By Abby Wargo
News Editor
Every semester, the Rose O’Neill Literary House brings renowned writers and scholars to Washington College through a series of events.
The upcoming events for spring 2018 span a wide variety of topics through an array of different genres.
The Literary House’s semester begins with poet Natalie Diaz on Feb. 1 to 2. She will read Feb. 1 at 4:30 p.m.
Her poems, according to the Literary Events Calendar, “yield an urgent and important new voice to the canon of contemporary Native American poetry.” She utilizes Spanish and Mojave languages as well as American English in her work.
On Feb. 2 at 5:30 p.m., Diaz will lead an interactive TEXTaural Workshop, which will “[explore] the interplay between imagery and sound,” said Lindsay Lusby, assistant director of the Literary House. Drawing materials and paper will be provided for the event.
The Sophie Kerr lecture series brings Kim Zarins to the Literary House on Feb. 6 at 4:30 p.m.
Zarins is the author of “Sometimes We Tell the Truth,” a modern retelling of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” with high school seniors on a school trip. This debut novel deals with debatable topics such as socioeconomic status, morality, and identity.
Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Black Studies program Elena Deanda is hosting a Tea & Talk discussion around her scholarly research, “The Poetics of Eros,” on Feb. 14 at 4:30 p.m.
From March 7 to 10, the Literary House staff and four students will be attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Tampa, Florida.
On March 21 at 4:30 p.m., Phil Sicker will give a talk. He is the co-editor of Joyce Studies Annual and has a book forthcoming in 2018, “Ulysses, Visual Technologies, and Culture.”
Fiction writer Amy Hempel will give a reading from her work March 27 at 5:30 p.m. She has written four short story collections.
Amber Dermont, the 2018 Mary Wood Fellow, will come to the Literary House in April. She has written a novel, “The Starboard Sea,” and the short story collection, “Damage Control,” and she is currently working on another novel, “The Laughing Girl.”
On April 10 at 4:30 p.m., she will give a craft talk, “focused on the craft of fiction and the power of narrative,” according to the Literary Events Calendar.
Dermont will also give a reading from her fiction on April 11 at 4:30 p.m.
The final literary event of the semester, the Senior Reading, will take place April 17 at 7 p.m. Creative writers from the Class of 2018 will read from their work, and the Literary House will announce the 2018 winners of the Literary House writing prizes.