2019-2020 Reading Series
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Poetry Reading
Wednesday, March 25, 2020, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of the collection Cenzontle (2018), which won the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize, and the chapbook Dulce (2018). His memoir, Children of the Land (2020), is his most recent publication. His work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, PBS Newshour, People Magazine en Español, The Paris Review, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, New England Review, and Indiana Review, among others. He currently teaches in the Low-Res MFA program at Ashland University. Please join us on Wednesday, March 25 at 5:30 pm in the Wendell Will Room for a reading from Cenzontle.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. A book signing will follow the reading. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Rebecca McLaughlin
Fiction Reading
Thursday, February 20, 2020, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Join us in welcoming Albion College alum Rebecca McLaughlin on Thursday, February 20th as she shares her debut novel, The Nameless Queen. Rebecca is a Michigan nerd who appreciates sweet coffee, kindness, and the scientific method. She got her degree in chemistry and creative writing from Albion in 2014. Since that time, she's worked as a technical writer in Michigan. When not working or crafting stories, Rebecca can be found practicing her knife-throwing skills or seeking out the perfect cup of coffee. She wrote Nameless Queen because she grew up lower-middle class (which was not ideal), went to a private college (which was weird), and made good friends along the way (which was wonderful). She realized that exploring the social and economic divide is difficult, but magic makes that exploration easier--or at least more entertaining.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. A book signing will follow the reading. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Lesley Nneka Arimah
Fiction Reading
Monday, February 3, 2020, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, was born in the UK and grew up in Nigeria and wherever else her father was stationed for work. A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree, her work has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award and the Caine Prize, and a winner of the Kirkus Prize, the African Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award for Fiction, and an O. Henry Award, among other honors. She lives in Minneapolis.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Dawn Davies
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Thursday, November 14, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Dawn Davies is the author of Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces (Flatiron Books, 2018), which recently won the Florida Book Award Gold Medal for Nonfiction and the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction. It was also a 2018 and 2019 Indies Next List book. Her numerous essays and stories have been Pushcart Special Mentions and Best American Essays notables. Her work can be found in McSweeny’s Quarterly Concern, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Arts & Letters, Narrative, Fourth Genre and elsewhere. She lives in weird Florida. You can find out more about her at dawndaviesbooks.com.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Justine McNulty
Fiction Reading
Thursday, November 14, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Author of Sweet Rot (Finishing Line Press, 2019), Ohio native Justine McNulty received her Master of Arts in Fiction in the Spring of 2014 from the University of Cincinnati, where she taught English Composition and was a volunteer editor for The Cincinnati Review. She has stories published in Confrontation Magazine, The Masters Review: New Voices, Juked, Miracle Monocle, The Hilltop Review, Pif Magazine, Qua Magazine, Pen + Brush and others, as well as poetry published in Canary Literary Journal. Justine currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband Luke, son Link, and cats Marceline and Mortimer. She is currently a volunteer editor for Third Coast magazine and in her spare time enjoys cooking, spending time with her family, and visiting nature centers.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
2018-2019 Reading Series
Hilary Plum
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Monday, April 8, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Hilary Plum is the author of the novel Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose (2018); the work of nonfiction Watchfires (2016), winner of the 2018 GLCA New Writers Award; and the novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets (2013). She has worked for a number of years as an editor of international literature, history, and politics. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Emily Fridlund
Fiction Reading
Thursday, March 14, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota and currently lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Her first novel, History of Wolves, was a finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Fiction. It was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. It was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, A New York Times Editor’s Choice, one of USA Today’s Notable Books, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a #1 Indie Next pick. The opening chapter was awarded the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction. Fridlund’s debut collection of stories, Catapult, won the Mary McCarthy Prize. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of journals, including Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, FiveChapters, New Orleans Review, Sou’wester, New Delta Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Southwest Review.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Chen Chen
