Series features two PSU writers

For years, the English Department’s Distinguished Visiting Writers Series has brought authors and poets from around the country to the Pittsburg State University campus. On Thursday, April 19, the series will host two of PSU’s own for the first annual Faculty Reading. Kathy DeGrave and Karen Stolz, who both teaching fiction writing, will read from their works at 8 p.m. in the Special Collections Room of Axe Library. The readings, sponsored by the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series and the Student Fee Council, are free and open to the public.

“I’m really excited that with our new Master’s Creative Writing emphasis that we’re able to
showcase our faculty writers in this way,” Said Laura Washburn, director of Creative Writing at PSU.

De Grave has published two books, a novel, “Company Woman,” and the scholarly work, “Swindler, Spy Rebel: The Confidence Woman in 19th-Century America,” as well as several articles and short stories in journals and anthologies. In 2000, “Swindler, Spy, Rebel” was named by MS Magazine as a book to take into the 21st century. Her most recent novel, “In Real Life Women Don’t Play Jazz,” was a finalist in the William Faulkner/William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2004.

Karen Stolz’s first published novel, “World of Pies,” was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection and has been published in Germany, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Australia and Holland. “World of Pies,” a June 2000 BookSense pick, was listed by the School Library Journal as one of the best adult books for young adults in 2000. Stolz’s second novel, “Fanny and Sue,” was the 2003 required summer reading pick for Ursuline Academy in St. Louis. Her short story, “A Beau for Aunt Sheree,” was published in the November 05 issue of Good Housekeeping. She is currently completing work on “Arvetta,” a novel she is co-writing with Herman Wright, set in the early 1900s in rural East Texas.

DeGrave did work in the creative writing program at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She won a prize for short fiction while earning her Ph.D in American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently she is a professor of American literature and fiction writing at PSU.

Stolz, recipient of a 1999 Fiction Fellowship from the Austin Writers' League/Texas Commission on the Arts, received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has taught at Austin Community College, St. Edward’s University and the Writer’s League of Texas in Austin. Currently she is an instructor of English and fiction writing at PSU.

---Pitt State---