Event Details

The low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte is pleased to announce its next series of faculty readings. 

The next reading series event features a reading by Elissa Schappell, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and one of the founding editors of the literary magazine Tin House.  Schappell's newest book, the collection of linked stories Blueprints for Building Better Girls has been widely acclaimed as one of the best books of 2011.  The New York Times Book Review called Schappell "a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora's box of feeling in a single line" and described Blueprints for Building Better Girls as a book that "crackles with the blunt, cynical humor wielded by people chronically on the defensive."

Friday, January 13, 8:30 p.m.

Elissa Schappell is the author of the new collection of linked stories Blueprints for Building Better Girls and of Use Me, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Los Angeles Times best book of the year. She is a founding editor of Tin House Magazine, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a frequent reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and formerly senior editor of The Paris Review. She is also co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. Her short fiction, essays and non-fiction have appeared in places such as The Paris Review, SPIN, GQ, The Bitch in the House, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, The KGB Bar Reader and Cooking and Stealing.

James McKean is the author of two books of poems, Headlong from the University of Utah Press, and Tree of Heaven from the University of Iowa Press; and a collection of essays, Home Stand: Growing Up in Sports from Michigan State University Press. His poems and essays have appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review and Gray's Sporting Journal. His awards include a 1987 Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writer Award in Poetry, a 1994 Iowa Poetry Award, a "notable-essay" mention in the Best American Essays 1999, an essay chosen for the Best American Sports Writing 2003; and a 2006 Pushcart Prize.

For more information on the readings or on the Queens MFA Program in Creative Writing, contact Melissa Bashor, MFA Coordinator, at 704-337-2499 or by e-mail at bashorm@queens.edu.