Award-winning author, poet and professor Shana Youngdahl is the next featured guest in SUNY Oswego’s Living Writers Series, appearing at 3 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 3 in the Marano Campus Center auditorium, room 132.
Her event — which will include a reading, Q&A and book signing — is free and open to both the campus and wider community.
Youngdahl is the author of "As Many Nows as I Can Get," a YA (young adult) novel widely recognized for its emotional depth and literary excellence. Her latest novel, "A Catalog of Burnt Objects," is inspired by the 2018 Camp Fire and has received wide acclaim, with Publishers Weekly calling it “a wrenching story of resilience and healing… visceral.” Currently, Youngdahl serves as an associate professor in the master of fine arts in writing program at Lindenwood University in Missouri.
“It was important to me to include a YA novelist in our lineup because we’re all secretly reading YA,” said Living Writers Series organizer Sari Fordham. “I was riveted by this book, and I can’t wait for our students to talk with Shana.”
Youngdahl’s appearance ties directly into this year’s Living Writers Series theme: Home.
“Home is not always where we are from, and it isn't always just one place,” Youngdahl said. “But my entire sense of what home is was created in my hometown, and the connection to land. 'A Catalog of Burnt Objects' tells the story of Sierra, California — a fictional town based on my own hometown of Paradise, CA, which was decimated by the 2018 Camp Fire. As writers, we talk about character ‘ground work,’ and often this is the story of where someone is from, how they are built — or in the words of my protagonist Caprice, ‘Roots, you know?’ And Paradise was my roots. My soul home, even if I wasn't there to witness the fire firsthand.”
If an attendee has a Youngdahl book, they are encouraged to bring it along to be signed.
Living Writers Series events are made possible by ARTSwego and the Student Arts Fee, with additional support from campus partners.
For more information and details on upcoming installments of the Living Writers Series, visit this SUNY Oswego events calendar link.
— Submitted by the Living Writers Series