PAM HOUSTON + REBECCA GAYLE HOWELL: Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference Public Readings

Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference faculty, Pam Houston and Rebecca Gayle Howell, will give public readings of their work at the Porter Center on the Brevard College campus on Friday, May 17 at 7:30 pm.

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of short stories “Cowboys Are My Weakness,” which was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and “Waltzing the Cat,” which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction; two novels, “Contents May Have Shifted” and “Sight Hound,” and three collections of autobiographical essays, “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country,” from which Cheryl Strayed chose an essay for inclusion in the forthcoming “Best American Travel Writing” and another essay will be included in the forthcoming Pushcart Prize anthology, “A Rough Guide to the Heart,” and “A Little More About Me.”

Her stories have also been selected for The O. Henry Awards and The Pushcart Prize. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, and The Evil Companions Literary Award. She is a regular contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, and many other periodicals.  She divides her time between UC Davis and southwestern Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

Rebecca Gayle Howell is an award-winning poet, translator, and editor of place-based literature. Her books include two novels in verse: American Purgatory and Render / An Apocalypse, as well as two translations: El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale, a Patagonian migration narrative by Claudia Prado and Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation, Amal al-Jubouri’s Iraq War memoir-in-verse. Howell’s work has received critical acclaim from such outlets as The Los Angeles Times, Poetry London (U.K.), The Courier-Journal, Asymptote, and both American Purgatory and Render were named Bestsellers of the Decade by Small Press Distribution. In 2023 Howell released What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, co-edited by Howell & Ashley M. Jones. Called “the first major anthology of labor writing in a century,” What Things Cost received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and was named a Best Book of the Year by outlets like Ms. Magazine, Bitter Southerner, Book Riot, Southern Review of Books, and Poets & Writers.

Since 2014, Howell has served as the poetry editor for The Oxford American, where she curates and commissions a new profile of Southern poetics. In 2016 she and her fellow editors received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and in 2023 they received the Whiting Award. A seventh-generation Kentuckian, Rebecca Gayle Howell makes her home in Northwest Arkansas, where she is a professor of poetry & translation for the University of Arkansas MFA program.

The Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference (LGRWC) is a unique creative experience for writers which aspires to foster reading, writing, creativity, and a sense of place in Transylvania County.  The Transylvania County Library is a vital, trusted source for discovery, inspiration, and innovation at the heart of a community that celebrates learning, creativity, and curiosity.  Brevard College provides an experiential liberal arts education that encourages personal growth and inspires artistic, intellectual, and social action.

As partners, Brevard College and the Transylvania County Library Foundation seek to enrich the cultural and educational life of Transylvania County by nurturing and developing the LGRWC. Through intensive community-building creative workshops and public readings, the LGRWC will offer Transylvania County residents the opportunity to interact with renowned authors, engage in meaningful conversation about writing and place, and strengthen ties across generations by reaching out to the diverse population of Transylvania County.