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. All readings will be in the Knight Library Browsing Room. Fall and winter readings start at 4:30 p.m. Spring readings start at 7 p.m.

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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Poetry

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Matthew Dickman

Matthew Dickman is the author of Husbandry, Wonderland, Mayakovsky’s Revolver, and All-American Poem, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Sarton Award for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For the past decade he has worked in advertising and has written Super Bowl commercials for Chrysler, Kia, and Maserati as well as helping both small and big brands with storytelling. Dickman was the poetry editor for Tin House Magazine and then again for Tin House books, helping to launch their current poetry list. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his two sons.

For more information, visit Matthew Dickman’s website.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Aaron Baker

Aaron Baker is the author of two award-winning collections of poems: Posthumous Noon (Gunpowder Press, 2018), which was selected by Jane Hirshfield as winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize; and Mission Work (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), which won the Katherine Bakeless Prize in Poetry and the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Missouri Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Recipient of many awards, including the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, he is currently an associate professor in the creative writing program at Loyola University Chicago.

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Mark Jarman

Mark Jarman began reading and writing poems in his teens.  His early poetry reflects the influence of living by the Pacific and the North Sea at important times in his life, along with growing up in a strongly religious family. As he has matured, his poetry has remained invested in family experience, a sense of place, and the presence of God in everyday life.  Zeno’s Eternity, his latest book, reflects much of these interests and values, along with celebrating the land and seascape of Southern California where he grew up.

For more information, visit Mark Jarman’s website.

Fiction

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Dan O’Brien

Dan O’Brien is an internationally produced and published playwright, poet, librettist, and nonfiction writer whose recognition in playwriting includes a Guggenheim Fellowship and two PEN America Awards. The Body of an American, O’Brien’s play about the Battle of Mogadishu and the haunting of war reporter Paul Watson, was co-produced off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre by Primary Stages and Hartford Stage (New York Times Critic’s Pick), at the Gate Theatre in London, and at various theaters around the UK and the US. The Body of an American received the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize, the Weissberger Award, and was shortlisted for an Evening Standard Award in London. Previous off-Broadway and regional credits include world premiers at Second Stage Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Page 73 Productions, SoHo Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Portland Center Stage, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. O’Brien’s poetry collections are War Reporter (winner of the UK’s Fenton Aldeburgh Prize), Scarsdale, New Life, Our Cancers, and his latest, Survivor’s Notebook. His memoir, From Scarsdale, was published in 2023 by Dalkey Archive Press. O’Brien lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughter Isobel.

For more information, visit Dan O'Brien’s website.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Claire Luchette

Claire Luchette is the author of the novel Agatha of Little Neon and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. Claire’s work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, VQR, Ploughshares, The New York Times, Granta, and the Kenyon Review. Their story “New Bees” won a 2020 Pushcart Prize. They’ve received fellowships and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. They teach creative writingat Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York.

For more information, visit Claire Luchette’s website.

Morgan Thomas

Morgan Thomas is a writer from the Gulf Coast. Their debut story collection, MANYWHERE, was published by MCD-FSG and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, Lambda Literary’s Transgender Fiction Prize, the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Their work has appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, they received Lambda Literary’s Judith Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ+ Writers. They are currently a Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

For more information, visit Morgan Thomas' website.

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the forthcoming historical novel The American Daughters, which will be published in 2024 by One World Random House. He has also written The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021 and is the 2023 One Book One New Orleans selection. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize.

Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. 

For more information, visit Maurice Carlos Ruffin's website.