Past Events
SPRING 2021 EVENTS
Wednesday, February 17th at 4:10pm: Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (Non-fiction)
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is the author of Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. The first volume of a planned trilogy on African-Americans and utopia (Harlem, Haiti and the Black Belt of the American south), it was a New York Times Notable Book of 2011, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist and cited by BOOKFORUM as the “Best New York Book” written in the twenty years since the magazine’s founding. In 2019, Slate included Harlem Is Nowhere among its list of the “50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years.”
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Chimurenga, Bidoun, A Public Space, Creative Time Reports, Harper’s, Essence and Vogue, among many others. She has received grants and awards from Creative Capital, the Whiting Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. Her 2015 book for young readers, Jake Makes a World: Jacob Lawrence a Young Artist in Harlem (commissioned by MoMA and illustrated by Christopher Myers), was named by Booklist among the year’s top books about art for children.
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Writer-in-Residence fund.
Faculty Contact: Megan Fernandes (fernanmk@lafayette.edu)
Thursday, February 25th at 4:10pm: Keisha Bush (Fiction)
Keisha Bush was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in creative writing from The New School, where she was a Riggio Honors Teaching Fellow and recipient of an NSPE Dean’s Scholarship. After a career in corporate finance and international development that brought her to live in Dakar, Senegal, she decided to focus full-time on her writing. She lives in East Harlem. Her debut novel, No Heaven for Good Boys, was published in January 2021 by Random House
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Writer-in-Residence fund.
Faculty Contact: Mikael Awake (awakem@lafayette.edu)
Tuesday, March 2nd at 4:10pm: Claire Messud (Fiction and Non-fiction)
Claire Messud is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of six works of fiction including her latest novel, The Burning Girl. Her newest book is Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography Through Essays. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.
Sponsored by the Writer-in-Residence fund.
Faculty Contact: Jennifer Gilmore (gilmorjw@lafayette.edu)
Wednesday, March 3rd at 4:10pm: Jean Corrie Poetry Reading with Edgar Kunz and Student Poets (Poetry)
Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collection Tap Out (Mariner / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), a New York Times New & Noteworthy book. Originally from New England, Edgar lives in Baltimore where he teaches at Goucher College and in the low-residency Newport MFA. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He is working on a book of poems about love and late capitalism.
Sponsored by the Department of English.
Faculty Contact: Megan Fernandes (fernanmk@lafayette.edu)
Wednesday, March 10th at 7pm: Cardidad Svich (Playwriting)
As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work, but also an idea made manifest through the enactment of writing, its performance, and my living of it. Born in the US of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents, I have felt in a strange kind of exile even while growing up as an “American.” This sense of dislocation extends to the fact that as a child and adolescent, I lived in several states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, New York, and California, not to mention many cross-country road trips in between. The nomadic strain was thus instilled in me and has become an inevitable part of my writing vision. Explorations of wanderlust, dispossession, biculturalism, bilingualism, construction of identity, and the many different emotional terrains that can be inhabited onstage form the basis of my plays and other writing projects. Visions of migration (both physical and spiritual) dominate the plays, which have become, in turn, documents of internal diasporas.As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work.
~Caridad Svich in “Visions of Migration” Performance Research
Sponsored by the Cyril S. Lang ’49 Center for the Humanities Endowment Fund, with the support of the Lafayette College Theater Department, English Department, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and Africana Studies Program.
