Read” for September 2010. Her first novel, “The Turk and My Mother,” received the 2005 John Gardner Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many publications, including The Antioch Review, Epoch, The Iowa Review, and New Stories from the South. Stefaniak is an associate professor of English/creative writing at Creighton.

Spencer is the author of the novel “The Lost Son” and the collection “Are We Not Men?” His most recent book, a memoir about his father’s mysterious life and death, is “Rattlesnake Daddy.” It has won the Nebraska Arts Council’s Little Bluestem Award. Spencer’s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, River Teeth, Best American Mystery Stories, McSweeney’s Online, and elsewhere. Spencer, a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford and the Michener Award from Iowa, is the director of Creighton’s Creative Writing Program. His wife is writer and UNL professor of English Jonis Agee.

Recent News