Tribute to Don Heiney
On November 16, 2012, The UC Irvine Department of English,
with support from Jennifer
Cheng, Al Encinas, and Friends of the MFA in Writing, organized a tribute to Donald Heiney,
held in the UCI University Club. (Click on the image at the far right below for the program.)
The event was attended by more than 200 friends and admirers of Donald Heiney/MacDonald Harris.
(In fact, it was standing-room-only as the crowd spilled out into the adjacent lobby!)
Fifteen writers, many but not all former students of Heiney, offered their
appreciations of his work and the effect he had on their personal and professional lives.
These recollections were interspersed with short presentations of each of the novels
of MacDonald Harris, most by current MFA students.
Presenters included:
- James McMichael
(Four Good Things, Each in a Place-Apart, The World at Large, Capacity)
- Stephen Cooper (Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante)
- Joan Jobe Smith
(Jehova Jukebox, The Pow Wow Cafe, and Founding Editor of
Pearl: A Literary Magazine)
- Louis B. Jones
(Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, Radiance)
- Gregory Benford (author of
more than 25 science fiction novels)
- Marjorie Luesebrink
(hypermedia fiction as M.D. Coverley, Califia, Egypt, The Book of
Going Forth)
- Lowell Bruce McKay (Weighing the Dying)
- Vicki Forman
(This Lucky Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood)
- Gordon McAlpine
(Joy in Mudville, The Persistence of Memory, Hammett Unwritten)
- Rhoda Huffey
(The Hallelujah Side)
- James Brown
(The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir, This River: A Memoir)
- Justine Amodeo (Editor-in-Chief, Coast Magazine)
- Lane Von Herzen
(Copper Crown, The Unfastened Heart)
-
Greg Bills (Consider This Home, Fearful Symmetry)
- Susan Segal
(Aria).
Read the report by Ron Tonkovich on the event in the
OC Weekly
(also including his short review of The Carp Castle).
Special thanks to
Michelle Latiolais
(Widow, A Proper Knowledge, Even Now) for her efforts in putting this event together.
Last updated December 16, 2012
heiney@sas.upenn.edu.