Faculty Contacts: Mary Jo Lodge (lodgem@lafayette.edu) and Debbie Byrd (byrdd@lafayette.edu)
Monday, March 15th at 7pm: Lauren Yee (Playwriting)
Lauren Yee is a playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer born and raised in San Francisco. She currently lives in New York City. Her CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND, with music by Dengue Fever and others, premiered at South Coast Rep, with subsequent productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Victory Gardens, City Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Signature Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and Jungle Theatre. Her play THE GREAT LEAP has been produced at Denver Center, Seattle Rep, Atlantic Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Arts Club, InterAt Theatre, Steppenwolf, with future productions at Long Wharf, Cygnet Theatre, and Asolo Rep/Miami New Drama. Lauren Yee’s play KING OF THE YEES premiered at The Goodman Theatre and Center Theatre Group, followed by productions at ACT Theatre, Canada’s National Arts Centre, and Baltimore Center Stage. Other plays include CHING CHONG CHINAMAN (Pan Asian Rep, Mu Performing Arts), THE HATMAKER’S WIFE (Playwrights Realm, Moxie, PlayPenn), HOOKMAN (Encore, Company One), IN A WORD (Young Vic, SF Playhouse, Cleveland Public, Strawdog), SAMSARA (Victory Gardens), THE SONG OF SUMMER (Trinity Rep, Mixed Blood), and THE TIGER AMONG US (Mu).
She is the winner of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Horton Foote Prize, the Kesselring Prize, the ATCA/Steinberg Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, and the Francesca Primus Prize. She has been a finalist for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her plays were the #1 and #2 plays on the 2017 Kilroys List.
Lauren is a Residency 5 playwright at Signature Theatre, New Dramatists member (class of 2025), Ma-Yi Writers’ Lab member, former Princeton University Hodder fellow, and Playwrights Realm alumni playwright. TV: PACHINKO (Apple), SOUNDTRACK (Netflix). Current commissions include Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Second Stage, South Coast Rep. BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD.
Sponsored by the Cyril S. Lang ’49 Center for the Humanities Endowment Fund, with the support of the Lafayette College Theater Department, English Department, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and Africana Studies Program.
Faculty Contacts: Mary Jo Lodge (lodgem@lafayette.edu) and Debbie Byrd (byrdd@lafayette.edu)
Wednesday, March 10th: Q&A with Screen and Fiction Writer, Jon Raymond (Screenwriting)
Jon Raymond is the author of the novels The Half-Life, a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2004; Rain Dragon (2012); Freebird, an Indie Next selection of 2018; and The Empty Chair (forthcoming). He also wrote the story collection Livability, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and winner of the 2009 Oregon Book Award.
Raymond has collaborated with director Kelly Reichardt on five films—Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, and First Cow—and was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. He’s also published a collection of writings about visual art in Portland called The Community. His writing has appeared in Tin House, Zoetrope, Playboy, Artforum, and Bookforum, among many other publications.
Sponsored by the Department of English and FAMS.
Faculty Contact: Jennifer Gilmore (gilmorjw@lafayette.edu)
Wednesday, April 14, 2021 – 4:10pm, Alex Martinez Kondracke : Activism in Hollywood
Alexandra Martinez Kondracke (L Word, Hung) is a movie and television writer/producer. She attended Dartmouth College and NYU Graduate Film School. She has worked on projects for Disney, Paramount, HBO, Showtime, ABC, BBC, National Geographic and Annapurna Pictures.Alex wrote and directed videos that went viral, about the Electoral College and what it would take to stop a Trump Presidency. She is also a founding member of Time’s Up, The Latinx House and She Se Puede.
Thursday, April 22nd at 4:10pm: H. MacKnight Black Poetry Reading with Alex Dimitrov and Student Poets (Poetry)
Alex Dimitrov is the author of Love and Other Poems, which will be published in 2020, Together and by Ourselves, and Begging for It. His most recent book is Astro Poets, co-written with Dorothea Lasky. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He lives in New York.
Dimitrov has taught creative writing and literature at Bennington College, Columbia University and Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets where he edits the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. In 2009 Dimitrov founded Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon which he ran until 2013 in New York City, where he lives.
Sponsored by the Department of English.
