Spring 2009 Read/Write Series

March 5th, 7:00 PM, in the new Lippit Auditorium (403)
Poet and Nonfiction Writer, Jan Clausen and Fiction Writer, Jane Lazarre

Jan Clausen’s eleven books include the novels Sinking, Stealing and The Prosperine Papers, the memoir Apples and Oranges, and five volumes of poetry. Her two most recent poetry titles, From a Glass House (IKON) and If You Like Difficulty (Harbor Mountain Press), both came out in 2007. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Coconut, Fence, Hanging Loose, The Hat, Heliotrope, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Tarpaulin Sky, The Village Voice, and many other journals and anthologies. She frequently reviews books and the literary scene for publications including Boston Review, Ms., The Nation, Poets and Writers, and The Women’s Review of Books. A feminist activist since the 1970’s, Clausen was a founding editor of the lesbian feminist literary journal Conditions. The recipient of writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and NYFA, she teaches creative writing at the New School and in the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program.

Jane Lazarre is the author of many works including the memoirs, The Mother Knot, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons, and Wet Earth and Dreams, a Narrative of Grief and Recovery, all published by Duke University Press; and the novels, The Powers of Charlotte (Crossing) and Worlds Beyond My Control (Dutton,) recently reissued by Painted Leaf Press. She has also written Some Kind of Innocence ( a novel, Dial Press) and On Loving Men,(personal essays, Dial Press). Many of these works have been published in France, England, Germany and Italy. In 2001, a new French language edition of The Mother Knot was issued by Editions de l”Aube, translated and with an introduction by Nancy Huston. Jane Lazarre’s short fiction and essays have been widely anthologized. She has read her work in colleges and universities across the country and has spoken at many conferences about her work, and on the subject of race in America. Her essay, “A Jewish Story,” is forthcoming in the collection of Jewish writers and scholars edited by Rebecca Goldstein for the Brandeis Series on Jewish women to be published by the University Press of New England. She reads her work on the new CD produced by Hadassah and Brandeis University, “The Jewish Writer Reads Her Work.” Along with John Edgar Wideman, she will be a featured writer, discussing autobiography and race, in the first episode of a PBS series on American ethnicities, scheduled for fall, 2002, directed by Orlando Bagwell (Eyes On the Prize, Africans in America, and other documentaries.) Among her awards and grants are a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, a New York State Foundation for the Arts grant in fiction, the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in America. She is the recipient of two New School Faculty Development Grants, the most recent of which was used to produce a collection of essays, “Writers Teaching Writing,” now being submitted for publication. The recipient of a University Award for Distinction in Teaching, Jane Lazarre is on the faculty of Literature, Writing and the Arts at the New School University. For many years she was the director of the writing program, both freshmen and upper level, at Eugene Lang College where she continues to teach creative writing and African American literature. She has recently completed a novel, Some Place Quite Unknown, and has begun work on another, Three White Women.