MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will host a Writers Harvest on Tuesday, Nov. 26, when three area authors will read from their works and invite their audience to donate funds, food, toiletries and clothing to support local poverty and hunger relief.
The benefit reading, at 8 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of Cornell’s Commons, will feature poets Matthew Cooperman and Cole Swenson and fiction writer Chris Offutt. Contributions of cans of food, baby supplies, linens, bedding, toiletries, winter clothing and cash will be accepted. Proceeds will go to support Inn Circle, a transitional housing and family resource center, and Waypoint, a domestic violence shelter for women, both in Cedar Rapids.
Cooperman, assistant professor of English at Cornell, is the author of two collections of poetry, “A Sacrificial Zinc,” winner of the Lena Miles Wever Todd Prize, and “Surge,” winner of the Wick Chapbook Award. He received a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has taught at Ohio University, the University of Colorado and Harvard University.
Swenson, visiting professor in creative writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is the author of seven collections of poetry, including “Noon,” winner of the New American Writing Award, and “Try,” winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Swenson has taught at San Francisco State, New College and the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently on leave as director of the creative writing program at Denver University.
Offutt has written four works of fiction, including the novel “The Good Brother” and a collection of short stories, “Out of the Woods.” A graduate of the Writers’ Workshop, where he is a visiting professor, Offutt has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Award.
Writers Harvest was started in 1992 by Share Our Strength as a national benefit to fight hunger. Today the event operates independently to support local outreach programs.