Faculty Contact: Megan Fernandes (fernanmk@lafayette.edu)
FALL 2020
CLOSS VIRTUAL READING SERIES
September 1st: SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM, Fiction
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels—Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize—and a story collection, Likes, forthcoming in September 2020. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of an O. Henry Award, a Whiting Award, and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Jennifer Gilmore
September 8th: IRVIN WEATHERSBY, Nonfiction
Irvin writes and teaches when he isn’t writing. He was raised on po-boys and poetry, mostly fried shrimp and hip hop. He lives in Brooklyn and enjoys getting lost with his passport. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic, The Root, EBONY, Killens Review, Notable Black American Men Book II, and elsewhere. He is a professor of literature and creative writing at Queensborough Community College and is represented by PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Mikael Awake
September 15th: ARIEL FRANCISCO, Poetry
Ariel Francisco Henriquez Cos is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020), All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) which was named one of the 8 Best Latino Books of 2017 by Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Before Snowfall, After Rain(Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he was raised in Miami and completed his MFA at Florida International University. He now lives in Brooklyn and is completing a masters in literary translation. He was named one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019 by The Miami New Times. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Yorker Podcast, The Rumpus, The New York City Ballet, Performance Today, and elsewhere. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Megan Fernandes
September 22nd: EMILY RABOTEAU, Nonfiction
Emily Raboteau is the author of a novel, The Professor’s Daughter (Henry Holt) and a work of creative nonfiction, Searching for Zion (Grove/Atlantic), named a best book of 2013 by The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, grand prize winner of the New York Book Festival, and winner of a 2014 American Book Award. Her fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, The Guardian, Guernica, VQR, The Believer, Salon, and elsewhere. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, The Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony. An avid world traveler, Raboteau resides in New York City and teaches creative writing in Harlem at City College, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Mikael Awake
September 29th: JORDY ROSENBERG, Fiction
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of Confessions of the Fox – a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, and longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award. Confessions has been recognized by The New Yorker, the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, Electric Literature and the Feminist Press, among other places, as one of the Best Books of 2018. Jordy’s work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from The Lannan Foundation, The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation, and the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies.
Jordy is a professor of 18th-Century Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Critical Theory at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Jennifer Gilmore
October 13th: HAFIZAH GETER, Poetry
Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Hafizah Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and editor. She received her BA in English and economics from Clemson University and an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Hafizah’s poetry and prose have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Boston Review, Longreads, and McSweeney’s Indelible in the Hippocampus, among others.
An editor for Little A and TOPPLE Books from Amazon Publishing, Hafizah serves on the planning committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival and lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is working on a novel about coming to America and a full-length nonfiction project about the intersection of anti-blackness, climate change, language, borders, and the aftermath of American slavery in daily life. Hafizah’s debut poetry collection UN-AMERICAN is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press, September 8, 2020. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Megan Fernandes
October 20st: JAMI ATTENBERG, Fiction
Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, Longreads and others. In 2017, HMH Books (US) and Serpent’s Tail (UK) published her novel All Grown Up. It will also be published in Italy, Germany, France, Holland, Poland, Russia, China, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Hungary in 2018. All This Could Be Yours will be published in 2019 by HMH Books and Serpent’s Tail, as well as in Italy, Germany, and China.
Her debut collection of stories, Instant Love, was published in 2006, followed by the novels The Kept Man and The Melting Season. Her fourth book, The Middlesteins, was published in October 2012. It appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, and was published in ten countries in 2013. It was also a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the St. Francis College Literary Prize. A fifth book, Saint Mazie, was published in 2015 in the U.S. and the UK, and in Italy, France and Germany in 2016, and has been optioned by Fable Pictures. Her work will be published in a total of sixteen languages.
She lives in New Orleans, LA. Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Jennifer Gilmore
October 27th: JENNA BOND, Nonfiction/Screenwriting
From Bond’s website:
“I am known for my writing, my Harlem salons and my idea hacks. In fact, my weekly essays to friends, my belle-lettres, landed me my first television writing job!
My original goal for living in New York was to become a magazine editor-publisher, like Clay Felker, but instead I cut my professional teeth as an aide to former president Bill Clinton. I managed his disaster relief efforts, engagement with Harlem, and his speeches and correspondence. The latter responsibility proved to be my favorite. I wrote a weekly essay for ten years about chasing guys, lines at clubs and the socialite struggle life. It’s now written monthly. I love being featured on a provocative panel, and have spoken at Austin Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, and Urbanworld in my previous role as the face of the WGA East for indie film and emerging television writer engagement. Because of that, I ran the Made in NY Writers Room and created the NY Screenwriter Workshop with FilmNation.
