Literary Arts

The English Department annually sponsors and co-sponsors significant contemporary writers and scholars, often winners of Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur "genius grants," National Book Awards and various other honors.

All writers brought to campus work with students personally; all public presentations are free. For more information, please email Kathy Barton at kabarton@davidson.edu or call 704-894-2254.

Thursday, March 23, 2023
7:00 p.m.
Lilly Family Gallery, Chambers Building

Sponsored by the Bacca Foundation Visiting Artist and Scholar Program, Art and English Departments, DACE, Digital Studies, Creative Writing & Humanities 

Event is free and open to the public. No tickets required. Book signing will follow the reading.

Austin English (born 1983  in San Francisco, CA), is is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. As a cartoonist, he has published the books Gulag Casual and Meskin and Umezo. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States, including Marvin Gardens in New York and Et Al Gallery in San Francisco. His art has been written about in publications including Art in America, Bomb Magazine, and The Huffington Post, among others. He runs the comics publishing house Domino Books, which he founded in 2011. He teaches comics and drawing at Parsons School of Design and art history at The School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. He also serves as the co-managing editor of The Comics Journal. Austin English will be in residency at Davidson College March 21 – 25, 2023.

2023 Literary Gala: Danielle Evans Reading

Thursday, April 13, 2023
C. Shaw Smith 900 Room | Alvarez College Union
7 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets required. Book signing will follow the reading.

Danielle Evans is an acclaimed writer and an award-winning author. A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, and The Best American Short Stories anthologies.

Her debut book, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, is met with critical acclamations, winning the 2011 PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize for first book, the Patterson Prize for fiction, and the Hurston-Wright award for fiction.

An honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway award, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, is a collection of short stories about mixed-race and African American teenagers, women, and men and their struggle to belong. In her book, The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans continues to the discussion on the subject of race in American history. In this collection of short stories, Evans provokes us to think about the truths of American history–about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.

Evans is a 2011 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a 2020 National Endowment for Arts fellow. She currently lives in Baltimore and teaches the John Hopkins University’s creative program, The Writing Seminars.

Learn more about Danielle Evans