Description

Reading by Authors Kelley Shinn ’04, M.F.A. ’06 and Jennifer A Sutherland M.F.A. ’20
Thursday, September 7, 7:30 pm, Green Drawing Room, Main Building
 
Kelley Shinn’s new book, The Wounds That Bind Us (West Virginia University Press, 2023), tells her own true story: an orphan at birth who loses her legs at the age of 16 to a rare bacterial pathogen. She becomes an avid off-road racer and, as a single mother, attempts to drive around the globe in a Land Rover with her three-year-old daughter in tow to bring light to the plight of land mine survivors. The Southern Review of Books calls The Wounds That Bind Us “simultaneously empowering and disconcerting. . . . Ultimately, one comes away from this book with an appreciation for the beauty of broken things. We are, so many of us, like cracked pottery, repaired with gold. Our wounds may be terrible, but they are also precious.” Shinn’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Fourth Genre, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and elsewhere. She completed her bachelor’s degree and her M.F.A. in creative writing at Hollins. She lives in Ocracoke, North Carolina.
 
Jennifer A Sutherland is a poet, essayist, and attorney in Baltimore. Her debut book, Bullet Points: A Lyric (River River Books, 2023), is part prose poem, part lyric essay. It considers an American courthouse shooting, its aftermath, and its echoes in law, history, and capitalism. “Bullet Points is relentless, harrowing, and tremendously smart,” said Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing. “With uncommon acuity and force, Sutherland chronicles experiences of both public and intimate violence, writing back from trauma and toward something new and necessary. This book is an absolute accomplishment.” Sutherland’s work has appeared or will appear in Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, I-70 Review, Cagibi, Appalachian Review, Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere. She won first place in Streetlight’s 2018 Poetry Contest for her poem, “An Elegant Variation.” Sutherland completed her M.F.A. in creative writing at Hollins and is an alumna of workshops at Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Kenyon Review.
 
Sponsored by the department of English and creative writing and the Dee Hull Everist Visiting Speaker Fund.