Released by Idaho State University                                                                October 25, 2018

Contact: The Department of English and Philosophy 282-2478, isu.edu/English

POCATELLO —On Wednesday, November 7^th, Idaho State University’s Department of English and Philosophy will host Visiting Writer David Wanczyk, author of Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind.

During his visit, Wanczyk will hold a public reading and give a talk at ISU’s Diversity Center. Additionally, Wanczyk—who is editor of the prestigious literary journal, New Ohio Review—will attend a Q&A session with Black Rock & Sage, ISU’s journal of the creative arts, and others interested in literary publishing and editorialship. All events are free and the public is welcome to attend.

Schedule/location of events:

Diversity Resource Center (Rendezvous 129):          12 pm, Conversation on Beep

Liberal Arts 256:                                                         3 pm, Literary Editing Conversation/Q&A

Bengal Café (Pond Student Union)                            6 pm, Public Reading

A 2018 Junior Library Guild selection, Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind explores the history and the present state of an adaptive sport with an increasingly global reach, and tracks in detail the fortunes of teams and individual players competing intensely in the pursuit of a complex range of athletic, psychological and social ambitions. In the L.A Review of Books, Joshua Jackson describes Beep as “a work of sports reportage. . .but also some fine travel writing, a history of the relatively new game, an exploration of an underrepresented culture, and even a memoir. [Wanczyk] gives beep its due respect as a sport, and he reveals its heroes and goats not only as athletes, but as humans.”

David Wanczyk holds a PhD in creative nonfiction from Ohio University. He has written extensively on novel sports for publications such as Salon and Slate. He has also contributed essays, poems, and criticism to venues as diverse as Woolf Studies Annual and the food journal Alimentum. He is the editor of New Ohio Review and director of special programs for the English department at Ohio University, where he presently teaches.

Wanczyk’s visit is made possible by support from the Idaho Humanities Council, ISU’s Department of English and Philosophy, ISU’s Disability Services, ISU’s Diversity Resource Center, and Black Rock & Sage. For more information, contact ISU’s Department of English and Philosophy at (208) 241-2478 or schubeth@isu.edu.

The Idaho Humanities Council is a State-based Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.