FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, Oct. 5, 2009
Contact: Dave Wellman, Director of Communications, 304-696-7153
 

Visiting Writers Series kicks off with Rachael and Joel Peckham

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Writers Rachael and Joel Peckham will read from their work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15 in Room 2W16 of the Memorial Student Center on Marshall University’s Huntington campus.

Their appearance is the first of three fall events in the Marshall University Visiting Writers Series.  Appalachian memoirist Linda Tate appears on campus Nov. 9, and acclaimed southern poet David Bottoms reads Nov. 17 at an evening hosted by the Huntington Museum of Art.

Rachael Peckham, new member of the creative writing faculty at Marshall, is the author of The Black Box Confessions, a dissertation in creative nonfiction from Ohio University. It is a collection of essays inspired by the life and death of aviator Harriet Quimby.  Peckham’s work has appeared in many journals including Passages North, Oxford Magazine, Lake Effect and The Southeast Review.  Her several awards include a nonfiction prize from Briar Cliff Review.

Joel Peckham is the author of two collections of poetry from Pecan Grove Press, Nightwalking and The Heat of What Comes.  His work has appeared in such journals as Black Warrior Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Ascent and many others.  He is the recipient of an award in poetry from the Academy of American Poets.  He has also published creative nonfiction and is currently on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College.

Their joint appearance is sponsored by the Marshall University Visiting Writers Series, the College of Liberal Arts and the English Department.  The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Art Stringer in Marshall’s English Department at 304-696-2403.

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