The most satisfying description I have heard of myself is that I am the perfect mix of irreverence, debauchery and sarcasm.” Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Mikael Awake
November 10th: TAYLOR JOHNSON, Poetry
Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Washington, DC. They’ve received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, the Conversation Literary Festival, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, among other organizations. In 2017, Taylor received the Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Their poems appear in The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and the Paris Review, among other journals and literary magazines. Their first book, Inheritance, will be published November 2020 with Alice James Books. Taylor lives in southern Louisiana where they listen.
Faculty Contact for Event: Professor Megan Fernandes
2020 Jean Corrie Poetry Reading
2020 H. MacKnight Black Competition Poetry Reading
featuring Terrance Hayes
& Student Competition Winners
October 1st, 7pm
Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin 2018) and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). To Float In The Space Between was winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin was a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, the 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Hayes is a Professor of English at New York University.
WRITE-A-THON 2020
March 26, 4:10-6:30 pm Marlo Room, Farinon
Come join us for a writing marathon! There will be prompts of all sorts to inspire your imaginative writing. This free, informal event is open to the entire Lafayette community: students, staff, and faculty. Bring a pen and paper, your journal or laptop, and allow yourself to be inspired by many writing prompts set up throughout the Marlo Room, Farinon, including visual art and a “writing wall.” There are no restrictions on your writing during the marathon. Allow yourself to write freely in any form and to enjoy the entire process. Great coffee and plentiful snacks will be provided.
Terrance Hayes
Question & Answer Session
Terrance Hayes
April 2, 4:10-5:30, Kirby 104
2020 H. MacKnight Black Competition Poetry Reading
featuring Terrance Hayes
& Student Competition Winners
April 2, 7:00-8:30 p.m., Kirby 104
Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin 2018) and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). To Float In The Space Between was winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin was a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, the 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Hayes is a Professor of English at New York University.
Owen McLeod
2020 Jean Corrie Poetry Reading
Owen McLeod is the author of the award-winning collection Dream Kitchen. His poems have appeared in many journals, including New England Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, Boulevard, Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry Northwest, The Yale Review, Missouri Review‘s “Poem of the Week,” and Poetry Daily.
Sponsor: Lafayette College Department of English
Closs Visiting Writer-in-Residence Alix Ohlin
September 23, 2019
Novelist and short story writer Alix Ohlin will give a public reading of her fiction on Monday, September 23, at 7:00 p.m., in 104 Kirby Hall of Civil Rights. Please also join us earlier on that date at 4:10 p.m. in the Marlo Room of Farinon Center for an informal conversation with Alix Ohlin about fiction writing and the writing life. Alix Ohlin is the author of five books, most recently Dual Citizens (2019). Her previous novel, Inside,was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize. Her short stories have appeared widely, including in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. A former professor at Lafayette College, she now chairs the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.
Kate Hope Day
October 17, 2019
Please join us on Thursday, October 17th at 7 p.m. in the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104 for a public reading of her novel. Earlier on that date, at 4:10 p.m., a question-and-answer session with Kate Hope Day will be held in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104. A former associate producer at HBO, Kate Hope Day holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in English from the University of Pittsburgh. Her recently released first novel, If, Then, has met with wide acclaim. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls the novel “an enthralling meditation on the interconnectedness of all things.” The Daily Mail asserts that “Day has a lot of sly, stealthy fun with time-bending and parallel universes, but she also has serious things to say on urban paranoia, climate change and the atomized nature of modern life.”
Flash Fiction Reading
November 13, 2019
Kate Racculia, judge of the 2019 Flash Fiction Contest at Lafayette College, will read her fiction on Wednesday, November 13, at 4:10 p.m, in the Gendebien Room of Skillman Library. Racculia is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her most recent novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, will appear in October 2019. Joining Kate Racculia at the podium will be the student winner and those receiving honorable mentions for their flash fiction.
