CONWAY, Ark. (August
25, 2014) – The Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language will
host the following campus events during the 2014-15 academic year. For more
information on these events, contact Henryetta Vanaman at 501-450-4597 or vanaman@hendrix.edu.
Playwright's Theatre: Rook*Bishop*King*Queen
(Co-sponsored
by the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance)
Friday, Sept.
12, 7:30 p.m., Cabe Theatre
Reception to
follow
Playwright's Theatre
produces dramatic readings of new plays by current or former Hendrix students.
Cast, crew, and director are also Hendrix alumni and students.
Rook*Bishop*King*Queen by 1975 Hendrix graduate Robert
Preston Jones is a dramatic speculation on the events leading up to the
prosecution and eventual execution of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry
VIII. Jones's first play, The Stroop
Report, won the Hendrix-Murphy Playwriting Contest in 1999 and was
later produced in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. He has recently won
awards for his song lyrics and lives in Dallas, where he continues to produce
art. An audience and cast discussion will follow the reading.
An Evening with Murphy Visiting Writer
Nathan Englander
Thursday, Oct.
30, 7:30 p.m., Reves Recital Hall
Reception and
book-signing to follow in Trieschmann Gallery
Nathan
Englander is the author of two short story collections (What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and For the Relief of Unbearable Urges), a
novel about the Disappeared in Argentina (The Ministry of Special Cases), and a
translation of the Haggadah (New American Haggadah), edited by
Jonathan Safran Foer. In 2012 his play The
Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at The Public Theater. He has won the Frank
O’Connor International Short Story Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, and the Bard
Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the
Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University and lives in Brooklyn,
New York, and Madison, Wisconsin.
An Evening with Hendrix-Murphy Visiting
Writer Kevin Brockmeier
Thursday, Feb.
19, 2015, 7:30 p.m., Reves Recital Hall
Reception and book-signing
to follow in Trieschmann Gallery
Little Rock native
Kevin Brockmeier is a much-lauded fantasy and literary fiction writer.
He is the author of the novels The
Illumination, The Brief History of
the Dead, and The Truth
About Celia; two short story collections; and two children's novels. His
latest release is the memoir A Few
Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of the Seventh Grade. His work has
appeared in such venues as The New
Yorker, The Oxford American, McSweeney's, and Tin House. He has received several
awards, including a PEN USA, a Borders Original Voices, and three O. Henry
awards. He is in residence at Hendrix College during the spring semester
as the Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Writer, teaching a creative writing course,
"Science Fiction and Fantasy."
Director’s Discussion by Freddie
Ashley
Thursday, Feb.
26, 2015, 11:10 a.m., Murphy Seminar Room
Freddie Ashley,
Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Theatre Director, will discuss the play he is
directing, The Laramie Project, by
Moisés Kaufman.
The Laramie Project by
Moisés Kaufman
Wednesday,
March 4 – Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, March 7, 2 p.m., Cabe
Theatre
Reception to
follow
Freddie Ashley, this
year's Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Theatre Director, will direct a student
theatrical production of The Laramie
Project by Moisés Kaufman. In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young gay man
living in Laramie, Wyoming, was kidnapped and brutally murdered. Five weeks
later, Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project went
to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town. The
play is a chronicle of the life of the town of Laramie in the year after the
murder. Freddie Ashley has been the Artistic Director of Actor's Express
Theatre in Atlanta since 2007, with a multitude of directing credits at Actors'
Express as well as other area theatres. He serves on the faculty of Kennesaw
State University and holds degrees from Shorter College and the University of
Southern Mississippi.
Classics Lecture – Dr. Holly Sypniewski,
"The Latin Graffiti of Herculaneum and the Language of Social Media"
Tuesday, March
31, 7:30 p.m., Mills C
Reception to
follow
Herculaneum was
a city in Italy which was covered in Vesuvius' eruption in 79 CE; like Pompeii,
it provides us with an exceptional snapshot into life in antiquity, and the
abundant graffiti on its walls show us how the Latin language was used by real
people in real time. In her lecture Classics scholar Holly Sypniewski examines how
the graffiti at Herculaneum function as a means of informal communication akin
to today's social media of Twitter and Facebook.
An Evening with Murphy Visiting Poet
Carolyn Forché
Thursday, April
16, 7:30 p.m. Reves Recital Hall
Reception and
book-signing to follow in Trieschmann Gallery
Carolyn Forché is
an acclaimed poet, translator, and human rights activist. She is strongly
associated with the literature of witness and has edited or co-edited two
anthologies of "witness" poetry. Her own four books of poetry are
deeply spiritual, mystical, and filled with praise for human existence. In
addition to her work as a poet and an editor, she has translated the work of
many writers and been awarded numerous prizes and grants. In 2013, Forché was
awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic
achievement. She is Lannan Visiting Professor of Poetry and Professor of
English at Georgetown University.
Aonian/Hendrix-Murphy
Literary Contest Winners' Reception and Reading
Thursday, April
30, 4:30 p.m., Murphy Seminar Room
Winners of the
Hendrix-Murphy Literary Contest will read their entries during a reception that
will also celebrate the debut of this year's campus literary and visual art
magazine, the Aonian.
Founded in
1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences
education. For the sixth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the
country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report. Hendrix
is featured in the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools
That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, as well as the 2014 Princeton Review’s The Best 378 Colleges, Forbes magazine's
list of America's Top Colleges, and
the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United
Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.