Spring Break
Author speaks to NT about book 'Body Language'
Kelly Magee discusses her collection of short stories based on Southern life
Rachel Slade
Issue date: 1/31/07 Section: ARTS
Kelly Magee, a winner of NT's Katherine Anne Porter Prize, will be reading selections of her most recent work tonight as part of the English department's 2006-2007 "Visiting Writers Series."
The reading and book signing will begin at 8 p.m. today in Golden Eagle Suite A on the third level of the University Union. The event will be followed by a reception open to the public.
Magee will hold a question and answer session before the reading at 4 p.m. today in Auditorium Building room 212.
Magee, who is currently a visiting assistant professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction in 2006 for her first collection of short stories titled "Body Language." Sponsored by NT, this annual competition awards $1,000 and publication of the work by the NT Press to its winners.
"'Body Language' is exciting because it holds together as a coherent book," said Karen DeVinney, managing editor of the NT Press. "It's not just a collection of disparate stories. Kelly explores the ways the body communicates, has its own language. This body language in some ways trumps verbal language."
"Body Language" is a collection of 11 stories set mostly in the South. They relate the life struggles of characters often ignored by society including those of a drag queen, a bus driver and an ex-paratrooper.
"I do like to write the outsider character, and in 'Body Language' that often takes the form of characters who want to make themselves understood and can't," Magee said. "The crisis of most of the stories comes from a character's failure to communicate."
Magee's works have appeared in numerous publications including the "Crab Orchard Review," "The Indiana Review," "Quarterly West" and "The Cream City Review."
She has won awards from both the Associated Writing Programs and Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, which grants money to female artists whose work focuses on women. Also in 2006, Magee's story "Go" was published after winning the magazine Hotel Amerika's fiction contest.
The reading and book signing will begin at 8 p.m. today in Golden Eagle Suite A on the third level of the University Union. The event will be followed by a reception open to the public.
Magee will hold a question and answer session before the reading at 4 p.m. today in Auditorium Building room 212.
Magee, who is currently a visiting assistant professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction in 2006 for her first collection of short stories titled "Body Language." Sponsored by NT, this annual competition awards $1,000 and publication of the work by the NT Press to its winners.
"'Body Language' is exciting because it holds together as a coherent book," said Karen DeVinney, managing editor of the NT Press. "It's not just a collection of disparate stories. Kelly explores the ways the body communicates, has its own language. This body language in some ways trumps verbal language."
"Body Language" is a collection of 11 stories set mostly in the South. They relate the life struggles of characters often ignored by society including those of a drag queen, a bus driver and an ex-paratrooper.
"I do like to write the outsider character, and in 'Body Language' that often takes the form of characters who want to make themselves understood and can't," Magee said. "The crisis of most of the stories comes from a character's failure to communicate."
Magee's works have appeared in numerous publications including the "Crab Orchard Review," "The Indiana Review," "Quarterly West" and "The Cream City Review."
She has won awards from both the Associated Writing Programs and Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, which grants money to female artists whose work focuses on women. Also in 2006, Magee's story "Go" was published after winning the magazine Hotel Amerika's fiction contest.
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