April 15, 12:45 p.m.-4:00 p.m. at Georgia State University: Perimeter College – Dunwoody Campus, 2101 Womack Rd, Dunwoody, GA 30338, Building N-C auditorium and café. (If you’re not on our mailing list, use the form here to add yourself so you will get any updates about this meeting.)

This meeting may be recorded; if so, the recording link will be shared in the following month’s eQuill newsletter.

 

12:45-1:30 p.m. Nosh and Networking Mixer for members and first-time guests in the café

 

1:30-1:45 p.m. AWC announcements and upcoming events with AWC President Jill Evans

 

1:45 p.m.-2:45 p.m. Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris: Poetry – A Reading and Craft Discussion

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books).
His work was the finalist for The National Book Award and won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).
Deaf Republic was The New York Times‘ Notable Book, and was also named Best Book of the Year by dozens of other publications, including The Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Irish Times, Vanity Fair, Lithub, Library Journal, and New Statesman.
He collaborates frequently with painters, sculptors, musicians, choreographers, and theater artists. Odesa, Kaminsky’s recent collaboration with the photographer Yelena Yamchuk, published by Gost Books, was listed by Time Magazine among The 20 Best Photo Books of 2022.
His poems have been translated into over twenty languages, and his books are published in many countries, including Turkey, Netherlands, Latvia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, Iceland, India, Slovenia, France (where Kaminsky received Prix Alain Bosquet given annually by Gallimard), Italy (where his work was honored by the Bonanni Prize in L’Aquila), Germany (where his poetry was listed by the SWR television channel as German literary critics’ top pick) and China (where he was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize). In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”
Ilya Kaminsky has worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center. More recently, he worked pro-bono as the Court Appointed Special Advocate for Orphaned Children in Southern California. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Katie Farris is the author of A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, winner of the 2021 Chad Walsh Poetry Award, and her collection of poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, was just released from Alice James Books. She is also the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls, (Marick Press, 2011; Tupelo Press 2019), and the chapbooks Thirteen Intimacies (Fivehundred Places, 2017), and Mother Superior in Hell (Dancing Girl, 2019). Most recently she is winner of poetry awards from Beloit Poetry Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Massachusetts Review, and the Orison Anthology Prize in Fiction. Her work has appeared American Poetry Review, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and Poetry, and has been commissioned by MoMA. She is the co-translator of several books of poetry from the French, Chinese, and Russian, including Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. She graduated with an MFA from Brown University, and is currently associate professor of literature, media, and communication at Georgia Institute of Technology.

 

 

 

 

2:45-3:00 p.m. Book signing for Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris in the café

 

3:00-4:00 p.m. Jillian Medoff: Finding the Balance: The Long View on Life, Work, and Writing

Jillian Medoff is a “bestselling author who has made a name for herself with uncannily insightful takes on the dark side of family institutions.” (Entertainment Weekly) Her most recent novel, WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL, is a story about privilege, power, consent and dirty, sexy money that garnered many accolades: Book of the Month Club feature selection, Apple Books Best of the Month, Audible Editor’s Pick, People Picks of the Week, and a favorite of Town and Country Magazine and O Daily, among others.

Jillian has written four other novels: THIS COULD HURT, I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE (a national bestseller), GOOD GIRLS GONE BAD, and HUNGER POINT. HUNGER POINT was made into an original cable movie starring Christina Hendricks and Barbara Hershey and directed by Joan Micklin Silver (Lifetime TV, 2003).

A former fellow at MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center, VCCA and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, Jillian has an MFA from NYU. She studied with Mona Simpson (her thesis advisor) and Jonathan Dee; and took master classes with Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, and Joyce Carol Oates. Jillian’s MFA experience was life-changing. She sold her graduate thesis, originally titled THE HUNTERS, to HarperCollins where it was retitled HUNGER POINT and published as her debut novel in 1997. Back then, readers loved the deeply depressed Frannie; now, they hate her and her whole stupid, self-absorbed family. Times change, culture evolves, and still, trauma endures.

In addition to writing novels, Jillian has a long career in corporate consulting. Since her early days at Max Factor and American Home Goods (in Trump Tower!), she’s worked for a wide range of employers, including Deloitte and Aon. Now with Segal Benz, she advises clients on communication strategies for all aspects of the employee experience.

Jillian lives with her husband, Keith Dawson, and three adult daughters, who come and go. She reviews fiction for the New York Times Book Review, and is currently working on a new novel, THE COMMITTEE, a story about medical ethics and race in Seattle, circa 1961.

On April 15, Jillian will discuss “Finding the Balance: The Long View on Life, Work and Writing.” In this talk she will discuss her more-than-30-year career as both a novelist and consultant (the day job), the highs, the lows, and how to how to find the balance with family, work, and writing fiction.

 

4:00-4:15 p.m. Book signing for Jillian Medoff in the café