Past Creative Writing Events
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Hafizah Augustus Geter
Co-sponsored by Wesleyan University Press, African American Studies and the Center for African American Studies
Wednesday, November 16, 6:00 PM - Russell House
Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, (Random House, 2022) is a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022. Hafizah is also the author of the poetry collection Un-American from Wesleyan University Press (September 2020), nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, a finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. Hafizah’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Funambulist, Salon, BOMB Magazine, The Believer, Paris Review, Longreads, Roxane Gay's GAY Magazine, Yale Review, Tin House, Boston Review, McSweeney’s Indelible in the Hippocampus, among others.
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Alice Elliott Dark
Fall 2022 Joan Jakobson Visiting Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 6:00 PM - Russell House
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels, Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Redbook, DoubleTake, The Literarian, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, Ploughshares, A Public Space, and translated into many languages. “In the Gloaming,” a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and has been awarded fellowships for residency at VCCA, Yaddo and MacDowell. She is an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the MFA program and English Department. -
Mahogany L. Browne
2022-23 Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence
Wednesday, October 19th, 6:00 PM - Russell House
Mahogany L. Browne, Executive Director of JustMedia and Artistic Director of Urban Word, is a poet, playwright, organizer, educator, and the founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair. Selected as one of the Kennedy Center's “Next 50,” she is also the first ever poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center. Her most recent books include the titles Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, and Black Girl Magic. Her forthcoming poetry collection Chrome Valley is a promissory note to survival and will be available from Liveright (W. W. Norton & Company) in Spring 2023. Browne has received fellowships from Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. While she readies herself for the upcoming stage debut of Chlorine Sky at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Illinois, she is teaching this semester at Wesleyan a Special Topics class on “Young Adult Novels and Other Poetic Intersections.” She will host an Open Mic night for students at the Shapiro Center for Writing on October 10 (6pm).
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Sister Spit Tour 25th Anniversary Tour Fall 2022
Co-sponsored with THEATER DEPARTMENT
Wednesday, October 5th, 6:00 PM - Russell House
Sister Spit began in San Francisco as a weekly, girls-only open mic and became the first all-girl poetry roadshow, at the end of the 90s. In honor of the many intersections artists embody and changing identity landscape of queer and literary communities, they now welcome artists of all genders, so long as they mesh with the tour’s historic vibe of feminism, queerness, humor and provocation. WITH: Michelle Tea, author of over a dozen books, including the cult classic Valencia and the PEN/America winner Against Memoir. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and a founder of Drag Queen Story Hour. Her latest book is Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of my In/Fertility. Sini Anderson, award-winning film director, producer, video art maker, and feminist art and class activist. Her films, The Punk Singer, a documentary about Kathleen Hanna, and Catherine Opie b. 1961 have earned awards from the Seattle International Film Festival and OutFest Los Angeles, as well as HBO’s Best Documentary Short at Provincetown International Film Festival. Cristy C. Road, zinester and graphic novelist. Her most recent project is the Next World Tarot (2019) a deck envisioning a world based on radical redefinitions of love and social justice. Julián Delgado Lopera, author of The New York Times acclaimed novel Fiebre Tropical, winner of the Ferro Grumley Award and a 2021 Lambda Literary award. Mya Spalter, author of the non-fiction Enchantments and 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Vera Blossom, writer and podcast producer (The Believer, Translash, and Your Magic). Sara Seinberg, writer, photographer and visual artist who lives in a tiny town of 750 people, where she makes obscure middle-aged lesbian pottery and mostly writes letters to support exposing corruption and making governments that are not fascist.
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Yuri Herrera
2022-23 Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence
Wednesday, September 28th, 6:00 PM - Russell House
Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, Yuri Herrera studied Politics in Mexico, Creative Writing in El Paso and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. His first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, was published to great critical acclaim in 2015 and included in many Best-of-Year lists, including The Guardian‘s Best Fiction and NBC News’s Ten Great Latino Books, going on to win the 2016 Best Translated Book Award. Three Novels (And Other Stories, 2021) includes this work as well as Kingdom Cons and The Transmigration of Bodies. His fourth book, A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, is first of non-fiction. He is also the author of a book of stories, Ten Planets, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2023.
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Cameron Awkward-Rich
Spring 2022 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer
Wednesday, February 16th, 6:00 PM
Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation. Presently, he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His book, The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in Fall 2022. -
Joss Lake
Spring 2022 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer
Wednesday, February 16th, 6:00 PM
Joss Lake is a trans writer and educator based in New York whose work has been supported by Queens Council of the Arts, Women and Performance Studies Collective, the Watermill Center, and Columbia University. His debut novel, Future Feeling, was published by Soft Skull Press, featured in the “New & Noteworthy” section of The New York Times Book Review, recommended by Ms. Magazine, and cited by Wired as a “must-read book.” Deeply passionate about social justice, the literary community, and good coffee, he runs a literary sauna series called Trans at Rest and lives with his dog, Violet.