The Roosevelt Reading Series (2010-2011)

The Roosevelt Reading Series is held in the Gage Gallery, across the street from Millenium Park in downtown Chicago. Unless noted otherwise, readings are from 5-6p.m., with coffee and cake served at 4:30p.m. All readings are open to the public.

Sept 27Prize-winning fiction writer Ben Fountain, winner of the prestigious Pen/ Hemingway Award for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. He’s also received a Whiting Writing Award, two O. Henry Awards for the short story, and the Texas Institute of Letters Prize for best work of fiction. Fountain has also served as the editor at the Southwest Review.

Oct 27 Tom Grimes’ forthcoming memoir Mentor was named a Barnes and Nobles Discover Great Writers book for 2010. His previous honors include LA Times Dramatist Prize for his plays, a NY Times “notable book” of the year, and two Nelson Algren Award nominations.

Nov 17 Heather Sellers is an award-winning essayist, fiction writer, and poet. She won an NEA award for fiction and her first book of fiction, Georgia Under Water, was part of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers program. She’s published three books of poetry, a children’s book, and her newest book, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, is a memoir about face blindness will be published Fall 2010.

Dec 1 Kyle Beachy's debut novel, The Slide, was published in 2009 by The Dial Press. Hailed as “Suspenseful, erotic, and terribly sad,” it is a ghost story, a love story, and a story of the American Midwest (set in St. Louis). He received his M.F.A. from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught writing and literature at The School of the Art Institute, the Graham School at The University of Chicago, and the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Feb 7Bruce Machart is the author of the novel, The Wake of Forgiveness, and a forthcoming collection of short stories entitled Men in the Making, due out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. His fiction has been published in Zoetrope, Story, One Story, Five Points, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. His short stories have been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West

March 1 Jericho Brown, a former speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans, has been a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. His first book of poetry, PLEASE (New Issues), won the 2009 American Book Award.

March 29 Kim Dana Kupperman won the prestigious 2009 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize in Nonfiction for I Just Lately Started Buying Wings, which was published by Gray Wolf Press in 2010. Her work has also been selected for inclusion into Best American Essays. She is the managing editor of The Gettysburg Review.

April 11 John Dufresne is the author of the novels Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and Requeim, Mass. He's written two story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad. He has also written two guides to writing fiction, The Lie That Tells a Truth and his newest book, Is Life Like This? He teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.