Author Jeff Parker to Read at the University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut Creative Writing Program is excited to announce that Jeff Parker will be reading from his nonfiction and short fiction at 6:30pm on Tuesday, October 17 at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Storrs Center. Parker will also be the Fall Aetna Writer-in-Residence at the University of Connecticut. Those in attendance are encouraged to ask relevant questions about Parker’s recent work as well as life as a published author.
Jeff Parker is the author of the nonfiction book Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal (2015), the short story collection The Taste of Penny (2010), and the novel Ovenman (2007). Alongside Pasha Malla, he co-assembled the book of found sports poetry, Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion (2015), and with Annie Liontas he edited A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors (2015). Parker’s most recent book, Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal gives readers a unique view of daily Russian life through the story of his friendship with Igor, a former café manager.
Parker’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and many others. Alongside Mikhail Iossel he co-edited two volumes of contemporary Russian prose in translation, Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (2009) and Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (2004). He also co-translated the novel Sankya by Zakhar Prilepin from Russian.
Jeff Parker has held teaching positions at Eastern Michigan University, the University of Toronto, the Russian State University for the Humanities, and the University of Tampa. He currently teaches in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He is both co-founder and director of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Creative Writing Program aims to introduce and engage both undergraduate and graduate students in various writing courses including fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, drama, screenwriting, and more. These courses are offered to students of all majors in order to engage and include all that are interested in joining this growing creative writing community at the University of Connecticut.
The reading, co-sponsored by the Aetna Chair of Writing, the UConn Creative Writing Program and the UConn Barnes & Noble Bookstore, is free and open to the public. The UConn Bookstore is located at One Royce Circle, 101 Storrs Center, and can be contacted at 860-486-8525. For more information, visit the Creative Writing Program’s website at www.creativewriting.uconn.edu.
For more information, contact: Lauren Cenci at lauren@uconn.edu