Spring 2018 Schedule of Writers
(Spring 2018 Schedule .pdf flyer)
The Visiting Writers Series is named in honor of Hughlene Bostian Frank (class of 1968), a 2013 Appalachian Alumni Association Outstanding Service Award recipient, past member of Appalachian's Board of Trustees, current board member of the ASU Foundation, and generous supporter of Appalachian State University.
THE SPRING 2018 HUGHLENE BOSTIAN FRANK VISITING WRITERS SERIES IS SUPPORTED BY:
Appalachian State University Foundation, Inc.
Appalachian’s Office of Academic Affairs
College of Arts and Sciences
Department of English
Office of Multicultural Student Development
University Bookstore
Belk Library
Appalachian Journal
BUSINESS SPONSORS:
The Gideon Ridge Inn
The Red Onion Restaurant
The New Public House & Hotel
COMMUNITY SPONSORS:
John and the late Margie Idol
Paul and Judy Tobin
Alice Naylor
Thomas McLaughlin
In Partnership with the Black Mountain College Semester:
Admission to all VWS events is free and open to the public. Parking is free on campus after 5 p.m. We recommend the Library Parking Deck on College Street (from King Street, turn down College Street at the First Baptist Church). To reach the Student Union, cross College Street and follow the walkway between the chiller plant and the University Bookstore, passing the Post Office and entering the Student Union on the second floor. For further parking information or a map, please see parking.appstate.edu
For further information on the Spring season, please email weinbergsc@appstate.edu.
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Susan Ludvigson is the 2017-2018 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor.
Susan Ludvigson is the author of Step Carefully in Night Grass, published by John F. Blair, as well as the following volumes, all from Louisiana State University Press: Northern Lights, The Swimmer, The Beautiful Noon of No Shadow, To Find the Gold, Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming, Trinity, Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems, and Escaping the House of Certainty. She has received prizes for the best poem published in a given year from Virginia Quarterly Review (1984), Gettysburg Review (2000), and the James Dickey Prize from Five Points (2016). Professor Ludvigson taught at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, from 1972-2002. Over the course of her career she has received grants and fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the South Carolina Arts Commission, The Witter Bynner Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Fulbright Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. She will serve as Appalachian State University's 2017-18 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professorship in Creative Writing.
Travel and ecology writer Peter Fish will be the 2018-2019 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor.
Currently a freelance writer and editor, Peter Fish for more than 30 years wrote and edited for Sunset Magazine, the 118-year-old magazine of the American West, where he focused on travel and environmental coverage. Most recently his writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and AFAR magazine. His article on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, “Howl,” won a 2013 Lowell Thomas Award gold medal for environmental journalism. He annually serves on the jury of the Commonwealth Club's California Book Awards. His own anthology of California literature, California’s Best: Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State, was published by Farcountry Press in 2010. He received a B.A. in History from Yale University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University; in addition, he spent a year as a Hoyns Fellow in fiction at the University of Virginia’s MFA program. Raised in southern California, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and son. He read in the 2015-16 Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series.
Honoring the late newspaperwoman and writer Rachel Rivers-Coffey, the Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professorship in Creative Writing annually sponsors the fall semester residency of a writer of national prominence at Appalachian State University. This position rotates among various distinguished authors of all creative genres; distinguished professors teach a creative writing seminar, conduct community outreach and other off-campus activities, and are featured annually in the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series.