University of Indianapolis Announces 2024-2025 Kellogg Writers Series
The Kellogg Writers Series at the University of Indianapolis announced its 2024-25 season, which features four critically acclaimed writers, including a member of UIndy’s faculty, who represent a variety of literary genres, including poetry and memoir.
“Talk about good fortune—you’re not going to believe the writers we have coming to UIndy this year,” said Barney Haney, Chair of the Kellogg Writers Series and Associate Professor English.
“Beth Nguyen’s stunning memoir on motherhood and refugee status made all the year’s best lists for good reason. She’s an incredible writer and has been for decades. Gina Chung’s stories are wildly entertaining and super smart, full of Korean Folklore, praying mantis sex, all the messiness of relationships, and step-by-step instructions on how to eat our own hearts. April Gibson’s poems—oh my chickens, what living with illness means, the traumas and joys, that’s what’s in her poems. I heard her read in Kansas City last spring and sent that email before I got home. She’s bigger than life. And, at season’s end, we get to celebrate one of our own: beloved UIndy Professor Liz Whitacre. Liz suffered a spinal injury in her early twenties that transformed the way she understood her body which transformed how she understood everything else, and once you hear her poems, you will be transformed as well.”
This year’s series will feature readings from the following writers:
Beth Nguyen
Memoir Reading
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at 7:30 p.m.
UIndy Hall A of Schwitzer Student Center
Beth Nguyen is the author of four books, most recently the memoir Owner of a Lonely Heart, published by Scribner in 2023. Owner of a Lonely Heart was a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick and was named a best book of 2023 by NPR, Time, Oprah Daily, and BookPage. Nguyen’s three previous books, the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner and the novels Short Girls and Pioneer Girl, were published by Viking Penguin. Her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a PEN/Jerard Award from the PEN American Center, a Bread Loaf fellowship, and best book of the year honors from the Chicago Tribune and Library Journal. Her books have been included in community and university read programs around the country. Nguyen’s work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, Literary Hub, Time Magazine, and The Best American Essays.
Nguyen was born in Saigon. When she was a baby, she and her family came to the United States as refugees and were resettled in Michigan, where Nguyen grew up.
She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Photo credit: H. Nguyen
Gina Chung
Fiction Reading
Tuesday, November 19, 2024, at 7:30 p.m.
UIndy Hall A of Schwitzer Student Center
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, an APALA Adult Fiction Honor Book, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, and Gulf Coast, among others.
Photo credit: S.M. Sukardi
April Gibson
Poetry Reading
Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at 7:30 p.m.
UIndy Hall A of Schwitzer Student Center
April Gibson is a poet, writer, and professor from the South Side of Chicago. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Rhino Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. April is a winner of The Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and a Loft Literary Center Mentor Series Award in Poetry. She has been a Writer-in-Residence for WriteOn, Door County, and a Vermont Studio Center resident. April is a fellow of the Poetry Incubator (Poetry Foundation), the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and The Watering Hole Poetry Retreat. She is also a Tin House and VONA Writing Workshop alum and her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She teaches in the Department of English, Literature, and Speech at Malcolm X College in Chicago.
Photo credit: Min Enterprises Photography
Liz Whiteacre
Poetry Reading
Tuesday, April 8, 2024, at 7:30 p.m.
UIndy Hall A of Schwitzer Student Center
Liz Whiteacre’s poetry explores accident, disability, aging, and wellness. She is the author of Hit the Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and her poems have appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Wordgathering, Kaleidoscope, Breath & Shadow, Last Leaves, The Scores, Flying Island, and other publications. Whiteacre is an associate professor of English at the University of Indianapolis. She teaches writing and publishing there, as well as advises Etchings Press. As a 2022-2024 research fellow with UIndy’s Center for Aging and Community, she worked with CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions of Central Indiana, exploring resilience through poetry with health care providers and aging populations.
Photo credit: Liz Whiteacre
All readings are free to attend and open to the public; no advanced registration is required. All readings are also LP credit eligible for UIndy students who attend.