The Hurst Professorship
An endowed chair, the Hurst Visiting Professorship brings to campus annually four or more distinguished writers. In addition to presenting readings and lectures, these visitors are particularly accessible to students in the Writing Program through one-on-one and group meetings. Recent Hurst Professors have included poets Frank Bidart, Louise Gluck, Linda Gregerson, Lyn Hejinian, Heather McHugh, Arthur Sze and Jay Wright and fiction writers Amy Bloom, Tony Earley, Amy Hempel, Michael Martone, Hilary Mantel, Sigrid Nunez and Joy Williams.
The Hurst Professorship is made possible by a bequest of the novelist Fannie Hurst, an alumna of Washington University. The Hurst Professors are in residence either for a one or two-week period, during which they visit classes, give public lectures and readings, and are accessible to students interested in their field, or for the whole semester, in which case they also offer an upper division course (for example, Leonard Barkan's "Intertextuality and the Anatomy of Art in the Renaissance," Helen Vendler's "Problems in the Interpretation of Poetry," Joseph McElroy's "Modern Fiction").
Fall 2008 Visiting Hurst Professors and Writers
Steve Stern is the author of several story collections and novels, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American fiction, and The Wedding Jester, which won the National Jewish Book Award. His stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, such as The O.Henry Prize, The Pushcart, and The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Fiction. He has received grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundations, and is a writer-in-residence at Skidmore College. His most recent books are the novel, The Angel of Forgetfulness, and The North of God, a novella.
The complete schedule for 2008-2009 will be posted shortly. Please check back soon!