The Creative Writing program hosts an annual reading series featuring writers from across the country. Visitors conduct a Craft Talk for our undergraduate students in addition to giving a public reading.
Readings are free and open to the public.
While it always our goal to host these events in person, the actual delivery method is subject to the expected conditions at the time of the event. If converted, Zoom registration information will be posted as soon as possible.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Event Location: Knight Library, Browsing Room.
Time: 04:30 PM
Brian Trapp (Fiction)
Brian Trapp directs both Disability Studies and the Kidd Program at the University of Oregon, where he also teaches fiction and nonfiction. His debut novel, Range of Motion, is out now from Acre Books. His work as been published in the Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Longreads, Brevity, and elsewhere. He has received a Steinbeck Fellowship, an Oregon Arts Fellowship, and a Taft Fellowship from the University of Cincinnati, where he completed his PhD. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, with his twin brother, Danny. For more information, visit Brian Trapp's website.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Event Location: Knight Library, Browsing Room.
Time: 04:30 PM
Jan Verberkmoes (Poetry)
Jan Verberkmoes is a poet and editor from Oregon. Her first poetry collection, Firewatch, was published by Fonograf Editions in 2021, and recent work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Lana Turner, and The Paris Review. Her writing has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship to Germany, a John and Renée Grisham Fellowship, a Stadler Fellowship, and a Fairfield Fellowship from the University of Denver, where she is a PhD candidate in English and Literary Arts. For more information, visit Jan Verberkmoes's website.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Event Location: Knight Library, Browsing Room.
Time: 4:30 PM
Michelle Peñaloza (Poetry)
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, awarded by the Academy of American Poets (Persea Books, 2025). She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and the chapbooks. landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015. Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. The proud daughter of Filipino Immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in Covelo, CA. For more information, visit Michelle Peñaloza Website.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Event Location: Knight Library, Browsing Room.
Time: 7:00 PM
V. Penelope Pelizzon (Poetry)
V. Penelope Pelizzon’s A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye (Pitt Poetry Series), longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, is a TLS Book of the Year and one of LitHub “Favorite Poetry Collections” of 2024. Her first book, Nostos, won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award; her second, Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time, was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize at The Waywiser Press. She is also coauthor of Tabloid, Inc., a critical study of film, photography, and crime narratives. Her recognitions include a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and a “Discovery”/The Nation Award. She is a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. For more information, visit V. Penelope Pelizzon's Website.