Campus Read: Participate in Virtual Discussions on Select Works by Neil Gaiman

As part of the St. Louis Literary Award series of programs honoring 2023 award recipient Neil Gaiman, the Saint Louis University Campus Read Book Talk Series offers opportunities to explore the themes of Gaiman’s work.

Gaiman is the author of “Coraline,” “Neverwhere,” “The Ocean At The End Of The Lane,” “American Gods,” “The Graveyard Book,” “Stardust,” and “The Sandman.”

He has been honored with both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. 

The Campus Read will mainly focus on two of Gaiman’s most memorable works, “The Graveyard Book” and “Stardust.” The talks will also feature conversations about other aspects of his work including film, graphic novels and comics, poetry, music, and television.

Saint Louis University launched the Campus Read in 2019 in conjunction with the St. Louis Literary Award. Before 2019, the University sponsored the Common First Year Read for incoming students. Copies of the Campus Read books are available for free to the SLU campus community at the patron desks of all of the University Libraries.  

The Campus Read Book talk series is open to the public with registration. All Book Talks will take place over Zoom at 7 p.m. Central Time.

Memory, Nostalgia and Memetic Children’s Literature in  “The Graveyard Book”

Hosted by Shiraz Biggie, a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, this presentation will look at folklore and children’s literature. Biggie currently teaches classes in Children’s Literature at Brooklyn College and Theatre History at New York University. Her wide-ranging research interests are broadly linked by ideas of cultural memory and production. Her dissertation research looks at Jewish and Irish theatre, touring, diaspora, and the use of folklore for national identity.

She has published in Studies in Musical Theatre and The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers and presented at many conferences including the Children’s Literary Association, the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the American Conference for Irish Studies. In her first of many seasons in the production department of New York’s New Victory Theatre, she worked with the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s “The Wolves in the Walls.”

Each time a ghost appears in “The Graveyard Book,” their gravestone epitaph is announced. Readers are pulled into the story to imagine not only the present story but past stories. “The Graveyard Book” presumes a familiarity with stories of its type, as Neil Gaiman has said repeatedly, it draws inspiration from the works of Rudyard Kipling. 

The event is slated for 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19.

A Tale Told, and Retold, and Told Again: Stardust as Neil Gaiman’s Traditional English Faerie Story

Hosted by Joseph Michael Sommers, Ph.D., a professor of English at Central Michigan University where he teaches coursework in children’s and young adult literature, popular culture, and comics, this talk will discuss Gaiman’s love of faerie stories past and how these faerie stories might and can continue.

Sommers has published essays, article and miscellaneous other things on topics in YACL literature and culture, comics, movies, video games, and on Neil Gaiman. The author, curator, and/or editor of seven books, he has published three titles on Gaiman thus far: “Critical Insights on Neil Gaiman,” “Conversations with Neil Gaiman,” and “The Artistry of Neil Gaiman.” His new biography of Gaiman and his seminal work “The Sandman” is due in 2023 from the University Press of Mississippi, and it is tentatively titled “Biographix: Neil Gaiman and The Sandman.” He is the editor of the academic journal Children’s Literature Quarterly and an Editorial Board member of the comics journal, INKS. 

The event is slated for 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26.

A Teen and Teacher Talk: Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book

This presentation will be a lively and engaging conversation between Naomi Farkas, a high school student in Los Angeles, and Tara Prescott-Johnson, Ph.D., a lecturer in Writing Programs at UCLA, about “The Graveyard Book” and its impact on young and seasoned readers alike. 

Prescott-Johnson has a Ph.D. in English, specializing in twentieth-century American literature, from Claremont Graduate University, and a M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of “Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy,” editor of “Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century,” and co-editor of “Gender and the Superhero Narrative” and “Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman.” She performed “Hike Your Own Hike” for TEDxUCLA.

Naomi Farkas (15, she/they) is a high school sophomore and a book enthusiast. Their poetry has been published in The Los Angeles Press, Stone Soup, Young Poets 2021, Unum e Pluribus, and Gaia Lit. She’s served as a guest speaker in Honors 87W: The Worlds of Neil Gaiman at UCLA and deeply enjoys spending time in cemeteries.

The event is slated for 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb 2.

Composer Ilan Eshkeri

London-based composer Ilan Eshkeri, composer of the music for “Stardust,” will speak about working with Gaiman. Eshkeri is an award-winning composer, artist, songwriter, producer and creator whose work is performed in concert, theatre, film, television and video games.

The event is slated for 12 p.m. Thursday, Feb 23.

Neil Gaiman’s “Dreaming”

Hosted by Olivia Badoi, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Saint Louis University, Madrid, this talk considers how Neil Gaiman’s stories (particularly his fairytales) encourage readers to envision models of knowing and meaning-making that depart from the standard analytic, reason-based or empirical models we are encouraged to apply in our day-to-day lives.

Badoi is currently working on her first book, “Arboreal Modernism and the Woodcut Novel,” an eco-critical examination of the woodcut novel, a type of wordless book that was widely popular in both Europe and the United States throughout the first half of the twentieth century. 

The event is slated for 12 p.m. Thursday, March 2.

A Child Adopted by a Graveyard Might Grow Up Slightly Spooky: Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book”

Hosted by Joseph Michael Sommers, Ph.D., a professor of English at Central Michigan University where he teaches coursework in children’s and young adult literature, popular culture, and comics, this talk will focus on Gaiman’s reorientation of the scary and the filial and how a nobody becomes a somebody and at what cost. 

The event is slated for 7 p.m. Thursday, March 23.

An Evening with World-Renowned Illustrator P. Craig Russell

Acclaimed illustrator and painter P. Craig Russell will discuss his career, as well as his long collaboration with writer Neil Gaiman. Russell is an award-winning illustrator of graphic novels and comics including “Coraline,” “The Graveyard Book,” “The Giver,” “Nevermore,” “American Gods,” various issues of “The Sandman,” “Star Wars,” and “Batman,” among others.

Russell is a Harvey and Eisner award-winning illustrator of graphic novels and comics. 

The event is slated for 7 p.m. Thursday, March 30.

Register for Book Talks 

The 2023 St. Louis Literary Award ceremony is on April 13, at the Sheldon Concert Hall. A craft talk will take place on April 14 on the campus of Saint Louis University. 

St. Louis Literary Award 

The St. Louis Literary Award is presented annually by the Saint Louis University Library Associates and has become one of the top literary prizes in the country. The award honors a writer who deepens our insight into the human condition and expands the scope of our compassion. Some of the most important writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have come to Saint Louis University to accept the honor, including Margaret Atwood, Salmon Rushdie, Eudora Welty, John Updike, Saul Bellow, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, Zadie Smith and Tom Wolfe.

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