Dalsheim

Poet and novelist Alan Michael Parker of Davidson will be the guest at the monthly meeting of Charlotte Writers Club North in Davidson on April 5. Meanwhile, anthropologist Joyce Dalsheim has a new book out titled “Unsettling Gaza,” examining Israeli settlements in and around Gaza. Plus, a calendar of literary events at Davidson College and other area venues. 

ALAN MICHAEL PARKER

^[1]

Alan Michael Parker

Alan Michael Parker’s appearance at Charlotte Writers Club North is  Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. at Davidson College Presbyterian Church Congregation House, on Concord Road.

Professor Parker, who teaches at Davidson College, is the author of two novels, “Whale Man” (2011) and “Cry Uncle” (2005). He also has seven collections of poems: “Days Like Prose,” “The Vandals,” “Love Song with Motor Vehicles,” “A Peal of Sonnets,” “Elephants & Butterflies,” “Ten Days” (with painter Herb Jackson), and “Holier Than This” (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2012).

He served as Editor of “The Imaginary Poets,” and co-editor of two other volumes of scholarship. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines, and are forthcoming widely, including in “The Best American Poetry 2011.” His prose has appeared in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

Professor Parker has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Since 1998, he has taught at Davidson College, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Davidson, NC, with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.

Founded in 1922, Charlotte Writers Club is a membership organization whose mission is to support Charlotte’s community of writers. Charlotte Writers’ Club North typically meets at 7 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month at Davidson College Presbyterian Church, room 201. The public is always welcome to attend. For more information, please visit www.charlottewritersclub.org ^[2].

JOYCE DALSHEIM HAS A BOOK

^[3]

Joyce Dalsheim

Cultural anthropologist Joyce Dalsheim of Davidson has a new book out titled “Unsettling Gaza: Secular Liberalism, Radical Religion, and the Israeli Settlement Project.” Published by Oxford University Press, it’s an ethnographic study of Israeli settlements in and around the Gaza Strip.

Based on fieldwork in the year before the Israeli withdrawal, the book poses questions about Israel’s settlement policies that move beyond the usual categories of politics, religion, and culture. The book is described as the first study to place radical, right-wing settlers and their left-wing and secular opposition in the same analytic frame.

Dr. Dalsheim teaches at UNC Charlotte and has taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and Wake Forest University. In 2005, she held the Rockefeller Fellowship at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

She studies nationalism, religion and the secular, and conflict in Israel/Palestine and has a doctorate from the New School for Social Research.

See the Oxford University Press catalog entry for “Unsettling Gaza.” ^[4]

LITERARY CALENDAR

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 4:30 p.m., Davidson College Alvarez College Union Sprinkle Room – Reading with poet and activist Eli Clare. Thoughtful and compelling, Clare mixes art and politics, polemic and poetry in his books, The Marrow’s Telling: Word in Motion and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. Clare’s readings take the form of storytelling, memoir, and a critical analysis of disability, queerness, and other social justice issues. Free.  For information call 704-894-2254.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 7:30 p.m.,  Davidson College, Alvarez College Union, Smith 900 Room – Poet and activist Eli Clare titled “Digging Deep: Thinking about Privilege.” Clare will speak about disability, race, gender, class, queer and trans identities, and social justice. His published work includes a book of essays titled Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry titled The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion. There is no charge to attend the presentation, which begins at For information call 704-894-2254.

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 7:30 p.m., Davidson College Alvarez College Union, Smith 900 Room – Susan Choi, lecturer in creative writing at Princeton University, will present the annual Vereen Bell Writing Awards. She will also read from her work and sign copies of her books. Choi’s novel “American Woman” was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Free For information call 704-894-2254.

MONDAY, MAY 16 to FRIDAY, MAY 20, Glendale Springs, N.C. – The Farm at Weathers Creek will host a spring retreat with a small group of serious writers at Glendale Springs, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Writers in residence include Jim Minick (memoir), Darnell Arnoult (fiction and poetry), Georgann Eubanks (nonfiction). Guest speakers include novelist Lee Smith and poet, novelist and playwright Joseph Bathanti. Details at: tablerockwriters.com ^[5], click on “spring studio.”