Author to kick off NWC reading series

Award-winning author Scott Kaukonen, assistant professor of English at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, will kick off Northwestern College’s 2010–11 Deep Song Reading Series Monday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. in Te Paske Gallery of the Korver Visual Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Kaukonen’s collection of short stories, Ordination, won the 2004 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction. Ordination is comprised of stories of men and boys who like to see themselves as worthy of the titles of father, son, husband, lover and friend, but who must fight their own instincts and desires to claim such honors.

Kaukonen is currently working on a novel, The Martyrdom of Katie Deeds, that explores the intersection of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian culture with American consumer culture over the body and legacy of a preacher’s dead 16-year-old daughter.

Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, Kaukonen has had stories and reviews published in Third Coast, the Cincinnati Review and the Missouri Review. He is a Michigan native who earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri.

The Deep Song Reading Series will also feature Wayne Miller, poet and editor of the literary journal Pleiades, on Nov. 16; novelist Ben Percy in March; and poet Christie Hodgen in April.