Hugo Literary Series: Dinaw Mengestu, Alissa Nutting, and Sarah Galvin

Cliché: Beating a dead horse
Meaning: To continue to bring up the same ol' subject, even though it's already been concluded and it won't do any good to debate it further.

The 2015-2016 season begins on with writing based on the cliche “Beating a Dead Horse.” The event features novelist and reporter Dinaw Mengestu; fiction writer Alissa Nutting; and poet and Seattle native Sarah Galvin. The Foghorns, a rock-bluegrass band, will provide the music.

Dinaw Mengestu received a B.A. from Georgetown University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. His journalism and fiction have appeared in such publications as the Iowa Review, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal.

Alissa Nutting is the author of the novel, Tampa, and the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, which won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. Her fiction has appeared in The Norton Introduction to Literature, Tin House, Bomb, and Conduit; her essays have appeared in Fence, the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, and other venues.

Sarah Galvin is a poet and author of The Three Einsteins. Her blog, The Pedestretarian, is devoted to reviews of food found on the street. She has an MFA in poetry from University of Washington. In addition to poetry and discarded food, her interests include demolition derbies, food that isn’t discarded, and confetti cannons. She has a recurring nightmare about a sentient house. She is widely known as "The Champagne of Queers." Her poems and essays can be found in io, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Pinwheel, Vice Magazine, and The Stranger.