David James Poissant will read from his highly acclaimed short story collection, The Heaven of Animals, at UT’s Writers in the Library on Monday, November 17, at 7 p.m. in the Lindsay Young Auditorium of the John C. Hodges Library. The reading is free and open to the public. Prior to the reading, at 3 p.m., he will be available for a Q&A session for UT students and faculty in the Practice Presentation Room, 220 E in Hodges Library Commons North.

The Heaven of Animals was named one of the most anticipated books of 2014 by The Millions. In a starred review, Kirkus describes Poissant’s stories as “Rueful and kind, akin to both Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver in humane spirit and technical mastery.” Rebecca Lee of The New York Times Book Review touts the collection as “A wise debut . . . Beautiful, with a rogue touch,” and Karen Russell says of his writing, “Like Flannery O’Connor, Poissant’s stories are marked by violence, humor, and grace; like Saunders, he can spoon-bend reality; like Carver and Diaz, he writes scenes soaked in kerosene and seconds from combustion.”

David James Poissant’s stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, The New York Times, One Story, Playboy, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and in the New Stories from the South and Best New American Voices anthologies. His writing has been awarded the Matt Clark Prize, the George Garrett Fiction Award, the RopeWalk Fiction Chapbook Prize, and the Alice White Reeves Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts & Letters, as well as awards from The Chicago Tribune and The Atlantic and Playboy magazines.

David James Poissant teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando with his wife and daughters.

Read an excellent review of The Heaven of Animals at Chapter 16: a community of Tennessee writers, readers and passersby (brought to you by Humanities Tennessee).
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Writers in the Library is sponsored by the UT Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

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