Poetry Reading
Thursday, February 14, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The collection was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and named one of the best of 2017 by The Brooklyn Rail, Entropy, Library Journal, and others. His work has appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, The Best American Poetry, Bettering American Poetry, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Chen earned his MFA from Syracuse University and is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing as an off-site Texas Tech University student. He lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles. Chen is the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232
Shannon Gibney
Fiction Reading
Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color(Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples' Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she teaches critical and creative writing, journalism, and African Diasporic topics. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, her critically-acclaimed new novel, Dream Country, is about more than five generations of an African descended family, crisscrossing the Atlantic both voluntarily and involuntarily (Dutton, 2018). In October 2019, University of Minnesota Press will release What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color, which she co-edited with writer Kao Kalia Yang. Photo credit - Kristine Heykants.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English, History, and Ethnic Studies Departments, as well as the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
H.R. Webster
Poetry Reading
Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
H.R. Webster is a poet and educator from New England. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. H.R. has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Vermont Studio Center, Art Farm, and InsideOut Detroit Literary Arts. She has served as Assistant Editor of the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing and helped launch the Poetry Beyond Bars Summer Writing Intensive for Incarcerated Writers. H.R. has taught writing in prisons, secondary schools, museums, and colleges around New England and the Midwest. She currently teaches at Albion College and serves as the Managing Editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Ecotone, Black Warrior Review, The Seattle Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Leia Penina Wilson
Poetry Reading
Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Dr. Leia Penina Wilson is an afakasi Samoan poet hailing from the Midwest. She's spent the last five years in the desert of Las Vegas, NV. You can check out her work in OmniVerse, Dream Pop Press, Diagram, Alice Blue Review, Verse Daily, Bombay Gin, and others. Her favorite things are reading trashy paranormal romance novels, Magic the Gathering, nature documentaries, and koko. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @rakishheir.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Ryler Dustin
Poetry Reading
Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Ryler Dustin’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Best of Iron Horse, American Life in Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and has performed on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam. His book, Heavy Lead Birdsong, is available from Write Bloody Publishing.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
2016-2017 Reading Series
Lauren Acampora
Fiction Reading
Thursday, March 16, 2017, 5:10 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Lauren Acampora is the author of The Wonder Garden (Grove Atlantic), a collection of linked stories which won the GLCA New Writers Award for Fiction (2016), and was both a finalist for the New England Book Award and on the longlist for The Story Prize. The book was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and an Indie Next selection, and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by NPR. Acampora’s stories have appeared in literary journals such as The Paris Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, and Antioch Review. She has received fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, Writers OMI International Residency, and the Ragdale Foundation. A graduate of Brown University and Brooklyn College, Acampora lives in Westchester County, New York.
Natalie Scenters-Zapico
Poetry Reading
Thursday, April 6, 2017, 5:10 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Natalie Scenters-Zapico is the author of The Verging Cities, which won the GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry (2016), 2015 NACCS Tejas FOCO Book Award, and 2016 Utah Book Award in poetry. The poetry collection was also named a Must-Read Debut by LitHub and listed as a top ten debut of 2015 by Poets and Writers. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies such as American Poets, The Believer, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, and Best American Poetry 2015. A Canto Mundo fellow, Natalie Scenters-Zapico is from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A. and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. She lives in Salt Lake City. For more information, visit her at https://nataliescenterszapico.com/.
