Award-winning authors Amina Gautier and R.A. Villanueva will give a public reading at a celebration honoring the two 2013 prize-winning writers at 7 p.m. April 2 at the Great Plains Art Museum.
The event will feature readings from Villanueva’s poetry collection “Reliquaria” and Gautier’s short-story collection “Now We Will Be Happy.” The readings will be accompanied by multimedia interpretations of each of the author’s works by local artists Zach Mueller, photographer, and Kiernan Lofland, sculptor, with a book signing and catered reception to follow. The event is free and open to the public.
Villanueva was born in New Jersey and lives in Brooklyn. His honors include the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry and fellowships from Kundiman and the Asian American Literary Review. His writing has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI and elsewhere. He teaches at New York University. Of “Reliquaria,” Idra Novey, author of “Exit, Civilian,” writes: “These vivid and deeply lived poems question ‘every delicate gift we have thrown away. Villanueva searches the world for the divine and – gorgeous poem by poem – he finds it.”
Gautier teaches in the English department at the University of Miami. She is a winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review and Southern Review. Of “Now We Will Be Happy,” Leah Strauss of Booklist writes: “Gautier’s linked stories deftly capture her characters’ internal struggles for identity and home.”
Prairie Schooner is a nearly 90-year-old national literary journal published quarterly with the support of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Press. Prairie Schooner is home to some of the best fiction, poetry, essays and reviews being published today by beginning, mid-career and established writers around the globe. For more information, visit http://prairieschooner.unl.edu.