CREATIVE WRITING EVENTS
2018-2019, Lafayette College
Reading by Jennifer Gilmore, Thursday, October 4, 4:15pm, Gendebien Room, Skillman 206
Jennifer Gilmore will read from her new book, If Only, just published by Harper Teen. Gilmore is the author of three acclaimed novels for adults, two of which were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. If Only, her second young adult novel, has received high praise, including this from a starred Kirkus review: “Gilmore’s gritty multigenerational tale not only seeks to ask adoption’s toughest questions, but dares to offer no easy answers: Not to be missed.” A reception and book signing will follow the reading. Sponsored by: Friends of Skillman Library and the Department of English
OCTOBER 18, 2018
WRITE-A-THON, 4:10-6:00, Marlo Room, Farinon Student Center, OCTOBER 18, 2018
This free, informal event is open to the entire Lafayette community: students, staff, and faculty. Bring a pen and paper, your journal or laptop, and allow yourself to be inspired by many writing prompts set up throughout the Marlo Room, Farinon, including visual art and a “writing wall.” There are no restrictions on your writing during the marathon. Allow yourself to write freely in any form and to enjoy the entire process. Great coffee and plentiful snacks will be provided.
Sponsors: College Writing Program & Department of English
CLOSS VISITING WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: BROCK CLARKE
NOVEMBER 7 & 8, 2018: Brock Clarke
Closs Visiting Writer-in-Residence: Brock Clarke
Fiction Reading: Wednesday, November 7, at 7:00 p.m., Kirby Auditorium 104
Question-and-Answer Session: Thursday, November 8, at 4:10 p.m., Kirby Auditorium 104
Brock Clarke is a novelist, short story writer, and a foremost writer of satire. He is the author of four novels, including the best-selling An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, and three collections of short stories. His novels and short stories have been widely translated and highly awarded. As Victor LaValle has noted, “Brock Clarke wields his wit like a sword.”
Sponsor: Department of English through the Closs Fund
FLASH FICTION READING FEATURING JENN ROSSMANN AND STUDENT WINNERS
NOVEMBER 27, 2018: Jenn Rossmann
Flash Fiction Reading, Featuring Jenn Rossmann and Winners of the Flash Fiction Contest, 4:10 p.m., Gendebien Room, Skillman Library
Jenn Rossmann is a gifted writer of fiction whose debut novel, The Place You’re Supposed to Laugh, is forthcoming in Fall 2018. Her short stories have appeared widely.
She is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Lafayette College.
Sponsor: Department of English
MACKNIGHT BLACK COMPETITION IN POETRY: Q & A SESSION (4:10) AND READING (7:00 P.M.), FEATURING SHANE MCCRAE & STUDENT WINNERS
APRIL 16, 2019: Shane McCrae
MacKnight Black Question & Answer Session with poet Shane McCrae, 4:10 – 5:20, Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104
APRIL 16, 2019
MacKnight Black Poetry Reading, featuring Shane McCrae & Winners of the MacKnight Black Competition in Poetry, 7:00-8:30, Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104
Shane McCrae’s books of poetry include Mule (2011), Blood (2013), and The Animal Too Big to Kill (2015). His most recent book, In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Award. He is a recipient of a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a PEN Center USA Award, and the Whiting Award. He teaches at Columbia University. Sponsor: Department of English
JEAN CORRIE POETRY READING & ICE CREAM SOCIAL
APRIL 25, 2019: Leslieann Hobayan
Jean Corrie Poetry Reading & Ice Cream Social, featuring Leslieann Hobayan & Winners of the Jean Corrie Poetry Competition, 4:10 p.m., Marlo Room, Farinon
Leslieann Hobayan’s poetry has appeared widely, including in The Rumpus, The New York Quarterly, Growing Up Filipino II, Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina-AmericanWriters, and Pinoy Poetics. She is a 1995 graduate of Lafayette College and a recipient of a James Merrill Fellowship for Poetry and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Writing Fellowship. She teaches at Rutgers University.