2015-2016 Reading Series
Creative Nonfiction Reading:
Angela Pelster
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Angela Pelster is the author of Limber (Sarabande), which won the GLCA New Writers Award for creative nonfiction. The Seattle Times describes Limber as "one of the quirkiest and most original books about the natural world… Filled with precise, poetical and sparse language, the essays reveal not just the life of trees but how they connect us to the greater world around us." Pelster's essays have appeared in Granta, The Gettysburg Review, Seneca Review, Fourth Genre, and others. Her children's novel, The Curious Adventures of India Sophia (River Books), won the Golden Eagle Children's Choice award in 2006. She earned an MFA from the University of Iowa. She currently lives with her family in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
Poetry Reading:
Tarfia Faizullah
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (Southern Illinois University Press), which won the GLCA New Writers Award for poetry. Faizullah's poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, Ploughshares, Jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. She has received various awards, including the 2015 VIDA Award in Poetry, a 2015 Pushcart Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, an Associated Writers Program Intro Journals Award, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A native of Midland, Texas, she earned an MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University. Currently, Faizullah lives in Detroit, and is an editor for the Asian American Literary Review and the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. Visit her online at: www.tfaizullah.com.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
Fiction Reading: 
David James Poissant
Thursday, April 7, 2016
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
David James Poissant is the winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for fiction for his collection of short stories, The Heaven of Animals (Simon & Schuster), which was a finalist for the 2014 LA Times Book Prize and was nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, One Story, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review, and his stories have been anthologized in New Stories from the South and Best New American Voices. He has received various awards, including the Matt Clark Prize, the George Garrett Fiction Award, the RopeWalk Fiction Chapbook Prize, and the Alice White Reeves Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts & Letters. Currently at work on a novel, Poissant teaches at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando. Visit him online at: www.davidjamespoissant.com.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
2014-2015 Reading Series
Fiction Reading:
E.J. Levy
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
E.J. Levy’s writing has been featured in Best American Essays, Paris Review, and The New York Times, among other places, and received a Pushcart Prize. Her debut story collection, Love, In Theory, won the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Award, a 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Award, and a 2014 Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award; a French edition is forthcoming. Her anthology, Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction by New American Writers, won a Lambda Literary Award. She holds a degree in History from Yale and teaches in the MFA Program at Colorado State University; she lives with her partner and their baby in Loveland.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
Fiction Reading:
Monica McFawn
Thursday, February 5, 2015
5:00 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Monica McFawn lives in Michigan and teaches writing at Grand Valley State University. Her fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Web Conjunctions, Missouri Review, and others. Her collection of short stories, Bright Shards of Someplace Else, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is also the author of a hybrid chapbook, A Catalogue of Rare Movements, and her plays and screenplays have had readings in Chicago and New York.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
Creative Nonfiction Reading: 
Joe Wilkins
Monday, October 20, 2014
5:00 p.m.
Bobbitt Auditorium
Joe Wilkins is the author of the memoir The Mountain and the Fathers (2012), a 2012 Montana Book Award Honor book and winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers award. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Killing the Murnion Dogs (2011) and Notes from the Journey Westward (2012), winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the High Plains Book Award. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and Slate, and has also been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing, Writing Today, New Poets of the American West, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Best New Poets 2006. The recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center and the winner of the Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency from PEN Northwest, Wilkins was born and raised in eastern Montana. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho, and he currently teaches at Linfield College.
A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517-629-0232.
2013-2014 Reading Series
Creative Nonfiction Reading:
Benjamin Busch
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
5:00 p.m.
Bobbitt Auditorium
Writer, actor, photographer, and former United States Marine Corps infantry officer, Benjamin Busch is the author of the memoir Dust to Dust (Ecco/HarperCollins), which won the 2013 GLCA New Writers Award for creative nonfiction (2013), and was a finalist for both the Michigan Notable Book Award and the Society of Midland Authors Literary Award. His poetry and essays have appeared in literary journals such as Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, North American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and his essay “Growth Rings” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a contributing writer to NPR’s All Things Considered. His photographs have appeared in print journals such as Prairie Schooner, Five Points, The Connecticut River Review, Epiphany, and War, Literature, & the Arts. As an actor, Benjamin Busch is best known for his role as Anthony Colicchio on HBO’s The Wire, as well as his appearances on The Beast and Generation Kill. He is also the writer/director of the award-winning films BRIGHT and Sympathetic. Benjamin Busch lives on a farm in Michigan with his wife and two daughters.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Fiction Reading:
Ismet Prcic
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
5:00 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Ismet Prcic is the author of Shards (Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic), a novel that won the GLCA New Writers Award for fiction (2013), and was shortlisted for the Center of Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan award (2011). He is a recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction and was a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. Born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Prcic immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife. Visit him online at: http://www.ismetprcic.com/index.html.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Poetry Reading:
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
5:00 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of The Ground (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), which won the 2013 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry (2013), the GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry (2013), a was finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry (2012) and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. Phillips is also the author of a collection of essays, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010), and a translation of Salvador Espriu’s short stories, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012). His poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Callaloo, Granta, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Born and raised in New York City, he is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Brown University. He is currently an associate professor of English and the director of the Poetry Center at Stony Brook University. He lives in New York City and Barcelona.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Poetry Reading:
Dan Albergotti
Thursday, April 10, 2014
5:00 p.m.
