Award-winning authors offer on-campus reading

KALAMAZOO--Two award-winning authors whose work has been published by Western Michigan University's New Issues Poetry and Prose will be featured in the next installment of the Frostic Reading Series at WMU.

Kevin Fenton and Rachel Eliza Griffiths will read from their selected works at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, in Room 157 of the Bernhard Center.

Fenton lives in Saint Paul, Minn., and works as an advertising writer and creative director. His first novel, "Merit Badges," published by New Issues Poetry and Prose, won the AWP Prize for the Novel awarded by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Publishers Weekly writes, "An impressive vitality, droll wit and affecting nostalgia lift Fenton's first novel."

Fenton's fiction has appeared in Northwest Review, Laurel Review and Emprise Review. His writing on graphic design has been anthologized in Looking Closer 2 and Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue. He holds a master's in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and a juris doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.

Griffiths is the author of "Mule & Pear" published by New Issues, as well as "Miracle Arrhythmia" and "The Requited Distance." Reviewer Roxane Gay writes, "Griffiths tackled sex(uality), slavery, the strength of women, the mark of history and the power of language in fierce poems that were so memorable I return to them over and over."

A Cave Canem Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Cave Canem Foundation and others. A photographer and painter, her visual work has been published widely in both national and international magazines and journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.

Visit New Issues Poetry and Prose online at newissuespress.blogspot.com.