SCC Visiting Writers Series Welcomes Dennis Maulsby, Saturday, March 4

02/21/2017

SCC's Culture on Campus Committee will host a Visiting Writers Series event Saturday, March 4, at 8:00 p.m. on its West Burlington campus. Scheduled to appear is author Dennis Maulsby, a former resident of Burlington, Iowa. SCC’s Di Dante Literature & Writing Club will co-host. 

SCC English/Creative Writing Professor and Di Dante Advisor Charles Burm notes, “Members of SCC’s Culture on Campus Committee feel it is important to provide our students and the greater community with cultural opportunities that otherwise may be difficult to access. It is our honor and pleasure to bring this distinguished writer to our campus.”

This reading will be held in the Little Theatre, Room 333, on SCC’s West Burlington campus, and it will be followed by a brief question and answer session with the author. Free refreshments will be provided at the close of the event. 

Burm is quick in promoting the talents of guest author Dennis Maulsby and the cooperative efforts of multiple organizations to make SCC’s Visiting Writers Series successful. “Much credit should go to the Burlington Area Arts Council, the Burlington Fine Arts League, the Society of Great River Poets, the SCC Foundation, and many area businesses and individuals for supporting our Culture on Campus Committee, the Visiting Writers Series, and Di Dante Literature & Writing Club students and projects. Through cooperative institutional and community efforts, we are able to host writers of this caliber.”

Dennis Maulsby, formerly of Burlington, Iowa, is a retired bank president living in Ames, Iowa, with his wife, Ruth, a retired legal secretary, and his dog, Charlie, a retired CIA operative. His poetry and short stories have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, The North American Review, Haiku Journal, Spillway, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Briarcliff Review, and numerous other journals.

A U.S. Army Veteran, Mr. Maulsby spent more than four years on active duty. Enlisting as a private, he served two years as a Russian voice intercept operator. After rising to the rank of Second Lieutenant, Mr. Maulsby led a mobile electronic intelligence gathering platoon with the 25th Infantry Division in firebases and villages in southwestern Vietnam in 1968. He earned an Honorable Discharge in 1970.

Mr. Maulsby’s first book of war poetry, Remembering Willie, and all the others, won Silver Medal book awards from the Military Writers Society of America and the Branson Stars & Stripes organization. Subsequent collections include Frissons, Near Death/Near Life, and a book of linked poetry and short stories, Free Fire Zone.

In May 2004, Mr. Maulsby’s poem “6 June, Omaha Beach” was featured with a musical background on National Public Radio’s Themes & Variations in memory of the 60th anniversary of the World War II Normandy landings, and his poem “Isle Royale Hunted” received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2011.

Mr. Maulsby is a past president and current member of the Iowa Poetry Association. He also holds memberships in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, the Military Writers Society of America, the Urbandale Omega Poets, the Ankeny Writers Workshop, the International War Veterans Poetry Archives, and the Society of Great River Poets in Burlington, Iowa.

A file photo of Mr. Maulsby is available here: https://www.scciowa.edu/marketing/2017/photos/

All Visiting Writers Series events are free and open to the public, but space is limited. Guests are encouraged to arrive and be seated by 7:45 p.m. For more information, contact Charles Burm, cburm@scciowa.edu, (319) 208-5230. 

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