Wendell Will Room
Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA, 2008), which poet Edward Hirsch selected for the Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), which poet Rodney Jones selected for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition. He is also the author of The Use of the World (Unicorn Press, 2013), a limited-edition chapbook, and Charon's Manifest, which won the Randall Jarrell/Harperprints Chapbook Competition (2005). His poetry has appeared in
literary journals such as Blackbird, Five Points, Mid-American Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. A scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conference, a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Pushcart Prize recipient, Dan Albergotti holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Currently, he edits the online journal Waccamaw and teaches creative writing and literature at Coastal Carolina University.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the English Department and Sigma Tau Delta. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
2012-2013 Reading Series
Danielle Cadena Deulen
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room, Stockwell Library
Danielle Cadena Deulen is the author of The Riots (University of Georgia Press), a memoir that won the 2010 AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2011 Grub Street National Book Prize in Nonfiction, and won the 2012 GLCA New Writers Award. She also published a collection of poems, Lovely Asunder (University of Arkansas Press), which won the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in such journals as The Utne Reader, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, and The Indiana Review. A 2007-2008 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Deulen received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from George Mason University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah. She currently lives in Ohio, where she is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the Graduate Creative Writing program at the University of Cincinnati. Visit her online at www.danielledeulen.com.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Shane Book and Alan Heathcock
Poetry and Fiction Reading
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room, Stockwell Library
Poet and filmmaker Shane Book is the author of Ceiling of Sticks (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), which won both the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. His work has appeared in over fifteen anthologies and forty literary magazines in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. He has studied at New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. The recipient of various awards, including a New York Times Fellowship in Poetry, The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a National Magazine Award, Shane Book has also received various scholarships to residencies and conferences such as the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Cave Canem.
Alan Heathcock is the author of VOLT (Graywolf), a collection of short stories. VOLT was recognized as a Best Book 2011 by numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; in addition, VOLT was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, and won the GLCA New Writers Award. Heathcock’s fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Kenyon Review, VQR, and The Harvard Review. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Heathcock is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A Chicago native, he teaches at Boise State University.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Thisbe Nissen and Jay Baron Nicorvo
Poetry and Fiction Reading
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room, Stockwell Library
Thisbe Nissen is the author of two novels, The Good People of New York (Knopf) and Osprey Island (Knopf), and a story collection, Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night (University of Iowa Press), which was the winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. She is also the co-author, with Erin Ergenbright, of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, a collection of stories, recipes and art collages. Her fiction has been published in various literary journals, such as The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, Story, Seventeen, The Virginia Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, Glimmer Train, and NANO Fiction, while her creative nonfiction has appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Glamour, and The Believer. Nissen has received many awards, including fellowships for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. She earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1994 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She teaches at Western Michigan University.
Jay Baron Nicorvo is the author of Deadbeat (Four Way Books); he has also contributed poetry, fiction, nonfiction and criticism to The Literary Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review and The Believer. He's served on editorial staffs at Ploughshares and at PEN America, the literary magazine of the PEN American Center, and worked for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). He teaches at Western Michigan University, where he's faculty advisor to Third Coast, and he lives on an old farm outside Battle Creek with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, Sonne, and a dozen vulnerable chickens. Visit him online at www.nicorvo.net.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
Traci Brimhall
Poetry Reading
Thursday, April 4, 2013
5:30 p.m.
