Shelley Jackson, an author lauded for her electronic literature as well as for her printed work, will be at the University of Rochester at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 9, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the River Campus as part of the Plutzik Reading Series.
The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Howard Foundation grant, Jackson is the author of several acclaimed hypertexts, which are works created specifically to be read online or on a CD: Patchwork Girl, a reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; The Doll Games, and My Body.
Her story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy was published to widespread acclaim by Anchor in April 2002. Jackson also illustrates children’s books, including two of her own, The Old Woman and the Wave and Sophia, The Alchemist’s Dog. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Grand Street, Conjunctions, and The Paris Review. Currently, she is getting volunteers to have one word from her new work Skin tattooed on each of their bodies; the text will not be published anywhere else.
Jackson resides in Brooklyn and is a teacher at the Pratt Institute and the New School. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree from Brown University. In 2001 she was selected as one of the Village Voice Literary Supplement’s “Writers on the Verge.”
The Plutzik Series is one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious literary reading programs. Established to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University, it has featured more than 175 noted writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wilbur, and Galway Kinnell.
The Plutzik Series is administered by the Department of English. For more information, call (585) 275-4092.