On Leap Day, our two newest creative writing faculty, Caroline Randall Williams and Christa Parravani, read to a full audience in the downtown library’s Robinson Reading Room.

Caroline Randall Williams reading from Lucy Negro, Redux

Caroline Randall Williams, who came to WVU in fall 2015 and read from her 2015 poetry collection Lucy Negro, Redux (Ampersand Books). In the collection, Randall Williams identifies Shakespeare’s “dark lover” through historical undefined116122.undefined116123.undefined116124.undefined116731.undefined213152.documents and imagination and carries that empowered voice across time and place to speak into and out of her own life, declaring, with Shakespeare, that “Beauty herself is black.” She was introduced by second-year MFA Sarah Munroe.

Christa Parravani reading a selection from her next memoir

Christa Parravani also joined WVU’s faculty in fall 2015, in creative nonfiction. She was introduced by second-year MFA Kelsey Englert. Author of Her: A Memoir (Picador, 2013), Parravani read a chapter from her new memoir-in-progress about growing up on a military base. In the selection, a military family picnic turned into a trip to the hospital for Christa. At times funny, at times poignant, and at times a bit frightening, the memoir excerpt allowed a glimpse into Parravani’s young life, her relationship with her twin sister Cara, and the important adults in her life.

You can hear this and many of the program’s other readings at the Creative Readings Podcast hosted by WVU’s Center for Literary Computing.