PERFORMERS
EPISODE 04 - The Musical Episode - February 6, 2012
Mike Doughty (http://www.mikedoughty.com) is a writer and nationally touring musician. His new album, Yes and Also Yes, was released in 2011, and his memoir, The Book of Drugs, was published in January of this year.
Catherine Killingsworth is the executive director of Deep (DeepKids.com), a local nonprofit that offers free creative writing programs at area public schools. She studied English with a Writing Concentration at Yale University, where she graduated magna cum laude and won the Curtis Prize for her academic writing and the Wright Prize for her creative writing. She also won the Thouron scholarship to study creative writing at Cambridge in 2006 and the Wagster, Cepeda-O’Leary, and Richter fellowships to conduct independent research in Argentina in 2007. She is the author of Writing Wednesdays, Deep's guidebook to teaching creative writing. Catherine is a volunteer Event Coordinator with Seersucker Live.
Dr. Harrison Scott Key is a writer, professor, and chair of the liberal arts department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Pushcart Prize-nominated stories and essays have appeared in The Oxford American (forthcoming winter 2012), The Pinch Journal, City Journal, Swink, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Defenestration, Document. A few recent essays include "The Fabulous Bestiary of Alton's Creek", "Those Imaginary Miles", "A Letter to the YMCA", and "The American Idol Judges Review My Recent Karaoke Performance". As well, Harrison's award-winning speeches have been delivered by executives in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
EPISODE 03 - September 23, 2011
Daniel Handler is the author of the literary novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written a sequence of books for children, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than 60 million copies and were the basis of a feature film. Handler has worked intermittently in film and music, most recently in collaboration with composer Nathaniel Stookey on a piece commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, entitled The Composer Is Dead, which has been performed all over the world world and is now a book with CD. An adjunct accordionist for the music group The Magnetic Fields, he is also the author of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, The Beatrice Letters, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid, and two books for Christmas: The Lump of Coal and The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming. He is the screenwriter of the film Rick, a revamp of the Verdi opera Rigoletto, and the film adaptation of Joel Rose's novel Kill the Poor, and has written for The New York Times, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, Chickfactor, and various anthologies.
Jonathan Rabb is the author of the critically acclaimed historical novels Rosa, Shadow and Light, and The Second Son, a trilogy set in Europe between the wars. Rabb won the international Dashiell Hammett prize at the Spanish Semana Negra Festival in 2006 for Rosa. Prior to the trilogy, Rabb wrote The Overseer and The Book of Q, and contributed essays and reviews to Opera News and the collection I Wish I'd Been There (Doubleday). He graduated from Yale, and completed his graduate work at Columbia in political theory. He teaches creative writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Patricia Lockwood's first book, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black, is forthcoming next summer from Octopus Books. Her poems have appeared or will soon appear in Poetry, VQR, The New Yorker, Gulf Coast, and other magazines.
EPISODE 01
Keith Lee Morris is the author of two novels (The Dart League King and The Greyhound God) and two collections of short stories (Call It What You Want and The Best Seats in the House). His work has appeared in such publications as A Public Space, Ninth Letter, Tin House, Southern Review, New England Review, Georgia Review, and New Stories from the South. He teaches creative writing at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he lives with his gorgeous, highly intelligent wife, who has helped him raise two incredibly talented, highly intelligent sons, both of whom the world is bound to hear from soon. You can read one of his stories HERE. And there is an interview with Keith HERE.
Emma Bartholomew was born in London, England, but has grown up on both sides of the pond. After getting her B.A. in English and Philosophy from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, she completed an M.S.c. in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Emma is currently living in Savannah, GA, but will return to Edinburgh in January 2011 to begin work on her PhD, focusing on poetry and cartography. She has been published in various literary magazines, and her first chapbook will be released by Forest Publications, Edinburgh, in February 2011. When she is not writing, Emma teaches poetry to middle-school students and accrues extensive late fees from a plethora of libraries.
Neal Saye is a relative newcomer to Savannah and downtown living. He is in his twenty-third year of teaching English up the road at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. (He needs everyone to know that he started teaching college as a young child.) Neal is the current GSU Professor of the Year, an award selected by the student body, and is the school’s only prof to have won the title twice, once before in 1992. He also received the GSU Award for Excellence in Contributions to Instruction, selected by faculty, in 2002 and his Department of Writing & Linguistics’ Dorothy Golden Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003. When asked his secret, Neal immediately replied, “It is so easy. I give them candy and A’s and pretend to like Lady Gaga.” Having spent most of his career on the research of teaching, he is now trying, trying to write creatively. Oh, and Neal believes (really!) that the purpose in life is joy, pure JOY. P.S. Neal has two little grandsons who make his world complete. They call him Abu.
John R. Saylor was born and raised in New York State and has lived in Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut. He now resides in Seneca, SC. He has been writing short stories since the last millennium and is also working on a novel based on the life of his great-great grandfather. He has degrees in mechanical engineering form the University of Buffalo, the University of Minnesota and Yale University, and he currently works as a professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University. John's work has been considered for publication by many fine literary journals.
EPISODE 02
Elizabeth Rushing grew up in Savannah writing novels, secretly. That curious childhood venture became her greatest pursuit, leading her now to Love Panic Tour, a novel in progress about the decline of an old Savannah family and the young painter who becomes entangled with their dissolution. When she’s not writing (and usually when she is) there's gin on ice, bike rides, thoughts on maps and art, lots of reading, research, and champagne.
Travis Morningstar is a bit confused as to why he was invited to perform in Seersucker Live. He has only written a few pun-ridden jokes on newyorkisboring.com and a couple grammatically-correct articles for South Magazine in addition to submitting a mean-spirited list to Outlet Magazine - which was then inexplicably published. Travis isn't even a noteworthy college student; he attends Armstrong Atlantic State University, but I mean, only barely. And he is either a Sophomore or a Junior, but definitely not a Senior.
Jenny Dunn grew up in Buffalo, NY and earned her B.A. in English Literature from Binghamton University. Before moving to Savannah, she spent five years building houses in Los Angeles and New Orleans with Habitat for Humanity. She’s written articles for SCADDistrict, Georgia Public Radio, and newyorkisboring.com. Right now, she’s writing her thesis: a collection of non-fiction stories about tattoos, road trips, crack houses, monster truck rallies, and the non-profit kids in New Orleans.
Joseph J. Schwartzburt holds a B.A. in English from Armstrong Atlantic State University and is currently pursuing his M.F.A. in Creative Writing through Wilkes University's Low Residency program. He lives and writes in Savannah, GA where he is working on his first novel, which is set in a New Hampshire town that he has only ever been to once. Suffice it to say he enjoys a challenge, even ulcer-inducing ones.
Chad Faries is the author of two collections of poetry, The Border Will Be Soon and The Book of Knowledge, and a memoir, Drive Me Out of My Mind. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, he lived and taught in Central Europe for many years. Currently he teaches at Savannah State University, where he also hosts a radio program on WHCJ 90.3. When not in Thunderbolt, Georgia, Faries gets lost on his motorcycle whenever he can. Above all, he is a "Yooper"—a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.