Speaker Series

Each semester, through the UCA Artists in Residence Program and the College of Fine Arts and Communication, the Department of Writing and Speech invites acclaimed writers to visit UCA, hold master classes with writing students, and give a free public reading/talk for the campus and community.

Sharon Olds April 8 - 9, 2007

Sharon Olds has published eight volumes of poetry, and is anthologized in over 100 other collections.  Olds teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University, and was the New York State Poet Laureate for 1998-2000.  She will read from her works and discuss poetry methods with UCA students.       

2006 SPEAKER SERIES

Neil Gaiman Tuesday, November 14, 2006 7:30 PM McCastlain Hall East Free

A professional writer for more than twenty years, Neil Gaiman has been one of the top writers in modern comics, and is now a bestselling novelist. His work has appeared in translation in more than nineteen countries, and nearly all of his novels, graphic and otherwise, have been optioned for films. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers.

Gaiman was the creator/writer of the monthly cult DC Comics series, Sandman, which won Neil nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award.

His six-part fantastical TV series for the BBC, Neverwhere, was broadcast in 1996. His novel, also called Neverwhere, and set in the same strange underground world as the television series, was released in 1997; it appeared on a number of bestseller lists, including those of the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Locus.

Stadust, an illustrated prose novel in four parts, began to appear from DC Comics in 1997. In 1999 Avon released the all-prose unillustrated version, which appeared on a number of bestseller lists, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year, and was awarded the prestigious Mythopoeic Award as best novel for adults. American Gods, a novel for adults, was published in 2001 and appeared on many best-of- the-year lists, was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, and won the Hugo, Nebula, SFX, Bram Stoker, and Locus Awards. Coraline (2002), his first novel for children, was a New York Times and international bestseller, was nominated for the Prix Tam Tam, and won the Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla Award, the BSFA Award, the Hugo, the Nebula and the Bram Stoker Award.

2003 saw the publication of bestseller The Wolves in the Walls, a children's picture book, illustrated by Gaiman's longtime collaborator Dave McKean, which the New York Times named as one of the best illustrated books of the year; and the first Sandman graphic novel in seven years, Endless Nights, the first graphic novel to make the New York Times bestseller list. In 2004, Gaiman published the a new graphic novel for Marvel called 1602, which was the best-selling comic of 2004, and 2005 saw the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Mirrormask, a Jim Henson Company Production written by Gaiman and directed by McKean. A lavishly designed book containing the complete script, black and white storyboards, and full-color art from the film will be published by William Morrow in early 2005; a picture book for younger readers, also written by Gaiman and illustrated with art from the movie, will be published by HarperCollins Children's Books at a later date.

Gaiman's official website, www.neilgaiman.com, has 400,000 unique visitors per month in 2004; close to 600,000 per month are expected in 2005. His online journal is syndicated to thousands of blog readers every day.

Born and raised in England, Neil Gaiman now lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Anansi Boys, the long-awaited follow-up to American Gods was published in September of 2005.