Authors Jaimy Gordon and Bonnie Jo Campbell
Jaimy Gordon, author of the 2010 National Book Award-winning novel Lord of Misrule, and Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of 2009 National Book Award finalist American Salvage, will host a panel to discuss the current literary landscape and their own work.
Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore, graduated from Antioch College in 1966, received an M.A. in English from Brown University in 1972, and earned Doctor of Arts in Creative Writing in 1975, also from Brown. In addition to Lord of Misrule, she has published three other novels: Bogeywoman, which was on the Los Angeles Times list of Best Fiction of 2000; Shamp of the City-Solo, an underground fantasy classic; and She Drove Without Stopping, a woman’s road novel.
Bonnie Jo Campbell studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, received her M.A. in mathematics and her M.F.A. in writing from Western Michigan University, and has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss alps on her bicycle, and traveled with the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus selling snow cones. Her collection Women and Other Animals details the lives of extraordinary females in rural and small town Michigan and won the AWP prize for short fiction. Her story “The Smallest Man in the World” has been awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her novel Q Road investigates the lives of a rural community where development pressures are bringing unwelcome change in the character of the land.