· The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts is celebrating its 20th year with a new monthly format that features prominent authors year-round.
· All events are free and open to the public.
· Award-winning authors January Gill O’Neil and Lynn Melnick are the Celebration’s featured authors in December.
ANKENY, Iowa—The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, which is currently celebrating its 20th Anniversary with a new year-round format, will host a free Virtual Reading with award-winning authors January Gill O’Neil and Lynn Melnick from 12-1 p.m. CT on Mon., Dec. 5, via Zoom.
The DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts spotlights a variety of local, regional and nationally known authors, and includes mix of both in-person and virtual events throughout the year. All events are free and open to the public.
To attend the Virtual Reading on Dec. 5, register here.
About the authors: January Gill O’Neil and Lynn Melnick
January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of “Rewilding” (2018), “Misery Islands” (2014) and “Underlife” (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and she currently serves on the boards of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and Montserrat College of Art. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day Series, American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Poetry and Sierra magazine, among others.
O’Neil’s poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry award from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. O’Neil is one of five judges for the 2022 National Book Award in poetry. She lives with her two children in Beverly, Mass.
Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, “I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton,” from the University of Texas Press’s American Music Series/Spiegel & Grau Audio (October 2022). She is also the author of three poetry collections, “Refusenik” (2022), “Landscape with Sex and Violence” (2017) and “If I Should Say I Have Hope” (2012), all with YesYes Books, and the co-editor of “Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation” (Viking, 2015). Her work has appeared in APR, LA Review of Books, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, A Public Space and the anthology “Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture.”
Melnick has received grants from the Cafe Royal Cultural Society and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. A former fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and previously on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, she currently teaches poetry at Columbia University, Princeton University and the 92Y. Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn.
For more information about the DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, visit https://cla.dmacc.edu or contact Marc Dickinson, DMACC English Professor and Coordinator of the DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts, at (515) 964-6221 or madickinson@dmacc.edu.
Select writings by January Gill O’Neil:
- Prayer
- Hoodie
- Driving Through Mississippi After the Capitol Hill Riot
- Three White Ole Miss Students Use Guns to Vandalize a Memorial to Lynching Victim Emmett Till
- Author website: januarygilloneil.com
Select writings by Lynn Melnick:
- I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (memoir excerpt)
- Landscape with Loanword and Solstice (poem—New Yorker)
- Refusenik (poem)
- Twelve
- Selected poems: https://poets.org/poet/lynn-melnick
- Author website: lynnmelnick.com
About DMACC
Des Moines Area Community College, a public institution serving the educational and career training needs of Iowans, is committed to the lifelong success of its students. Situated in one of America’s most vibrant regions, DMACC offers 200 programs, certificates and transfer degrees, annually serving more than 70,000 credit and noncredit students on six campuses and six learning centers. Thanks to college-wide innovation including Continuous Process Improvement (CPI), new programs and affordable tuition, DMACC continues to experience solid growth. For more information, please visit dmacc.edu.
(contributed press release, DMACC)
About the Author
