Final Thursday Reading Series

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

FINAL THURSDAY READING SERIES

Thursday, April 30, 2009
Hearst Center for the Arts
Cedar Falls, Iowa

Featured Reader:
Elizabeth Oness

FTRS RETURNS IN AUGUST. HAVE A GREAT SUMMER.

Elizabeth Oness

The Hearst Center is located at 304 W. Seerley Blvd. in Cedar Falls. Enjoy the art on your way back to the reading. Open mic signup begins at 7:00 p.m. Bring your best five minutes of poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction. Singer-songwriters are also welcome, and now we have access to the Hearst's grand piano. The open mic begins at 7:15. Elizabeth Oness takes the stage at 8:00. There will be a short question and answer period as time allows.

Elizabeth Oness is an Associate Professor of English at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. She is the author of the novels, Twelve Rivers of the Body (Gival Press) and Departures (Penguin Putnam) and the short story collection, Articles of Faith (University of Iowa Press). Her poems and stories have appeared in The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Glimmer Train, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review and other magazines. She is also the marketing and development director for Sutton Hoo Press. You can read a sample of her work below.

Hearst Center for the Arts

The James & Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts is located at 304 West Seerley Blvd. in Cedar Falls. Stop by early to check out the current exhibitions.

Excerpt from Twelve Rivers of the Body
by Elizabeth Oness

Elena believed she would have been different about men if her mother had lived to guide her into adolescence, as if her mother would have taught her to swim in the mysterious waters of men and sex. Instead, Elena felt as if she had ended up in an over-chlorinated pool wearing a racing suit that kept riding up her butt. Her mother died a few weeks before Elena turned twelve, and Elena felt she had missed the chance to learn what other women knew. Her mother had been beautiful, and even to Elena’s unsophisticated gaze, seductive. The looks she had inherited—full-lipped, dark, Mediterranean—were a mask she hadn’t yet grown into. On the rare occasions when she traded jeans for something the least bit sexy, she almost believed she looked beautiful. But she didn’t feel like that, and she couldn’t seem to help it. When she was young, part of the problem seemed to be with the nature of boys themselves; she was unwilling to suffer their ineptitude, but party of the problem was the fact that any reserve on her part was considered teasing. If she were tall and blonde, people might assume she was cold, but men somehow assumed she was silently smoldering, waiting for their touch.

The Spring 2009 Lineup
Final Thursday Reading Series