Wendell Will Room, Stockwell Library
Traci Brimhall is the author of two poetry collections, Our Lady of the Ruins (Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award. In March of 2013, Diode Editions will release her chapbook of collaborative poems, Bright Power, Dark Peace, written with the poet Brynn Saito. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals such as New England Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, FIELD, and Southern Review; and her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, PBS Newshour, and Best American Poetry 2013. Lastly, Brimhall’s poetry comic collaborations with Eryn Cruft can be found in Guernica, Ninth Letter, TheThe Poetry Comics, and Nashville Review. Brimhall has received many awards and fellowships, including an NEA, the Summer Poet in Residence at the University of Mississippi, the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and fellowships at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Vermont Studio Center. She earned a B.A. from Florida State University, an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and she is currently working toward her Ph.D. at Western Michigan University, where she serves as Editor in Chief for Third Coast. Visit her online at www.tracibrimhall.com.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the English Department. For more information, please contact the English Department at 517/629-0232.
2011-2012 Reading Series
Nick Lantz
Poetry Reading
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Wendell Will Room
5:00 p.m.
Nick Lantz is the author of We Don't Know We Don't Know, selected by Linda Gregerson for the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize, and The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House, selected by Robert Pinksy for the Felix Pollak Prize. His work has also appeared in journals such as Mid-American Review, Southern Review, Gulf Coast, FIELD, Indiana Review, and Prairie Schooner. He received a BA in Religious Studies from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Nick Lantz was the 2010-2011 Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. He has also taught at the University of Wisconsin, Tinker Mountain Writers' Workshop, and Queens University's Low-Residency MFA Program. Born in Berkeley, California, Lantz currently teaches at Franklin & Marshall College. Visit him online at http://www.nick-lantz.com/Nick_Lantz/Welcome.html.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Randi Davenport
Creative Non-fiction Reading
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wendell Will Room
5:00 p.m.
Randi Davenport is the author of The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in publications like The Washington Post, The Ontario Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Literature/Film Quarterly, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Women's History Review. Davenport studies history and creative writing at William Smith College; she later earned both an MA in Creative Writing/Fiction and a PhD in literature at Syracuse University. She has been a Summer Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Public Fellow at the Institute for Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has taught literature and writing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. She is currently the Executive Director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Visit her online at http://www.randidavenport.com/.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Goldie Goldbloom
Fiction Reading
Monday, March 26, 2012
Wendell Will Room
5:00 p.m.
Goldie Goldbloom is the author of Toads' Museum of Freaks and Wonders (New Issues Press) and You Lose These and other stories (Fremantle Press). Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, StoryQuarterly, and Prairie Schooner, and was anthologized in The Kid on the Karaoke Stage and Windy City Queer; her non-fiction was anthologized in the Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires. She earned an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Born in Western Australia, Goldbloom currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her eight children and her cat. Visit her online at http://www.goldiegoldbloom.com/.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
2010-2011 Reading Series
Margo Rabb
Fiction Reading
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wendell Will Room
5:30 p.m.
Margo Rabb is the author of the novel Cures for Heartbreak, which was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus and Booklist. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, One Story, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Best New American Voices, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She received the grand prize in the Zoetrope fiction contest, first prize in The Atlantic Monthly fiction contest, first prize in the American Fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award. Her new novel, Mad, Mad Love, will be published in Spring 2012. A New York City native, she now lives in Austin, Texas. Visit her online at www.margorabb.com.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Kevin McFadden
Poetry Reading
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Bobbitt Auditorium
5:30 p.m.
Kevin McFadden is the author of Hardscrabble, an inaugural selection of the VQR Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Winner of the Fellowship of Southern Writers George Garrett Award and the Erskine J. Poetry Prize, he has had poems appear in Poetry, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fence and The Antioch Review. McFadden is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Josh Weil
Fiction Reading
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wendell Will Room
5:30 p.m.
A New York Times Editors Choice selection, Josh Weil's first book, The New Valley, has received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the New Writers Award from the GLCA; and a "5 Under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. Weil's short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals including Granta and The New York Times, and since earning his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Tickner Fellowship from Gilman School, a Writer's Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences. Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Virginia to which he returned to write The New Valley novellas, Josh Weil is currently the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at The James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut, where he is at work on a novel.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Diana Joseph
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wendell Will Room
5:30 p.m.
