Visiting Writers Series

Resiman Audience

The Creative Writing Program's Visiting Writers Series brings a number of distinguished authors to campus each semester. Visitors often conduct a colloquium with creative writing students in addition to giving a public reading.

Each year, through the Elliston Poet-in-Residence Program, a distinguished poet comes to campus to give public lectures and readings, and to conduct poetry seminars and workshops. The biennial Emerging Fiction Writers Festival brings four writers to campus for two days of readings and panels.

Past visiting writers have included Nicholson Baker, Charles Baxter, Sandra Cisneros, Victoria Chang, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Alice Fulton, Lauren Groff, Terrance Hayes, Juan Felipe Herrera, Cathy Park Hong, Denis Johnson, Lorrie Moore, Robert Pinsky, Tracy K. Smith, and Colson Whitehead.

Fall 2024

Sponsored by the Elliston Poetry Fund and the Robert and Adele Schiff Fund for Contemporary Fiction 
All readings are free and open to the public. Public parking is available in the Woodside Garage beneath Langsam Library on the Uptown Campus, or along Martin Luther King Drive on the north edge of the Uptown campus. Parking map HERE.

Lily Meyer and Sarah Rose Nordgren

Fiction and Poetry Reading 
September 5, 2024; 5:30 PM EST 
Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library

Lily Meyer is a translator, critic, and author of the novels Short War (Deep Vellum, 2024) and The End of Romance (Viking, forthcoming). A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Lily holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati, and will be Princeton University’s translator-in-residence in Fall 2024. Her stories and translations can be found in The DialThe DriftThe Sewanee ReviewThe Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, NPR BooksThe NationThe New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Washington, D.C. 

Sarah Rose Nordgren is a poet, writer, and cultural organizer. She is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Best Bones (University of Pittsburgh, 2014) and Darwin’s Mother (University of Pittsburgh, 2017), the creative nonfiction book Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer’s Journal, winner of the Essay Press Book Prize (Essay Press, 2024), and the prose chapbook The Creation Museum (Harbor Editions, 2022). Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Narrative, and have been featured by PBS NewshourThe Slowdown podcast, Poetry Society of America, and Poetry Daily. She lives in her hometown of Durham, North Carolina where she is the Founding Director of The School for Living Futures, an interdisciplinary, experimental organization dedicated to creating new knowledge and possibility for our climate-changed future.

Diana Khoi Nguyen and Cindy Juyoung Ok

Poetry Reading
September 17, 2024; 5:30 pm EST
Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library 

Photograph of Diana Khoi Nguyen

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her video work has been exhibited at the Miller ICA. Nguyen is a MacDowell and Kundiman fellow, and a member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). She's received an NEA fellowship and awards from the 92Y "Discovery" Poetry and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery contests. She teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Photograph of Cindy Juyoung OK

Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward from the Yale Series of Younger Poets and an Assistant Professor in the MFA at the University of California Davis. A former high school physics teacher, she has been a MacDowell Fellow, Kenyon Review Fellow, and Lambda Literary Fellow. 

JJJJJerome Ellis 

Poetry Reading
November 13, 2024; 5:30 pm EST
Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library

Photograph of JJJJJermone Ellis

Photo credit: Annie Forrest

JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American animal, artist, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice. Born in 1989 in Groton, Connecticut, USA the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!

2023-24

Rosa Alcalá, Anthony Cody, Danielle Cadena Deulen, Sidik Fofana, Douglas Kearney, Kristi Maxwell, Robin McLean, Katie Peterson, Molly Reid, Chet'la Sebree, and Emily Jungmin Yoon 

2022-23

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Luke Geddes, Gwen E. Kirby, Johannes Göransson, Allegra Hyde, Sara Eliza Johnson, Yalie Saweda Kamara. Brenda Peynado, Liv Stratman, Brian Teare, and Bess Winter 

2021-22

Heid E. Erdrich, Donika Kelly, Ginger Ko, Poupeh Missaghi, Hoa Nguyen, Craig Santos Perez, Raquel Salas Rivera, Divya Victor

2020-21

Tyehimba Jess served as Elliston Poet-in-Residence. All other events were cancelled due to COVID.

2019-20

Readers included Don Bogen, Brian Brodeur, Ross Gay, Lillian Li, Maria Massie, Hannah Pittard, Moriel Rothman-Zecher, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and Sarah Anne Strickley.

2018-19

Readers included Xhenet Aliu, Jamel Brinkley, Brock Clarke, Sloane Crosley, Blas Falconer, Ishion Hutchinson, Uzodinma Iweala, Katie Kitamura, Stephen Kuusisto, Brendan Mathews, Timothy O’Keefe, Mary Ruefle, Joan Silber, Jillian Weise, and Kevin Wilson.

2017-18

Readers included Brit Bennett, Victoria Chang, Allison Pitinii Davis, Erica Dawson, Kathy Fagan, Charley Henley, Juan Felipe Herrera, T. R. Hummer, Holly Goddard Jones, David Lazar, Karan Mahajan, Amit Majmudar, and Anne Valente.

2016-17

Readers included Michelle Y. Burke, Sandra Cisneros, Sarah Domet, Denise Duhamel, Catherine Lacey, Ada Limon, Elizabeth McKenzie, Nancy Reisman, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, A. E. Stallings, and Jung Yun.

2015-16

Readers included Becky Adnot-Haynes, Paul Beatty, Tom Drury, Claudia Keelan, Rebecca Lindenberg, Maurice Manning, Lee Martin, James McMichael, Ander Monson, Tomas Q. Morin, Jenny Offill, Carl Phillips, Julie Schumacher, and Lisa Williams.

2014-15

Readers included Dean Bakopoulos, Marianne Boruch, Amity Gaige, Michael Knight, Ted Kooser, Sonja Livingston, Jamaal May, Claire Messud, Alissa Nutting, Ed Park, Roger Reeves, Nelly Reifler, and Mary Szybist.

2013-14

Readers included Sarah Arvio, Jami Attenberg, Joseph Campana, Marisa Crawford, Denise Duhamel, Yona Harvey, Cathy Park Hong, Shara Lessley, Dana Levin, Colum McCann, Erin McGraw, Collier Nogues, Jack Pendarvis, Jamie Quatro, Nathaniel Perry, Marcus Wicker, and C. K. Williams.

2012-13

Readers included Charles Baxter, Matt Bell, Jedediah Berry, Jennifer Clarvoe, Ron Currie, Jr., Claudia Emerson, Danielle Evans, Lauren Groff, Caitlin Horrocks, Julia Johnson, James Longenbach, Ben Loory, Gregory Orr, Steve Scafidi, and Tracy K. Smith.

2011-12

Readers included Cynthia Arrieu-King, Mark Doty, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Terrance Hayes, Linda Hogan, Gary Leising, Brian Leung, Sinead Morrissey, Meghan O'Rourke, Kelcey Parker, Sarah Perrier, Martha Southgate, Anne Stevenson, Colson Whitehead, Caki Wilkinson, and Carolyne Wright.

Lily Meyer is a translator, critic, and author of the novels Short War (Deep Vellum, 2024) and The End of Romance (Viking, forthcoming). A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Lily holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati, and will be Princeton University’s translator-in-residence in Fall 2024. Her stories and translations can be found in The DialThe DriftThe Sewanee ReviewThe Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including BookforumNPR BooksThe NationThe New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.