By Lookout Staff

September 1, 2010 -- Santa Monica College's fall literary series kicks off September 14 with Award-winning author Graciela Limon's talk "Where Reality and Magic Intersect."

An exponent of magical realism, Limon won the 1994 American Book Award for her novel "In Search of Bernabe." She is a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and UCLA and the former chair of the Department of Chicano and Chicana Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

The series is sponsored by the SMC Associates, a private organization that funds speakers and special programs on campus; the SMC English Department; and the SMC English-as-a-Second Language Department.

Following is the full line-up:

Oct. 7: "No Other Paradise," by Kurt Brown, who founded the Aspen Writers' Conference and Writers' Conferences & Centers. He is the editor of several anthologies and teaches poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

Nov. 16: "Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa," by Robin D. Kelley, professor of American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and the former William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. He holds the Harmsworth Chair of American History at Oxford University, the first African-American historian to do since the chair was established in 1922.

Dec. 2: "American Poetry of the Future: A Reading by Charles Harper Webb." Webb is a poet, psychotherapist, former singer and guitarist, and a professor of English at California State University at Long Beach.

Currently in its eighth year, the SMC literary series has brought to campus such acclaimed authors as Khaled Hosseini, author of the best-selling "The Kite Runner;" Audrey Niffenegger, author of the bestselling "Time Traveler's Wife," which was made into a major motion picture; and Jonathan Safran Foer, author of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

All lectures are free and are held at 11:15 a.m. in Humanities & Social Science Hall 165 on the Main Campus, 1900 Pico Boulevard. For more information, call (310) 434-4303 or go to www.smc.edu/associates <http://www.smc.edu/associates>