Diana Joseph is the author of the short story collection Happy or Otherwise (Carnegie Mellon UP 2003) and the memoir I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: the Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog (Putnam 2009.) Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, River Teeth, Willow Springs, Best Sex Writing 2010, Country Living, Marie Claire, and elsewhere, and has been noted for distinction in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize. She teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
There will be a reception and book signing immediately after the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and the Stockwell-Mudd Library.
2009-2010 Reading Series
Aracelis Girmay
Poetry Reading
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wendell Will Room (inside Stockwell-Mudd Library)
5:30 p.m.
Aracelis Girmay is the winner of the 2009 GLCA New Writers Award for Teeth, a collection of poetry that reflects her Eritrean, Puerto Rican, and African American traditions. Nicholasa Mohr writes, "The poems of Aracelis Girmay ring out with a burning truth as she transports the reader into the world of despair, discrimination, sorrows, triumphs, joy, and the courage it takes to flourish as a woman of color." Martin Espada calls her poetry "hard, cutting, brilliant, beautiful. . . so strong, so brave, so lyrical, so fiery, so joyful, that the usual superlatives fail." A former Watson fellow and Cave Canem fellow, Girmay has published extensively in journals and literary magazines including Ploughshares, Indiana Review, and Callaloo, and is the author of a children's book, Changing, Changing: Story and Collages. Born and raised in Southern California, Girmay now leads community writing workshops throughout California and New York.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Melissa Delbridge
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wendell Will Room (inside Stockwell-Mudd Library)
5:30 p.m.
Melissa Delbridge ("...honest, funny, and fiercely Southern..." – Poets & Writers magazine) has won awards from the Southern Humanities Review and the Southern Women Writers Conference for her nonfiction and fiction. A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, she works as an archivist at Duke University. In her essay collection, Family Bible (University of Iowa Press, 2008), she explores themes of race, gender, and sexuality as they impacted her life in the 1960s and 1970s.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
A. Van Jordan and Blas Falconer
2010 Wilson Poets
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Olin 112
6:10 PM
A. Van Jordan is the author of three poetry collections: Quantum Lyrics; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by The Times of London; and Rise, which won the Josephine Miles PEN/Oakland award.
He has received many awards for his poetry, including a Whiting Writers Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Seneca Review, and Poetry 30: An Anthology of Thirty Poets in Their Thirties.
Blas Falconer is the author of the poetry collection A Question of Gravity and Light, and a chapbook The Perfect Hour. He is also the co-editor of both Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (forthcoming 2010) and The Other Latina/o: Diverging Lines in the New Canon (forthcoming 2011).
He has received several awards for his poetry, most recently the Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, Luna, Indiana Review, and Green Mountains Review.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the Department of English and made possible by a generous donation from Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.
2008-2009 Reading Series
Andy Mozina
Fiction Reading
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
I-House Auditorium
5:10 PM
Andy Mozina, this year's winner of the GLCA New Writers Fiction Award, is the author of the short story collection The Women Were Leaving the Men, a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Author Laura Kasischke describes the book as "both humorous and haunting. Mozina possesses both an ironic sensibility and a real compassion for characters in their human conditions." He is also the author of the critical work Joseph Conrad and the Art of Sacrifice, and his short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, such as Tin House, Alaska Quarterly, and Fence. The title story, "The Women Were Leaving the Men," received special mention in The Pushcart Prize (2006) and was named a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories 2005. Mozina is currently an associate professor of English at Kalamazoo College.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
John Rybicki
Poetry Reading
Thursday, November 6, 2008
I-House Auditorium
5:30 PM
John Rybicki's latest collection of poems, We Bed Down Into Water, is available from Northwestern University Press. One of the poems from the collections was selected for The Best American Poetry 2008. He is also the author of Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Poetry and Prose). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Field, and others. Rybicki travels the land teaching adults and children alike about the holiness of a sentence. He also works for Wings of Hope hospice teaching poetry writing to children who have been through a trauma or loss. He is a widower and the father of an extraordinary boy.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Prentiss M. Brown Honors Institute.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Fiction Reading
Thursday, November 6, 2008
I-House Auditorium
5:30 PM
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of Q Road and Women and Other Animals (winner of the AWP prize for short fiction), and co-editor of Our Working Lives. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary journals including Story, The Southern Review, Mid-American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Campbell lives with her husband and other animals outside Kalamazoo.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department.
