Iowa State’s English department will host its eighth annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and Creative Imagination on Sunday and Monday. The theme this year is “outliers.”

The symposium will feature literary readings, panel discussion, book signings and receptions, according to the English department’s website. The website stated that the events are free and open to the public. 

Daniel Woodrell and Aimee Nezhukumatahil will speak Sunday in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.

Woodrell is the author of “Winter’s Bone,” which was adapted into a film that won the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic films at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. 

“Woodrell has set most of his eight novels in the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up and now lives,” according to the English department’s website. 

Nezhukumatathil, who was born to a mother from the Philippines and a father from South India, recently published a book of poetry titled “Lucky Fish,” which is about her move from India to the Philippines and then to New York, according to the website. Nezhukumatathil teaches creative writing and environmental literature at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

After the conversation with Woodrell and Nezhukumatathil, there will be a Master of Fine Arts program reception followed by a reading by Nezhukumatathil from “Lucky Fish” and a reading by Woodrell from his collection of short stories, “The Outlaw Album.”

Monday will begin with a panel discussion on the “concept of the environmental imagination in literature.” According to the website, the panel will feature Briana Burke, ISU professor of English; Matthew Wynn Sivils, ISU professor of English; and Jeremy Withers, ISU lecturer of English. 

The panel will be followed by readings by writers from the MFA program in creative writing and the environment, whose work will be published in the next issue of “Flyaway: a Journal of Writing and Environment.”

Anthony Doerr, author of four books that take place on four different continents, and Rolf Potts, reporter who has reported from more than 60 countries, will then discuss travel writing, the website said. The discussion will be followed by an MFA program reception. 

According to the website, Monday’s program will end with readings from Potts and Doerr.