Jan. 22, 2019
Former CWU Student Joins Writing Faculty for Literary Reading
Former CWU student Jeff Suwak, along with Central professors Lisa Norris and Joseph Powell, will present their work at 6 p.m. in the Brooks Library Second Floor Commons at Central Washington University on January 29.
The readings are part of the 2018-2019 Lion Rock Visiting Series. The event is free and open to the public. Following the event, books by the authors will be available for sale courtesy of the CWU Wildcat Shop.
Suwak attended CWU after serving in the Army. While deployed, he swore that he would pursue his passion for writing if he made it back to the States. Today, he is an editor and writer in Tacoma. Suwak said he is excited to revisit CWU and particularly to talk with any veteran students from the perspective of someone who has readjusted to civilian life.
Suwak’s work has been published in five different countries. His recent publications include Shang Qin’s War in Guardbridge Books’ international anthology titled Myriad Lands: Around the World, The Guitaissta’s Lament in Dimension6, and The Familiar and his Alchemist in Spark: A Creative Anthology. His novella Beyond the Tempest Gate was published by Vabella Publishing in 2013.
Powell has published six full-length collections of poetry, including Holding Nothing Back, Preamble to the Afterlife, and Hard Earth and four chapbooks. Two books, Getting Here and Counting the Change, won the Quarterly Review of Literature’s international book award. His book of short stories, Fish Grooming & Other Stories, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 2009.
Lisa Norris is a professor of English at Central Washington University where she has taught since 2007. Previously, she was an instructor for 15 years at Virginia Tech. Her story collections include Toy Guns and Women Who Sleep With Animals, winners of the Will Cather and SFASU Fiction Prizes, respectively. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in Shenandoah, Ascent, Fourth Genre, Terrain.Org., Bullets Into Bells, Gulf Stream, and others.
The event is sponsored by CWU College of Arts and Humanities, CWU English Department, CWU Brooks Library, CWU Wildcat Shop, CWU Multimodal Education Center, Manastash Magazine, the CWU Veterans Center, and Karen Gookin.
For more information about the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series, contact Lisa Norris at Lisa.Norris@cwu.edu.