The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is proud to welcome novelist René Steinke as its 2022-23 Walton Visiting Writer in Fiction.

Steinke will give a free public reading of her work at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 3, at the Home Economics Auditorium, room 102, of the Human Environmental Sciences Building on the U of A campus, followed by a Q&A and book signing.  

Masks are encouraged at this event.

Steinke's novel Friendswood was named one of National Public Radio's Great Reads, shortlisted for the St. Francis Literary Prize and named an Amazon Book-of-the-Month. Darin Strauss called it "a large-hearted, big-brained book." Steinke is the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her second novel, Holy Skirts, a fictionalized biography of the Dada artist and poet, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her first novel is The Fires. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, O Magazine, Salon, 4Columns, Bookforum and in anthologies. She is currently the director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and she lives in Brooklyn.

Each year, the Walton Visiting Writers series in the Program in Creative Writing and Translation brings esteemed authors in poetry, fiction and literary translation to the U of A to give free public readings and to work with graduate students in the creative writing M.F.A. program.

Past Walton Writers include Natalie Diaz, Chris Abani, Caryl Phillips, Franz Wright, Esther Allen and Karen Tei Yamashita.

This event is made possible by the Program in Creative Writing and Translation, the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Walton Family Foundation and the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professorship in Creative Writing.