Joseph Holt Book Release: An MFA Faculty Reading

Published on by fairbanksartsassociation

Literary Reading featuring Joseph Holt

with Daryl Farmer and Sara Eliza Johnson

September 4, 2021 at 7 pm

Bear Gallery, 2300 Airport Way Fairbanks, AK 99701

Fairbanks Arts is pleased to present a book release with University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) author Joseph Holt! This event will additionally feature UAF faculty members Daryl Farmer and Sara Eliza Johnson.

This free event will start at 7 pm in the Bear Gallery. We welcome masked individuals with a cap of 20 audience members.

Joseph Holt grew up in South Dakota and graduated from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has taught at the American College of Norway, the University of Minnesota, and the Loft Literary Center. His nonfiction has appeared in The Sun and J Journal: New Writing on Justice. His fiction has received an AWP Intro Journals Award and appeared in Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Holt is a Term Assistant Professor in English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His story collection Golden Heart Parade is being published this month by Santa Fe Writers Project. His website is www.holt.ink.

The influence of Fairbanks shows in the title of Joseph Holt’s debut story collection: Golden Heart Parade. The phrase, of course, echoes the many instances of “Golden Heart” that appear around the Fairbanks community. But to Holt, the title also describes the characters who populate his stories: warm, welcoming, and well intentioned. Yet they are characters who, despite those endearing qualities, might nonetheless flounder. “Golden Heart Parade introduces characters in mutiny against themselves and the status quo,” says Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen and Stop That Girl. “These stories are comic and heartbreaking.”

Daryl Farmer is the author of two books: Bicycling beyond the Divide, a nonfiction travel narrative, and Where We Land, a collection of short fictionalstories. His recent work has been published in several journals including Terrain.org, Ploughshares and Natural Bridge. Daryl writes in three genres: nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. For him, it is not the genre, but the sense of place that is of primary importance, and much of his work seeks to illuminate the role that the environment plays in our day to day lives.

Sara Eliza Johnson grew up in Stratford, Connecticut. She is a graduate of Cornell University. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon and her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Utah. Her first book, Bone Map, won the 2013 National Poetry Series and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2014. Her second poetry book, Vapor, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2022. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks. Read more at saraelizajohnson.com.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact (907) 251-8386 or email literary@fairbanksarts.org.