Allison Amend

April 12 & 13th will be the 5th annual Rowan Festival in the Writing Program at Pitt. This festival is sponsored by The Alex Rowan Foundation (http://www.alexrowanfoundation.org/). Alex was a recent graduate of Pitt’s creative writing program who tragically passed away in 2013. The festival is one of the events Alex’s parents sponsor in her memory. Pitt brings a writer of national renown to the campus for a reading, and to hold a writing workshop with our undergrads and give out awards in Alex’s honor to the top female undergrad writers in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction (our three majors).

This year, Allison Amend (http://www.allisonamend.com/) will read at 8:30 p.m. at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, followed by a reception in the Cloister. The program is free and open to the public. Amend is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is the author of the novels Enchanted Islands, A Nearly Perfect Copy, and Stations West, which was a finalist for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Oklahoma Book Award.
She is also the author of the Independent Publisher’s Award-winning short story
collection Things That Pass for Love. A former Visiting Assistant Professor at
Pitt, she lives in New York City.