Spring Into Literature: Lincoln University’s 2024 Spring Reading Series

The 2024 Spring Reading Series was held in Pawley Theatre on April 23, 2024. Left to right: Sara Henning, Professor Eli Burrell and Ron A. Austin.

The Lincoln University 2024 Spring Reading Series event was held on April 23 in the newly renovated Pawley Theatre in Martin Luther King Hall. Sponsored by the Department of Humanities and Communications and organized by LU English Professor Eli Burrell, the event featured two nationally recognized writers — Sara Henning and fiction writer Ron A. Austin. The event attracted more than 50 students and residents from the greater mid-Missouri area. Before the event, Henning and Austin met with students, sharing insights into their writing journeys. Refreshments, courtesy of the Department of Humanities and Communication, were offered outside the theater.

Poet Sara Henning reads from her newly released collection of poems "Burn."

Sara Henning is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award and scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, Meridian and the Cincinnati Review. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.

Fiction writer Ron A. Austin reads from his acclaimed collection of linked stories, "Avery Colt is a
Snake, a Thief, a Liar."

Ron A. Austin's short stories have been placed in Boulevard, Pleiades, Story Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review and other journals. Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, his first collection of linked stories, has received several honors including the 2017 Nilsen Prize, a 2019 Foreword INDIES GOLD Award, a 2020 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, a 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize nomination and a 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nomination. Austin's work has been supported by grants from the Regional Arts Commission, including a 2016 Artist Fellowship. Austin is an assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University.