Poet and author begin UNLV residencies

By Kristen Peterson

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 | 5:39 p.m.

Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku and authors Mary Palevsky and Robert Rosenberg begin their nine-month residency at UNLV this semester where they will write new works and interact with students via the Diana L. Bennett Literary Arts Fellows Program of the Black Mountain Institute.

Lleshanaku was born in Elbasan, Albania, and grew up under house arrest with her family during the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha.

A graduate of the University of Tirana, she participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Palevsky, director of the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at UNLV since 2003, is the author of "Atomic Fragments: A Daughter's Questions."

Her parents were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II. Rosenberg, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., and author of "This Is Not Civilization," received a master's in fine arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

The Black Mountain Institute was founded in 2006 to encourage international and cultural dialogue and is in its third year of residencies.

The lineup for its lecture series this year includes novelist Joyce Carol Oates; 2007 U.S. Poet Laureate, Charles Simic; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon; and an authors panel on the role of race and gender in the 2008 election that includes Susan Faludi, Katha Pollitt, Farai Chideya and will be moderated by UNLV Professor and State Sen. Dina Titus

For more information, call 895-5542.