Ohio University's creative writing department aims to raise more than $1,000 for a Southeastern Ohio food bank at its annual Writers Harvest tonight.
Writers Harvest is the nation's largest reading series focusing on the issue of food insecurity. OU's version will be held at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Baker University Center Theatre. All proceeds from the $5 admission will go to Second Harvest Foodbank of Southeastern Ohio.
According to Second Harvest's website, the U.S. wastes almost 97 billion pounds of food each year, while 30 million more people are in danger of going hungry. Second Harvest, an affiliate of Feeding America, takes foods that otherwise might have been wasted from major manufacturers and wholesalers and distributes it to more than 200 feeding organizations throughout the 10 counties of Southeastern Ohio.
This year's event will feature Eric LaMay, Darrell Spencer and Christina Veladota.
LeMay joined OU's creative writing department as an assistant professor this fall. He is the author of Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese and The One in the Many, and he is also a web editor for Alimentum: The Literature of Food. His works have appeared in such publications as The Nation, The Harvest Review, The Paris Review and Castronomica.
LeMay said he feels grateful to participate in an event that will bring attention to such a worthwhile cause.
Although I'm a newcomer to the creative writing program
I have the sense that the writers at OU are deeply invested in the well-being of the larger community and food is essential to our collective well-being he said.
Spencer, also an OU creative writing professor, won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in 2004 and the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1998. He is the author of four short stories and a novel titled One Mile Past Dangerous Curve.
Veladota graduated from OU in 2002 with a Ph.D. in creative writing, and is now an assistant professor at Washington State College in Marietta. Her poetry has been published in The Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, The Journal and Lake Effect.
David Wanczyk, the English department's director of special programs, said about 200 people are expected to attend the event this year.
The more people we can get to come to the event
the more energy we'll get behind (hunger-relief) and the more people will think about this as an organization to donate to
Wanczyk said.
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Culture
Olivia Young
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