Lake Forest Literary Festival kicks off Feb. 27

• Reprints

Updated: March 24, 2012 9:00AM

The Lake Forest College Department of English holds its annual Literary Festival from Feb. 27 through Feb. 29.

Most of the events will be held in Meyer Auditorium in Hotchkiss Hall on the college’s Middle Campus, 555 N. Sheridan Road.

“I’m very excited by the diversity of the voices represented at this year’s festival, most of whom are concerned in some way with environmental writing or writing about place,” said professor Josh Corey, Lit Fest organizer. “From the feminist ecopoetics of Brenda Iijima to the gonzo piscatorian Mark Spitzer to the contemporary fairy tales of Kate Bernheimer to the visionary environments of Ed Roberson, these writers all bring ethical and imaginative intensity to their work.”

Besides the English Department, events are sponsored by the Dean of the Faculty, American Studies Program, Artist-in-Residence, Student Government and the Mojekwu Fund.

The lineup includes:

Tahitian artist and writer Rai a Mai (Michou Chaze), author of “Avant la saison des pluies” and “Vai: la rivière au ciel sans nuages,” noon, Feb. 27, Meyer Auditorium.

Poet Ed Roberson, author of “City Eclogue” and “To See the Earth Before the End of the World,” 4 p.m., Feb. 27, Meyer Auditorium.

Memoirist and environmental prose writer Mark Spitzer, author of “After the Orange Glow” and “Season of the Gar,” 7 p.m. Feb. 27, Meyer Auditorium.

Panel discussion on contemporary ecopoetics with poets Brenda Iijima and Ed Roberson, and critic John Elder, moderated by Professor Corey, noon, Feb. 28, Meyer Auditorium.

Novelist Lucy Ferriss, author of “The Lost Daughter” and other works, 4 p.m. , Feb. 28, McCormick Auditorium.

Reading by 2012-13 Madeline P. Plonsker Emerging Writer in Residence Elizabeth Gentry, followed by a reading by fiction writer Kate Bernheimer, author of “The Complete Tales of Merry Gold,” the children’s book “The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum,” and editor of “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales,” 7:30 p.m., Calvin Durand Lounge in the Stuart Commons.

Poet Brenda Iijima, author of “revv. you’ll—ution” and “If Not Metamorphic,” and editor of “eco language reader,” 4 p.m. Feb. 29, Meyer Auditorium.

Keynote address by John Elder, environmental critic and author of “Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature”, “The Frog Run: Word and Wildness in the Vermont Woods” and “Reading the Mountains of Home,” 7:30 p.m., Feb. 29, Meyer Auditorium.

For more information, call (847) 234-3100