Published on September 23, 2014 by Emily Duval  

Samford University is again hosting the annual Visiting Writers Series sponsored by the Birmingham Area Consortium for Higher Education (BACHE).

The 2014-15 series began Sept. 22 with writer Chantel Acevedo reading an excerpt from her new novel The Distant Marvels. The series will continue with two additional writers, Tayari Jones and Brian Turner.

Acevedo’s novel Love and Ghost Letters won the Latino International Book Award for Best Historical Fiction. Her short stories and poems have appeared in the journals American Poetry Review and North American Review. Acevedo is the founder of the annual Auburn Writers Conference and currently teaches at Auburn  University.

Jones has written three novels, one of which was named one of the year’s best by O Magazine. An African-American author from Atlanta, Ga., she is the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Jones is currently an associate professor of English at Rutgers-Newark University. She will speak Nov. 10 at 7p.m. in the Beeson University Center’s Howard Room.

Turner is a prize-winning author of two poetry collections about his time in the United States Army. Turner has been published in the Voices in a Wartime Anthology that is accompanied by a feature-length documentary of the same name. In 2014 he published My Life as a Foreign Country , a memoir of his service in the Iraqi war. Turner will read Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. in Brock Forum, Dwight Beeson Hall.

BACHE members Birmingham-Southern College, Miles College, Samford University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Montevallo collaborate to feature three renowned writers to engage students in a diverse group of authors, subject matter and style.

“We want our students to be aware of what is happening in contemporary writing, and be able to take part in it,” said Keya Kraft, assistant professor of English and Samford’s BACHE visiting writers series coordinator.

The event is free and open to the public.

Emily Duval is a journalism and mass communication major and a news and feature writer in the Office of Marketing and Communication.

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.