The University of Evansville’s 2015-2016 annual Coffee Hour Lecture series begins Wednesday, September 16. All lectures in the series are free and open to the public, and are at 4 p.m. in the Melvin Peterson Gallery at the University.

The speaker in September will be Richard Newman, author of the poetry collections All the Wasted Beauty of the World, Domestic Fugues, and Borrowed Towns. His poems have appeared in such periodicals and anthologies as Best American Poetry, Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, New Letters, and The Sun. His work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily.

Other lectures planned for this series are:

Melvin M. Peterson Literary Hour

Wednesday, October 14

Katie Darby Mullins, UE assistant professor of creative writing, is the featured speaker. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is editing a rock ‘n roll crossover edition of the metrical poetry journal Measure. She has been published or has work forthcoming in journals such as Hawaii Pacific Review, Harpur Palate, Broad River Review, Big Lucks, and The Evansville Review. She was a semifinalist in the Ropewalk Press Fiction Chapbook competition and in the Casey Shay Press poetry chapbook competition. She is lead writer and founder of the music blog Katie Darby Recommends.

Wahnita DeLong Reading

Wednesday, February 24 

Writer Steve Yates is the featured speaker. He has been granted Literary Arts fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission for fiction and creative nonfiction. He has received an individual artist’s grant from the Arkansas Arts Council for his fiction. Portions of his novel, Morkan’s Quarry, appeared in Missouri Review, Ontario Review, and South Carolina Review. A novella-length excerpt was a finalist for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society William Faulkner/Wisdom Award for the Best Novella. Excerpts from the sequel, The Teeth of the Souls, appeared in Missouri Review, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, and in Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review.

Wednesday, March 16: Speaker Corinna McClanahan Schroeder

Poet Corinna McClanahan Schroeder is the featured speaker. Author of the poetry collection Inked, and winner of the 2014 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, her poetry appears in such journals as Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, Poet Lore, and Blackbird.  The recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award in poetry, she has a MFA degree from the University of Mississippi and is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, where she holds a Wallis Annenberg Endowed Fellowship.

Senior Reading

Wednesday, April 20

Each spring during the Senior Reading, graduating creative writing majors read from their poetry and prose, and the Department of Creative Writing announces winners of the Virginia Grabill Writing Awards.

For more information, call 812-488-2963.

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About the University of Evansville: Located in Evansville, Indiana, with a full-time undergraduate enrollment of approximately 2,300, the University of Evansville is a private, liberal arts-based university with programs in the arts and sciences and in the professions. UE’s diverse student body represents 42 states and 56 countries. U.S. News & World Report recognizes UE as a top 10 master’s-granting university in the Midwest, and fourth in the region for “Great Schools, Great Prices.” For more information, please visit http://www.evansville.edu.

 Matthew Tully

Can Indiana’s leaders put politics aside and look for significant ways to tackle a troubling drug crisis? Examples of such cooperation are rare of late. Hopefully, this will be an exception.

Over the past two years I have spent time with infants struggling with cruel opiate dependencies, once-promising young men and women now locked up in prison or in their own personal hells, and parents who have forever lost the children who meant absolutely everything to them.

So forgive me if I see nothing but good in Gov. Mike Pence’s announcement Tuesday of a task force aimed at addressing the growing and heartbreaking trend of drug abuse and addiction in Indiana. And forgive me if I’m inclined to dismiss the partisan professionals and social media geniuses who used the announcement as another chance to divide and mock.

There is a time for looking back and determining whether the governor has done enough to address Indiana’s problems. We will have that political debate. We have it every day, and I’ve certainly taken part in it. But what’s more important now is that we as Hoosiers find a way to come together to address a problem of drug addiction that is, as Pence so accurately put it, costing us “our sons and daughters, our neighbors and friends.”

“The time has come for a fresh approach to how we address drug addiction,” the governor said Tuesday morning, adding: “Together is the best way to reduce, prevent and treat drug addiction in Indiana.”

He is right.

And if ever there was an issue that should be free of partisanship, this is it. If ever there was an issue that could inspire a state to come together, to work together, and to hope together, this is it. This is about an epidemic that has smashed through urban, rural and suburban divides, as well as through racial, economic and just about every other sort of divide. There is no downside to coming together on this issue, and there is every incentive.

Listen, I don’t want to act as if a task force can solve a problem as complex as this one or eliminate the abuse of meth, prescription drugs, heroin and synthetic drugs. But it can improve the way we are addressing a painful and destructive crisis that is destroying lives and tearing apart families, putting children at risk through no fault of their own, and costing the state dearly in both human and financial terms.

So let’s embrace this effort — if by doing nothing else than keeping it free of political divisions and other unhelpful arguments.

We can fight over so much else. We don’t need to fight over this issue. We don’t need knee-jerk criticisms from those paid to divide us, like the Indiana Democratic Party, which blasted Pence in a news release Tuesday even before he had finished talking.

Why not treat this one issue differently than so many others? Why not say that on this one issue we are not going to fight or point fingers but rather rally and root for success? Let’s save the finger-pointing for those who going forward stand in the way of doing important things.

If you think uniting is just a fantasy, please picture for a moment the babies struggling with opiate dependence in the state’s neonatal intensive care units. Or the moms and dads who now have only pictures of their children to hug. Or the young children whose heartbreaking stories of neglect and abuse are overwhelming the Department of Child Services. Or the state’s new HIV epidemic.

The governor’s words of empathy for those caught up in desperate worlds of addiction were important and wise because there is a lot of judgment floating around these days. Harsh judgment. Hurtful judgment. Unhelpful judgment. Judgment that seems to miss the reality that good people fall into addiction, and that the collateral damage is brutal. This is about those suffering from the disease of addiction but also about their children and parents, their friends and communities.

The governor took steps Tuesday to put this issue at the center of our political conversation, and that’s a good thing. In the end, of course, he and others in political leadership must display the wisdom and courage to accept the hard truths that the task force’s conversations will expose.

Some politicians will be forced to accept that improvements do not always fit into comfortable ideological boxes, and that fighting a crisis demands resources. Others, though, will need to understand that this isn’t only about money, and that spending resources on popular programs that don’t work is a mistake.

The task force is being asked to listen to experts on the ground and to bring back ideas that will help Indiana tackle this epidemic in smart, comprehensive and compassionate ways. So for once let’s put politics aside. Let’s put bumper-sticker solutions aside. Let’s put our cynicism aside. And let’s embrace an opportunity to come together to fight a crisis that is costing so many of our neighbors far too much.

You can reach me at matthew.tully@Indystar.com or at Twitter.com/matthewltully.

Matt Lloyd

Deputy Chief of Staff, Communications and Strategy

Governor Mike Pence

317-864-0884 (cell)