January 20: Barry McCrea and Mark Oppenheimer

Barry McCrea has taught comparative literature at Yale since 2004. His novel, The First Verse (Carroll & Graf, 2005; Brandon 2008), won the 2005 Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction and was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. It was nominated for an American Library Association Stonewall prize and for a Lambda award and was excerpted in the London Independent on Sunday and the Spanish daily El País. The First Verse was published in Spanish as Literati (DestinoLibro, 2007), and in German as Die Poeten der Nacht (Aufbau, 2008). He is currently working on a second academic book on firstness in fiction, provisionally entitled First Novels, Final Farewells.

Mark Oppenheimer, the editor of the New Haven Review (online at newhavenreview.com), writes for the New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, The American Scholar, and other publications. He is the author of two books: Knocking on Heaven's Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture and Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America. He will be reading from the manuscript of his forthcoming memoir, Wisenheimer: Memories of an Articulate Childhood. He lives in the Westville neighborhood of New Haven, and you can read more about him at markoppenheimer.com.

Yale's (and Ordinary Evening's) Elizabeth Alexander to read at Inauguration!

For the first time since 1997, a poet will read at the Inauguration. President-elect Barack Obama's Inauguration committee has chosen Elizabeth Alexander, from Yale, to read. We at Ordinary Evening Reading Series are thrilled, not just because millions will get to hear this fabulous poet, but also because we get to hear her again. She read for us on May 15, 2007. So do join us for the Spring 2009 series--you never know, an Inaugural speaker might be there!