Thornton Writing Program
The Thornton Writer-in-Residence Workshop
Each spring semester a writer comes to the College to teach a semester-long class. To ensure individualized instruction, the class size is limited to 16 students. Eligibility is determined through submission of sample writings. Any student, regardless of major, may apply.
Students often take more than one Thornton writing course during their 4 years, and academic credit earned can count toward an English major or toward elective hours, depending on the student's needs.
The visiting writer also gives public readings, conducts other classes at the request of professors, and is available for private conferences with student and faculty writers.
Public Readings and Short Workshops
Thornton writers commonly visit campus for one or two days. The centerpiece of such visits is a public reading or lecture. Writers also frequently meet with classes or conduct workshops for students interested in creative writing.
The LC Writing Program
The Thornton program is part of the larger writing program at Lynchburg College. Other courses in creative writing include Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, and Poetry Writing, all of which are taught by regular faculty of LC who are both teachers and writers. Among the faculty are published fiction writers, poets, playwrights, journalists, and essayists.
For further information, contact Allison Wilkins at wilkins.a@lynchburg.edu.
Spring 2014 Thornton Writer-in-Residence
Patrick Ryan Frank, Spring 14 Thornton Writer-in-Residence, will read from his work (TBA), followed by a reception and book signing.
Patrick Ryan Frank’s first collection of poetry, How the Losers Love What’s Lost, won the Intro Prize for Poetry and was published by Four Way Books in 2012. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Slate, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and have been anthologized in Best New Poets 2008.
He studied poetry at Northwestern University, Boston University, and the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Vermont Studio Center, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He is currently in Reykjavík, Iceland, on a Fulbright fellowship.
The reading is sponsored by The Richard H. Thornton Endowment in English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Spring 2013 Thornton Writer-in Residence
Joshua Kryah, Spring Thornton Writer-in-Residence, read from his work Thursday, February 28, followed by a reception and book signing.
Joshua Kryah was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry. He is the author of We Are Starved (2011) and Glean (2007). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah, among other journals. He teaches at UNLV where he is the poetry editor of Witness.
The reading was sponsored by The Richard H. Thornton Endowment in English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Spring 2013 Guest Reader
Christopher Bakken, Spring Guest Reader, will read from his work Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 8 p.m., Sydnor Performance Hall. Reception and book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 434.544.8820.
Christopher Bakken is the author of two books of poetry, Goat Funeral (2006) and After Greece (2001), and a culinary memoir called Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table. He also co-translated The Lions' Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios. He has been awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and he served as a Fulbright Fellow in American Studies at the University of Bucharest. He teaches at Allegheny College.
The reading is sponsored by The Richard H. Thornton Endowment in English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Fall 2012 Thornton Writer-in-Residence
Sara Pritchard, Fall Thornton Writer-in-Residence, read from her work Thursday, September 27, 2012, followed by a reception and book signing.
Sara Pritchard is the author of Crackpots (2003), a novel-in-stories; Lately (2007), a linked-story collection; and Help Wanted: Female (Etruscan Press, 2012), a story collection. Sara won the Bakeless Prize for Fiction in 2003 with Crackpots, which went on to become a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Other literary awards include a 2008 Pushcart Prize for her story "Two Studies in Entropy," originally published in New Letters.
Her stories and essays appear in numerous literary magazines, and she teaches in the Low-Residency Creating Writing Programs at Wilkes University and West Virginia Wesleyan.
Fall 2012 Guest Reader
Anne Panning, Fall Thornton Reader, read from her work Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 7:30 p.m., followed by a reception and book signing.
Anne Panning's short story collection, Super America, won The 2006 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. She has also published a book of short stories, The Price of Eggs, as well as short fiction and nonfiction in places such as Beloit Fiction Journal, Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The Florida Review, Passages North, Black Warrior Review, The Greensboro Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Kalliope, Quarterly West, The Kenyon Review, The Laurel Review, Five Points, The Hawaii Review, Cimarron Review, West Branch and Brevity. Four of her essays have received notable citations in The Best American Essays series. Her novel, Butter, will be published in October 2012 by Switchgrass Books. She is currently at work on a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: A Memoir of Motherhood and Loss.
She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children, and teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport.
Anne Panning, Fall 2012 Guest Reader
Watch an excerpt of Anne Panning's reading on October 25.
The Richard H. Thornton Endowment
Dr. Richard H. Thornton, 1907 alumnus of Lynchburg College, was a distinguished teacher, writer, and publisher. He became president of Henry Holt and Company publishers and established friendships with such writers as Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe, and Vachel Lindsay. He was both editor and friend to Robert Frost.
Since 1975 the endowment established in his name has made it possible for us to bring some of the most exciting and successful poets, novelists, dramatists, and nonfiction writers of our time to the College. These writers have taught classes, given readings, and enriched the cultural life of the campus.
