Lee University held its annual Writers’ Festival, celebrating the works of professionals in the creative writing field. Lecturers included Dr. Lauren Winner, author of the memoir Girl Meets God, and Dr. William Woolfitt, a writer and assistant professor at Lee University.
“The Writers’ Festival is great,” said Jessica Range, senior English major at Lee. “It gives aspiring authors a chance to interact with published authors and to learn more about the craft from them.”
inner read selections from her work on Monday night, bringing a large crowd into the Dixon Center as she shared stories and excerpts from Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis.
“It used to be I had to take in as many guest lectures as possible to pay for healthcare and insurance,” Dr. Winner told the audience Monday. “Now I actually have a steady job and only have to accept offers from the people I really like.”
Dr. Winner is also the author of Mudhouse Sabbath and Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, as well as having written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Books and Culture and Christianity Today. She holds degrees from Duke, Columbia, and Cambridge Universities, as well as a doctorate in history.
Dr. Woolfitt, the Department of Language and Literature’s newest addition as an assistant professor, presented on Tuesday afternoon in the Edna Minor Conn Theatre. He read a selection of his short fiction, including the short stories, “The Lepers of Siberia” and “Wax Museum.”
Dr. Woolfitt was recently honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and a “Best of the Net Nominations 2012” for his poem, "Teresa of Avila Compares the Soul to a Palm Cabbage" and fiction piece, “Summer in Giverny,” respectively. He was also the co-winner of the 2011 Keystone Chapbook Prize through Seven Kitchens Press and has been published in Best Indie Lit New England, Volume One; the Michigan Quarterly Review; Shenandoah and numerous other publications.
The Writers’ festival began with a precursory reading by Renaissance scholar and poet Brett Foster in November 2012 as part of Sigma Tau Delta’s Literary Symposium.
For more information about Lee’s Department of Language and Literature, call 614-8210.