Writers in Performance is a reading program dedicated to bringing the most distinguished minds and their bright visions to the citizens of Montgomery County through thought-provoking literature and cultural diversity. The series’ events are made possible by the partnership between the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council, LSC-Montgomery Library, the Conroe Commission on the Arts and Culture, Good Books in the Woods, LSC-Montgomery’s Academy for Lifelong Learning, and SWIRL, LSC-Montgomery’s magazine of student art and writing.

Spring 2018 Schedule

	Annette Gordon-Reed February 15 Founder's Square, Conroe TX • 3 p.m. General Academic Building, Room G-102 • 7 p.m.

The project to recognize Annette Gordon-Reed, Conroe native, historian, legal scholar and distinguished author, with a bronze bust, to be installed in downtown Conroe’s Founder’s Plaza, has just moved closer to completion. Conroe resident and 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, Dave Parsons, who initiated the project, enlisted the help of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council in organizing the project and asked well-known Conroe-based sculptor Craig Campobella to design the bronze tribute. Craig Campobella has reportedly completed the bust and sent it to a foundry for bronzing. Ms. Gordon-Reed has found time in her extraordinarily demanding schedule to attend the unveiling and address the local community on the afternoon of February 15, 2019.  In addition, that evening at 7 pm, she will read from her work on the campus of LSC-Montgomery as part of the “Writers In Performance” series, a monthly offering that the college presents in partnership with the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council. 

Born in Livingston, Texas, and raised in Conroe, Annette Gordon-Reed is the first African-American to graduate from Conroe High School where her mother was a teacher of English. She is a graduate of Darmouth College and Harvard Law School. She is the Warren Professor of American Legal History and Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.  Other books she has written include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Andrew Johnson, and she co-authored with Peter S. Onuf, Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. Her honors include: a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities; a MacArthur (Genius) Fellowship; the National Humanities Medal; the National Book Award; and the Woman of Power & Influence Award from the National Organization for Women in New York City. Ms. Gordon-Reed was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and is a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is married to Robert R. Reed, a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and  lives in New York with her husband and two children. See more about Ms. Gordon-Reed at https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10329/Gordon-Reed. Read an extensive interview that includes an account of her East-Texas upbringing at https://today.law.harvard.edu/annette-gordon-reeds-personal-history-east-texas-monticello/

	Katherine Hoerth March 20 General Academic Building, Room G-102 7 p.m.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry books. Her most recent poetry collection, Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014) won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has been included in journals such as Mezzo Cammin, Raintown Review, and Think Journal. She serves as editor-in-chief of Lamar University Literary Press and poetry editor of Amarillo Bay and Devilfish Review. She is the Vice President of the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers, teaches at the Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and is the 2017 Langdon Writer in Residence.

	Octavio Quintanilla April 17 General Academic Building, Room G-102 7 p.m.

2018 San Antonio Poet Laureate, is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). His work has appeared in Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. He is a CantoMundo Fellow and holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. He is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

	Walt Whitman Birthday Celebration Steven Herrmann May 2 General Academic Building, Room G-102 3 p.m.

Steven Herrmann has published over forty papers, several chapters, and four books, William Everson: The Shaman's Call; Walt Whitman: Shamanism, Spiritual Democracy, and the World Soul; Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward and Emily Dickinson: A Medicine Woman for Our Times. In 2015 he contributed a chapter "C.G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin: Peacemakers in an Age of Spiritual Democracy" in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Gustav Jung Side by Side, published by Fisher King Press. He has taught on the subjects of Jung, Whitman, and Melville at the C.G. Jung Institutes of San Francisco, Chicago, and Zürich, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and on Jung and James at Yale University. Herrmann's expertise in Jungian Literary Criticism makes him one of the seminal thinkers in the international field, and a foremost authority on Whitman, Melville, and now Dickinson in post-Jungian studies.

	Gathering of Poets at Martin's on the Square in Conroe Thursday, Dec. 8 Martin's on the Square in Conroe 219 Simonton St, Conroe, TX 77301 5 p.m.

20+ Regional poets read their work and Whitman’s in downtown Conroe in celebration of the birthday of the American Bard. 

All events are free, open to the public and made possible by :

Lone Star College Montgomery – Library
Conroe Comission on the Arts and Culture
Montgomery County Literary Arts Council
Swirl – The Literature and Arts Journal of Lone Star College – Montgomery

For more information, visit www.literaryartscouncil.org; or contact Dave Parsons at 936.524.6537 or david.m.parsons@lonestar.edu.