Danit Brown
Fiction Reading
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
I-House Auditorium
5:10 PM
Danit Brown is the author of Ask for a Convertible (Pantheon), a collection of linked short stories. Her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Story, Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, and One Story.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department.
Natasha Trethewey
2009 Wilson Poet
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Norris 101
7:10 PM
Natasha Trethewey's most recent collection is Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She has also published Domestic Work, which won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry prize (selected by Rita Dove), a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her second book, Bellocq's Ophelia, received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, was a finalist for both the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin and Lenore Marshall prizes, and was named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association. She is the recipient of various fellowships, including a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Her work has appeared in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, and Kenyon Review, as well as anthologies such as The Best American Poetry. Trethewey holds an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts and is the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the Department of English, the Anna Howard Shaw Women's Center, the Ethnic Studies Program, and made possible by a generous donation from Albion alumni Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.
Ander Monson
Creative Nonfiction Reading
Monday, March 16, 2009
I-House Auditorium
5:10 PM
Ander Monson, winner of the 2008 GLCA New Writer Award for creative nonfiction, is the author of Neck Deep and other Predicaments, described by John D'Agata as "unapologetically smart, unexpectedly emotional, and playful in ways that most nonfiction never attempts." The American Book Review writes, "Neck Deep should be read by anyone who cares about new developments in nonfiction." Monson is also the author of the novel Other Electricities, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, and the poetry collection Vacationland. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press. He recently moved from Michigan to Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the Department of English and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Helena Mesa
Poetry Reading
Thursday, April 16, 2009
I-House Auditorium
5:10 PM
Born and raised in Pittsburgh to Cuban parents, Helena Mesa is the author of Horse Dance Underwater, a collection of poems. She is also the co-editor for Mentor & Muse: From Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); her poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Third Coast. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Helena is an assistant professor in the English Department at Albion College.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department.
2007-2008 Reading Series
Jay Hopler
Poetry Reading
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Wendell Will Room (inside the
Stockwell-Mudd Library)
5:10 p.m.
Jay Hopler, this year's GLCA New Writer for Poetry award winner, is the author of Green Squall, which was chosen by poet Louise Glück for the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Boulevard, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, and Ploughshares. He holds degrees from the John Hopkins Writing Seminars and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and presently lives and teaches at the University of South Florida.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Tony D'Souza
Fiction Reading
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
I-House Auditorium
5:10 p.m.
Tony D'Souza, this year's GLCA New Writer for Fiction award winner, is the author of Whiteman (Harcourt), which received the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Playboy, Salon, Esquire, Outside, The O.Henry Awards, Best American Fantasy, McSweeney's, Tin House, and elsewhere; he has also appeared on Dateline, The Today Show, the BBC, NPR, and other venues. The Konkans, his second novel, is now available.
D'Souza was born and raised in Chicago. He holds degrees in writing from Hollins University and the University of Notre Dame; he also served three years in the Peace Corps in West Africa, where he was a rural AIDS educator.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.
Julianna Baggott
2008 Wilson Poet
Thursday, April 17, 2008
I-House Auditorium
7:00 p.m.
Novelist Madison Smartt Bell writes: "Few writers of the twenty-first century can rival the verve, the energy, and the sheer delight in language of Julianna Baggott." She is the author of three poetry collections, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, Lizzie Borden in Love, and This Country of Mothers, and four novels—Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam, and Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions (co-written with Steve Almond). She also writes children's novels under the pen name N.E. Bode, including The Anybodies and The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Poetry, The Southern Review, Triquarterly, and Best American Poetry. Baggott received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She teaches at Florida State University.
A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.
Sponsored by the English Department and Albion alumni Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.
