A West Virginia University professor and a graduate of WVU’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program will give a reading of their literary works Monday, Jan. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the Gold Ballroom of the Mountainlair. The reading is free and open to the public.

Mark Brazaitis, a professor of English and the director of WVU’s Creative Writing Program, is the author of four books of fiction, including “The Incurables,” winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize from the University of Notre Dame Press, and “The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala,” winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His book of poems, “The Other Language,” won the 2008 ABZ Poetry Prize.

In a recent review, the Times Literary Supplement said ”’The Incurables,’ deserves a lasting place among regional short story cycles; it brings small-town Ohio palpably alive and combines a comic relish for the bizarre with a tenderness towards human frailty.”

Last month, “The Incurables,” cracked the list of the top 500 best-selling books on both Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

“For a time, I felt like Stephen King,” Brazaitis said.

Amanda Cobb, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from WVU, has published poetry in Verse, Arts & Letters, Pebble Lake Review, Controlled Burn, Temenos Review, Georgetown Review, Tygerburning, The Boiler Journal and elsewhere.

Most recently, she participated in a translation project with the poet Miguel Saporta Bon and read alongside him in an event co-sponsored by WVU’s departments of English and World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. The recipient of an AWP Intro Award and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Cobb lives in Morgantown with her children Grace and Dashiell.

“It will be a lot of fun to read with Amanda, who is a dynamic young poet,” Brazaitis said.

-WVU-

rh/01/16/12

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