Visiting Writer Series Brings Gladys Swan to Converse

Writer and painter Gladys Swan will give a free public reading in the Barnet Room of the Montgomery Student Center on the campus of Converse College Tuesday, March 11 at 8 p.m. Her visit is made possible by the college’s Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Visiting Writer Series.

Swan has had five collections of short fiction and two novels published, “Carnival for the Gods” (Vintage Contemporaries Series) and “Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices,” nominated by LSU Press for the Pen/Faulkner Award. Her most recent book, a novella and stories under the title “News from the Volcano” was also nominated for the Pen/Faulkner Award.

Swan’s short fiction has appeared in such literary magazines as the “Kenyon Review,” “Sewanee Review,” “Virginia Quarterly Review,” “Shenandoah,” “Ohio Review” and “Prairie Schooner” where she was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Prize for Fiction. In 2001, she received the Tate Prize from the “Sewanee Review.” She was awarded one of the first Open Fellowships from the Lilly Endowment for a study in Inuit art and mythology and she has held residencies in writing and painting at Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, and elsewhere.

A former professor of creative writing at the University of Missouri, Swan currently writes and paints full time.