The UNM Honors College is offering “Creative Impulse in New Mexico,” a new course that includes talks from well-known New Mexico artists and writers.

Daniel Abraham presents on Monday, Feb. 22. Abraham writes both science fiction and fantasy, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. He was awarded the International Horror Guild Award. His science fiction series, “The Expanse,” has recently been adapted into a television series for the Syfy channel.

Presentations are held in the Honors Forum at 3-4 p.m. on Mondays. The appearances will include these artists and writers’ insight to their works and creative process.

Remaining speakers include: Steve Brewer, Margaret Randall, Sabra Moore, Melinda Snodgrass, Anne Hillerman and Barbara Coleman.

March 7 - Steve Brewer (crime fiction)
Steve Brewer is the author of more than 25 books, including the Bubba Mabry mysteries. Under his new pen name Max Austin, Brewer writes a series of hard-boiled crime stories set in Albuquerque and published by Random House. UNM Honors faculty.

March 21 - Margaret Randall (poetry and nonfiction)
Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936, she has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. Shorter stays in Peru and North Vietnam were also formative. In the turbulent 1960,s she co-founded and Co-edited El Corno Emplumado / the Plumed Horn, a bilingual literary journal which for eight years published some of the most dynamic and meaningful writing of an era.

She has published more than 80 creative works of literature. New York’s abstract expressionist painters in the 1950s, Mexico and her struggles of the 1960s, the Cuban revolution’s second brave decade in the 1970s, the Vietnamese people’s struggle against US attack and occupation in that same decade, and the Sandinista attempt to change Nicaragua in the early 1980s were places and events helped shape her work. 

March 28 - Sabra Moore (poetry, fine art, book arts)
Sabra Moore is an artist and art activist whose work includes book arts, painting and drawing, poetry, and quilt-making. Her work is influenced by the traditions of her East Texas grandmothers, and the artistic traditions of West Africa, as well as her twenty plus years of participation in the feminist art movements in New York City and her current interests in sustainable environmental and agricultural practices. Her artist's books can be found in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Brooklyn Art Museum. 

April 4 - Melinda Snodgrass (science fiction and fantasy)
Melinda M. Snodgrass is a well-known science fiction novelist and screenwriter. Her books include The Edge series and stories in the Wild Card anthologies. She has also published urban fantasy under the pseudonym Phillipa Bornikova and she wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

April 11 - Anne Hillerman (mystery fiction)
Anne Hillerman is an award-winning reporter, the author of several nonfiction books and the New York Times bestselling mystery novels Spider Woman's Daughter and Rock with Wings. Her mystery novels continue the Native American characters, settings, and themes of her father, bestselling author Tony Hillerman. 

April 18 - Barbara Coleman (fine art)
Barbara Coleman is a painter whose work features plein air landscapes in oils that she works into larger paintings in her studio. Her work has won national awards and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She also is an award winning signature member of the Pastel Society of America. 

All talks are open to the public and sponsored by the UNM Honors College.

For more information, contact Dr. Leslie Donovan at Ldonovan@unm.edu or (505) 277-4313.