Hickory – Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Visiting Writers Series will present Matthias Göritz and Aaron Coleman on Thursday, November 8, at 7pm in P.E. Monroe Auditorium. This event will be held in partnership with LR’s Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Göritz is the author of three collections of poetry, two novellas, and two novels. His most recent novel titled, “Parker: Roman,” was described by critic Anja Hirsch as “clairvoyant and entertaining.” Göritz has been the recipient of many awards, including the Robert Gernhardt Prize and the William Glass Award. He has been the writer-in-residence at Bard College, the Deutsches Haus of New York University, and was also a guest author at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. His first volume of poetry, “Loops,” was published in 2001, followed by his first novel, “The Short Dream of Jakob Voss,” in 2005, for which he was awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize and the Mara Cassens Prize. Göritz was born in Hamburg in 1969. He studied philosophy and literary studies and spent extended periods in Moscow, Paris, and Chicago. He teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, and his work is widely translated.

Coleman is a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is on the Comparative Literature Ph.D. Program’s International Writers’ Track. He is the author of two collections of poetry and has been published in journals such as Boston Review, FENCE, and New York Times Magazine. Coleman recently released, “Threat Come Close,” a full-length collection of poems which comment on and interrogate the meaning of home and identity for a black man in America, past and present. He has been a Cave Canem Fellow and Fulbright Scholar, and has won awards such as the 2015 Button Poetry Prize for his chapbook, “St. Trigger,” and the Cincinnati Review Schiff Award. From Metro-Detroit, Coleman has lived and worked with youth in locations including Chicago, St. Louis, Spain, South Africa, and Kalamazoo, and he has worked as a public projects assistant at Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

The VWS 30th Anniversary Season will continue with the following authors:
November 15, 2018, Juan Felipe Herrera, Grace Chapel, 7pm.
January 21, 2019, Joshua Bennett, Martin Luther King Day speaker, P.E. Monroe Auditorium, 10am and Belk Centrum, 7pm.
February 7, 2019, Armistead Maupin, P.E. Monroe, 7pm.
February 28, 2019, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Writers in Residence, Belk Centrum, 7pm.
March 7, 2019, Louise Penny, P.E. Monroe Auditorium, 7pm.
March 21, 2019, Kao Kalia Yang, Belk Centrum, 7pm.
April 4 & 6, 2019, Naomi Shihab Nye, The Little Read author, Thursday, April 4, Belk Centrum at 7pm and Saturday, April 6, P.E. Monroe Auditorium at 12pm.

LR’s VWS is supported by the United Arts Council of Catawba County through the North Carolina Arts Council, with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts. The VWS is also supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Sponsors of the 2018-19 VWS include: Barnes & Noble, NC Arts Council, United Arts Council of Catawba County, National Endowment for the Arts, Hickory Hop, Crowne Plaza, Cafe Rule, Hickory Public Library, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams and Robert Abbey Fine Lighting.

To learn more about the VWS visit lr.edu/VWS.
Aaron Coleman
Matthias Göritz