Sven Birkerts and Amy Gerstler

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Sven Birkerts and Amy Gerstler will read as part of the Writers Reading Series.   

Sven Birkerts has been editor of AGNI since July 2002. His most recent books are Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Other Walk (Graywolf Press, 2011), Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again (Graywolf Press, 2008), and Reading Life: Books for the Ages (Graywolf Press, 2007). His other books include An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature (William Morrow), The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry (William Morrow), American Energies: Essays on Fiction (William Morrow), The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Faber & Faber), Readings (Graywolf Press, 1999), and My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Viking, 2002). He has edited Tolstoy’s Dictaphone: Writers and the Muse (Graywolf) as well as Writing Well (with Donald Hall), and The Evolving Canon (Allyn & Bacon).

He has received grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. He was winner of the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle in 1985 and the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award from PEN for the best book of essays in 1990. Birkerts has reviewed regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Mirabella, Parnassus, The Yale Review, and other publications. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, and Amherst and has most recently been Briggs-Copeland lecturer in nonfiction at Harvard. He is the director of the Bennington Writing Seminars and a core faculty member. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction and journalism. She has published thirteen books of poetry, and a collaborative artists book (with Alexis Smith.) Scattered at Sea, a book of her poems, published by Penguin in June, 2015, was longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and was a finalist in poetry for the PEN USA literary award. Her book Dearest Creature (Penguin 2009) was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and was short listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Her previous twelve books include Ghost Girl, Medicine, Crown of Weeds, which won a California Book Award, Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. She was the 2010 guest editor of the yearly anthology Best American Poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, several volumes of Best American Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. She has taught writing and/or visual art at the California Institute of the Arts, Cal Tech, Art Center College of Design, the University of Utah, Pitzer College, and elsewhere. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of California at Irvine.