Des Moines Area Community College’s 15th annual Celebration of the Literary Arts will be held April 3-5 with classroom visits to all six DMACC campuses by area writers and literary instructors.
Hai-Dang Phan, an Assistant Professor of English at Grinnell College and a poet, and author Ralph James Savarese, who teaches American literature, creative writing and disability studies at Grinnell College, will read from their works from noon to 1 p.m., April 3 at the DMACC Newton Campus.
Phan is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2016, jubilat, Prelude, New England Review and elsewhere. His work has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the American Literary Translators Association, and Grinnell College. Phan is the author of the chapbook, Small Wars (Convulsive Editions, 2016) and is working on his first collection of poetry.
Phan was born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. as a refugee. He holds an M.F.A. from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Savarese is the author of Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption (Other Press, 2007). It won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal in the category of health/medicine/nutrition, and a chapter was selected as a “Notable Essay” in Best American Essays 2004. The book was featured on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360 Show” (twice), “ABC’s Nightly News with Charles Gibson,” and NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” (twice). He is also the co-editor of three collections: Papa PhD: Men in the Academy Write about Fatherhood (Rutgers University Press, 2010), a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly entitled “Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity” (2010), and a special issue of Seneca Review entitled “The Lyrical Body” (2010).
DMACC’s Celebration of the Literary Arts is an annual literary festival that brings national and Iowa-writers to DMACC’s six campuses. The celebration includes readings, master’s workshops, and classroom visits.
For more information about the Newton event, contact Lauren Rice, 641-791-1746 or lrrice@dmacc.edu. For more information about the Celebration of Literary Arts, contact Marc Dickinson, madickinson@dmacc.edu.