English Department

Student Reading Series

The series is an opportunity for UW-River Falls students, faculty and staff to read their original poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to fellow students, faculty, and staff. All students, regardless of their majors, are welcome and encouraged to participate.

The Reading Series began in the fall of 1996, as an outlet for students to share their passion for writing with their peers and teachers. Professor Jenny Brantley is the advisor to the series. Student and Faculty readings usually feature four to five readers, each of whom have up to fifteen minutes of reading time. An open mike follows the readings, allowing other students to read.

If you are interested in participating in any of the student readings, we post a sign-up sheet by the English Department.

Several types of readings are held each year:

• Student

• English Faculty

• Visiting Authors

• UW-River Falls Faculty and Staff

Guest authors have included: Betsy Brown, from her book of poems Year of Morphines, a poetry about violence and complicated loss. Brown's peotry has been published in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly and the National Poetry Series.

Richard Terrill, English professor at the University of Minnesota at Mankato, read from his collection of poetry entitled Coming Late to Rachmaninoff. Terrill concluded his reading with passages about learning to dance from Saturday Night in Baoding: A China Memoir, which is based on his experiences as a Fulbright Scholar in China and which won the prestigious AWP Award.

Playwrite and humorist Kevin Kling entertained the audience with stories from his past. The Denver Post writes "Kling's stories fall somewhere between David Lynch's perversity and Garrison Keillor's home-spun humor. . . " Kling's works can be heard on NPR and his play 21A, about the bus line that crosses St. Paul and Minneapolis, has been performed locally, nationaly and in Europe.