Spring 2018
THURSDAY, APRIL 5th
JEAN CORRIE POETRY READING AND ICE CREAM SOCIAL with SAM SAX
4:10-6:30PM, Wilson Room, Pfenning Alumni Center
sam sax is a queer jewish educator & writer. He’s the author of Madness(Penguin 2017) the winner of The National Poetry Series selected by Terrance Hayes. His second book Bury It (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) is the Winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poems. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, & The MacDowell Colony. He’s the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion & author of four chapbooks. He’s the winner of the 2016 Iowa Review Award, the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, The American Literary Review Prize, & his poems have appeared in The Academy of American Poets, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Tin House + other journals. He’s the poetry editor at BOAAT Press
Sponsored by the Department of English and the Academy of American Poets.
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TUESDAY, APRIL 24th
QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSION with MacKnight Black Competition Judge JILL BIALOSKY at 4:10 p.m
Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104
POETRY READING FEATURING MacKnight Black Competition JUDGE JILL BIALOSKY and STUDENT POETS at 7 p.m.
Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104
Jill Bialosky is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, as well as four collections of poetry: The Players, Intruder, Subterranean, and The End of Desire. Bialosky is also the author of the novels The Prize, House Under Snow and The Life Room, and she is co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child. Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review, among other publications.—Blue Flower Arts
Sponsored by the Department of English.
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THURSDAY, May 3rd
POETRY READING AND Q&A with KAVEH AKBAR
KIRBY 104
4:10-6:00PM
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. His first book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is just out with Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK. He is also the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College.
Sponsored by the Tapestries Grant and Friends of Skillman Library.
Fall 2017
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5th, 7PM, KIRBY 104
READING WITH CLOSS WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE IDRA NOVEY
Idra Novey is the author of the debut novel Ways to Disappear, winner of the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian, selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, The Next Country, a finalist for the 2008 Foreword Book of the Year Award, and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers Magazine, the PEN Translation Fund, and the Poetry Foundation. She’s also translated the work of several prominent Brazilian writers, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. She’s taught at Princeton University, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, the Catholic University of Chile, and in the Bard Prison Initiative. This fall she is the Visiting Distinguished Writer in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at LIU Brooklyn.
Sponsored by the Department of English.
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14th, 7pm, Gendebien Room
FLASH FICTION CONTEST STUDENT READING JUDGED BY JENNIFER GILMORE
Entries should be submitted to Ms. Maureen Mulrooney, Department of English, 316 Pardee Hall, no later than noon on October 13. The winner and honorable mentions will be invited to read their work along with the judge, novelist Jennifer Gilmore, at an event on November 14.
If you have questions concerning the competition, please contact Professor Alix Ohlin (ohlina@lafayette.edu).
Jennifer Gilmore is the author of three acclaimed novels for adults. Her first novel for teens is We Were Never Here. The Mothers is currently being adapted to film; Something Red is a New York Times Notable Book; and her first novel, Golden Country, was a New York Times Notable Book, an Amazon Top Ten Debut Fiction of the Year, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her work has appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Atlantic, Bomb, BookForum, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Psychology Today, Real Simple, Vogue, and the Washington Post. She’s been a MacDowell Fellow, and she teaches creative writing and literature at Harvard University.
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16th, 4pm-6:10pm,Williams Visual Arts Building Lobby
ANNUAL WRITE-A-THON!!!!
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28th, 4:10 PM, Gendebien Room
POETRY READING WITH CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON AND HAFIZAH GETER
Cortney Lamar Charleston‘s poems have been published in a range of literary publications, notably POETRY, New England Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly and The Iowa Review. Individual poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on several occasions, and he has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His debut poetry collection, Telepathologies, was selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and was a finalist in several other first book competitions. The book was released in March 2017.
Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Hafizah Geter‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Linebreak,among others. Hafizah also serves on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, and co-curates the reading series EMPIRE with Ricardo Maldonado. She is on the poetry committee and book ends committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival and is currently an Editor for Little A and Day One from Amazon Publishing.
Sponsored by FYS Program.
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THURSDAY, November 30th, 4:10PM, Gendebien Room
READING AND Q&A BY NOVELIST, ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN
Alexandra Kleeman is a Staten Island-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and the winner of the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received scholarships and grants from Bread Loaf, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and ArtFarm Nebraska. She is the author of the debut novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine (Harper, 2015) and Intimations (Harper, 2016), a short story collection.
Sponsored by the STEAM Mellon Arts Grant.
FALL 2016:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 4:30 P.M.
READING AND Q&A BY POET, ESSAYIST, AND SCHOLAR EVIE SHOCKLEY
KIRBY 104
Evie Shockley will be coming to talk and read about her environmental collaboration with artist, Alison Saar.
From the Poetry Foundation’s website:
Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee in 1965, Evie Shockley received her BA from Northwestern University. After studying Law at the University of Michigan, she earned her PhD in English from Duke University. The author of several collections of poetry, including a half-red sea (2006) and the new black (2011), Shockley is also the author of the critical volume Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011). Her poetry and essays have been featured in several anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (2010), A Broken Thing: Contemporary Poets on the Line (2011), and Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon (2013).
Click here to read more about Evie Shockley’s work.
Sponsored by the Department of English, the Museum and Galleries at Lafayette, and the Department of Africana Studies.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 7 P.M.
READING WITH CLOSS WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE HEIDI JULAVITS
KIRBY 104
From Columbia University’s website:
Heidi Julavits is the editor, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, of Women in Clothes (Blue Rider 2014). Her most recent novel is The Vanishers. She is also the author of The Uses of Enchantment and The Effect of Living Backwards, both New York Times Notable Books, and The Mineral Palace, a finalist for the Young Lions Literary Award. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, McSweeney’s, New York Magazine, the New York Times, Vogue, Bookforum and other places. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Travel Essays. She’s a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a founding editor of The Believer magazine.
Sponsored by the Department of English.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18TH, 4:10-6PM
WRITE-A-THON
WILLIAMS VISUAL ARTS BUILDING LOBB
Come join us for a writing marathon! This free, informal event is open to the entire Lafayette community: students, staff, and faculty. Bring a pen and paper, your journal or laptop, and allow yourself to be inspired by many writing prompts set up throughout the first floor of the Williams Visual Arts Building (lower campus). There are no restrictions on your writing during the marathon. Allow yourself to write freely in any form and to enjoy the entire process. Plentiful coffee and delicious snacks will be provided. Come alone or bring friends!
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26TH, 4:15 P.M.
READING WITH NOVELIST AND ESSAYIST POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR
SKILLMAN 206
From Khakpour’s official website:
Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran in 1978 and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. She has been awarded fellowships from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, and Yaddo. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She is most recently the recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Prose). Her debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove/Atlantic, 2007) was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Chicago Tribune “Fall’s Best,” and 2007 California Book Award winner. It also made the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing shortlist, the Dylan Thomas Prize long list, the Believer Book Award longlist, and many others. Her second novel, The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014) was a Kirkus Best Book of 2014, a Buzzfeed Best Fiction Book of 2014, and an NPR Best Book of 2014, among many others.
In 2017, her first memoir Sick will be published by HarperPerennial: “a memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, and the myth of full recovery, chronicling the long, arduous discovery of her late-stage Lyme Disease.”
She currently lives in New York City’s Harlem, and is Writer in Residence at Bard College.
Sponsored by The STEAM Mellon Arts Grant
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3RD, 8 P.M.
PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL’S SELECTED SHORTS
WILLIAMS CENTER FOR THE ARTS
It’s story time…for adults. Spellbinding, poignant, quirky, and droll, short stories by established greats and sensational emerging writers take on new life when they are read by stars of stage, screen, and television. Public Radio International’s wildly popular series and podcast, produced by New York’s Symphony Space and WNYC Radio, is broadcast on more than 130 stations to some 300,000 avid fans weekly. Yet nothing could be more exhilarating than listening live at the Williams Center to such compelling actors as Jane Curtain, Kate Burton, David Strathairn, BD Wong, or Cynthia Nixon…you never know who is going to appear. Join us for a memorable evening of literature in performance, recorded for future broadcast. Performers to be announced.
SPRING 2017:
THURSDAY, APRIL 24TH, 4:10 P.M.
MACKNIGHT BLACK COMPETITION QUESTION & ANSWER WITH KAZIM ALI
KIRBY 104
From Kazim Ali’s website, http://www.kazimali.com/
“His books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. He has also published a translation of Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras, Water’s Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri, Oasis of Now: Selected Poems by Sohrab Sepehri, and (with Libby Murphy) L’amour by Marguerite Duras. His novels include Quinn’s Passage, named one of “The Best Books of 2005” by Chronogram magazine,and The Disappearance of Seth. His books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence and Fasting for Ramadan. In addition to co-editing Jean Valentine: This-World Company, he is a contributing editor forAWP Writers Chronicle and associate editor of the literary magazine FIELD and founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. He is the series co-editor for both Poets on Poetry and Under Discussion, from the University of Michigan Press.
Ali’s forthcoming titles include: Uncle Sharif’s Life in Music, a collection of short stories; The Secret Room: A String Quartet, a novel; and Anais Nin: An Unprofessional Study, a new book of essays. Ali is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College.”
THURSDAY, APRIL 24TH, 7PM
MACKNIGHT BLACK POETRY READING FEATURING KAZIM ALI AND POETRY COMPETITION READERS
KIRBY 104
From Kazim Ali’s website, http://www.kazimali.com/
“Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, fiction writer and translator.His books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. He has also published a translation of Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras, Water’s Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri, Oasis of Now: Selected Poems by Sohrab Sepehri, and (with Libby Murphy) L’amour by Marguerite Duras. His novels include Quinn’s Passage, named one of “The Best Books of 2005” by Chronogram magazine,and The Disappearance of Seth. His books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence and Fasting for Ramadan. In addition to co-editing Jean Valentine: This-World Company, he is a contributing editor forAWP Writers Chronicle and associate editor of the literary magazine FIELD and founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. He is the series co-editor for both Poets on Poetry and Under Discussion, from the University of Michigan Press.Ali’s forthcoming titles include: Uncle Sharif’s Life in Music, a collection of short stories; The Secret Room: A String Quartet, a novel; and Anais Nin: An Unprofessional Study, a new book of essays. Ali is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College.”
Jean Corrie Poetry Reading
& Ice Cream Social,
Featuring Javier Avila
Tuesday, April 25, 2017, 4:10 p.m., Marlo Room, Farinon
Join us for an ice cream social and poetry reading, featuring the dynamic poet Javier Avila, author of books of poetry and fiction, and 2015 Pennsylvania Professor of the Year. Student winners of the competition will read their poems, followed at the podium by the competition judge, Javier Avila. Afterwards, pizza will arrive, and we’ll hold and informal question and answer session with Javier Avila.
From Javier Avila’s website:
“In addition to his accomplishments in academia, Ávila is a renowned poet and novelist whose literary excellence propelled him to international recognition. His bestselling novel Different became an award-winning motion picture entitled Miente, which was screened in over a dozen countries. His poetry booksThe Symmetry of Time and The Dead Man’s Position earned him prestigious awards by the Pen Club and The Puerto Rico Institute of Culture, respectively. Other books—Broken Glass on the Carpet, The Professor in Ruins, and The Oldest Profession—cemented his reputation as a celebrated writer. Ávila’s books have been part of university curricula for years. He frequently visits colleges to discuss his work, motivating students to become better readers and writers. Audiences praise Ávila’s recent work for being a powerful voice for Latinos in the U.S.”