This week, BSU’s creative writing program hosts its annual In Print Festival of First Books, a two-day event featuring a reading and panel discussion by writers who have just published their first books, as well as an editor from a small press or literary journal.

Today we introduce the third of our featured writers for this year’s festival: creative nonfiction writer Jan Shoemaker.

Jan’s Official Bio

Jan Shoemaker’s essay collection, Flesh and Stones: Field Notes from a Finite World, was published in 2016 by Bottom Dog Press. Her essays and poems have appeared in many journals and magazines. Having recently participated in a community reading of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in northern Michigan, she is increasingly interested in the idea of public readings as a form of political action. She writes and teaches in Michigan, where she lives with her husband and a succession of bed-hogging but well-meaning rescue dogs.

Interviews

• Interview with Brilliant Books about her writing process

Selected Essays

• “Ellora” in The American Literary Review
• “Koans From My Mother” in The Sun
• “Big-Shot” in Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction
• “Where the Water is” in The Sun, or listen at Rhode Island Public Radio

Event Details

Jan will be joined at the 2018 In Print Festival of First Books by fiction writer Nick White, poet Carolina Ebeid, and editor Kristen Elias Rowley.

• Wednesday, 03/28: In Print Reading, 8-10 PM in the Student Center Ballroom
• Thursday, 03/29: In Print Panel Discussion, 8-10 PM in the Student Center Ballroom

Jan Shoemaker will also be visiting Professor Jill Christman’s ENG 406 class:

• Wednesday, 03/28, 3:00-4:15 in Robert Bell, Room 361

She will also be visiting Professor Silas Hansen’s ENG 406 class:

• Thursday, 03/29, 2:00-3:15 in Robert Bell, Room 361

All In Print events are free and open to the public, but contact Prof. Hansen or Prof. Christman if you would like to sit in on one of their classes.