TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- University of Alabama Coal Royalty Visiting Chair in Prose Deirdre McNamer and new UA faculty member and poet Peter Streckfus will read from their works Friday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa as part of the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series.

McNamer, a full-time teacher and writer, has had her stories, essays, reviews and articles published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, Doubletake and Outside.

Her novels “One Sweet Quarrel” and “Rima in the Weeds” are both from Harper Collins and her most recent novel “My Russian” was published in 1999 by Houghton Mifflin. She has received an NEH in journalism and has been a Thurber Writer in Residence at the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. Her fourth novel, “Red Rover,” was published by Viking in August.

Streckfus’s first book, “The Cuckoo,” was the 2004 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, judged by Louise Glück, and was a finalist for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award that same year. His work, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Practice: New Writing + Art, Slope and elsewhere.

Streckfus is the recipient of grants and fellowships from institutions including the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and the Creative Writing Program at George Mason University, where he completed his MFA in 2000. He joined the Creative Writing Program faculty at UA this year.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, UA's program in creative writing, the department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, contact UA's creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.

The University of Alabama, a student-centered research university, is in the midst of a planned, steady enrollment growth with a goal of reaching 28,000 students by 2010. This growth, which is positively impacting the campus and the state's economy, is in keeping with UA's vision to be the university of choice for the best and brightest students. UA, the state's flagship university, is an academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.