AU professors raised more than $700 for a local AIDS charity group last night at the annual Visiting Writers Series Faculty Benefit Reading in the Butler Boardroom.
The event, which featured the writing of Cornelius Eady, Andrew Holleran, E.J. Levy, Richard McCann, Kermit Moyer, Denise Orenstein and Myra Sklarew, drew a full audience. Each author read eight minutes of selections from his or her work.
Proceeds benefited Food and Friends, a D.C.-based charity that provides food to people with AIDS. Attendees donated about $5 each, resulting in an amount that will pay for almost three weeks of food for Food and Friend's clients, according to the group's Web site.
"I love hearing the diversity of people's work, and I love doing so for Food and Friends," said professor Richard McCann in opening remarks.
McCann said he was extremely happy with the outcome.
"[The series has] always been good, but this is a particularly great year. ... It's terrific," McCann said, applauding the audience's generosity.
The event also highlighted the talent of AU's creative writing faculty.
"The writers in the [Master's in Fine Arts] program are all incredible," McCann said.
He praised the AU faculty's diversity and said that although "graduate programs in creative writing often produce a uniformity" in student's work, this is not the case at AU.
"One of the things that's most delightful is that a reading like this really shows a tremendous distinctness to the writing program," McCann said.
Halley Ofner, a freshman in the School of Communication, attended the event for her college writing class.
"I really enjoyed it," she said. "I didn't realize there was so much talent in the writing department. You don't really hear about it that much. It was amazing."
The evening began with poems from Eady, a Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist. Eady, who taught for two years at AU, announced that he will teach at Notre Dame's creative writing program in Indiana next year.
Before reading from his works, Eady thanked his fellow professors.
"What a wonderful, wonderful two years it has been with this faculty," Eady said, urging the professors to come visit him in Indiana.
Eady's works included a poem about writing Valentines in fourth grade and several poems Eady described as a "eulogy for my father."
Holleran read several pages from his story "Amsterdam," a story he never performed at a reading before because "it's too long."
After Holleran, Levy read a selection from "My Life in Peru." The story, about teaching and university life, provoked laughter from both professors and students. Levy was quick to joke that her character is one she doesn't "share any views with."
McCann followed with a selection from his work "Mother of Sorrows." On April 26 Pantheon Books will publish the book, which follows two boys and their "beautiful but very complicated" mother after the father's death.
Moyer followed with a selection from a novel in progress tentatively titled "The House at the Edge of the Woods," about a family dealing with a mother's sickness.
Orenstein read a few parts from her novel, which tells the story of women in prison who have to train guide dogs. Orenstein researched her novel by visiting prisons that actually use this program.
Sklarew, a professor who helped create the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, read last. Sklarew opened with a poem titled "Surgery" and then read "Infinite Regress of War," a poem that speaks out against all forms of war.
Lauren Zuckerman, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, said she appreciated the range of emotion in the night's presentation.
"There was a lot of humor," she said.
Zuckerman said she was also impressed with the amount of research writers such as Orenstein put into their work.
Students and community members can hear AU alumna Leslie Dietrich read her work at the next Visiting Writers Series presentation on Feb. 6 at 8 p.m. in the Butler Boardroom.
