Visiting Writers Series

Dawn Lundy Martin is an American poet and essayist. She is the author of five books of poems: Instructions for The Lovers; Good Stock Strange Blood, winner of the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry; Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; DISCIPLINE; A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering, and three limited edition chapbooks. Her nonfiction can be found in n+1, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Believer, and Best American Essays 2019 and 2021. Martin was the first person to hold the Toi Derricotte Endowed Chair in English at the University of Pittsburgh, where she co-founded and directed the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is currently working on a memoir titled When a Person Goes Missing, forthcoming from Pantheon Books. She is Professor and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

Adrienne Celt is the author of three novels: End of the World House, which was named a most-anticipated title by Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and more; Invitation to a Bonfire, which was a 2018 Indie Next Pick and an Amazon Book of the Month; and The Daughters, which won the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction. Also a cartoonist, she published a book of comics entitled Apocalypse How? An Existential Bestiary with New Michigan Press in 2016. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, the 2016 O'Henry Prize Stories, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, TriQuarterly, Strange Horizons, The Greensboro Review, and many other places. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her family.

Emma Patterson is a literary agent at Brandt & Hochman, where she has been since 2013. She represents fiction ranging from dark, voice-driven literary novels to historical and upmarket fiction to feminist fiction with a speculative bent; narrative non-fiction that includes memoir, investigative journalism, and history; and select children's titles. Her authors are NYT bestsellers as well as finalists or winners of awards such as the Pulitzer, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, PEN Awards, O. Henry Awards, and others. She represents emerging voices, established writers, and ongoing series. She has a particular soft spot for fiction that grapples with relationships (of all kinds), international or otherwise transporting settings, and writing with a sly sense of humor that also has emotional heft.

Lydi Conklin has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Sewanee Writers Conference, Emory University, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, Lighthouse Works, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are now an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, is forthcoming in June 2025 from Catapult in the US and Vintage in the UK. 

Ananda Lima is the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil and Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers and Program Curator at StoryStudio, Chicago, and has served as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. Craft, her fiction debut, has received starred reviews from Kirkus Review, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was longlisted for the New American Voices Award and the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The New York Times describes it as “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of National Bestseller The American Daughters, published by One World Random House. He is the recipient of the 2024 South Arts State Fellowship, the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award, the 2022 Louisiana Board of Regents ATLAS grant, and a Black Rock Senegal Residency. He also wrote The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021. It is the 2023 One Book One New Orleans selection. The book was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and longlisted for the Story Prize. The book was also selected to represent Louisiana at the 2023 National Book Festival. 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. It was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. All three books were New York Times Editor’s Choice picks. His work appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Ruffin was the 2022 Grand Marshal of the Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats.

Adam Ehrlich Sachs is the author of three books: Gretel and the Great War, The Organs of Sense, and Inherited Disorders. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, and Harper's, and he was a finalist for the Believer Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin, and he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Julie Carr is the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose, including Climate, co-written with Lisa Olstein (Essay Press, 2022), Real Life: An Installation (Omindawn, 2018), Objects from a Borrowed Confession (Ahsahta, 2017), and Someone Shot my Book (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Earlier books include 100 Notes on Violence (Ahsahta, 2010), RAG (Omnidawn, 2014), and Think Tank (Solid Objects, 2015). With Jeffrey Robinson she is the co-editor of Active Romanticism (University of Alabama Press, 2015). Her co-translation of Leslie Kaplan’s Excess-The Factory and The Book of Skies were published by Commune Editions (2018) and Pamenar Press (2024), respectively. Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2023. Underscore, a book of poems, is just out from Omnidawn (2024). Overflow, a trilogy, will be published sequentially over subsequent years. Carr was a 2011-12 NEA fellow, is a Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder in English and Creative Writing, and is chair of the Women and Gender Studies department. She has collaborated with dance artists K.J. Holmes and Gesel Mason. With Tim Roberts she is the co-founder of Counterpath Press, Counterpath Gallery, and Counterpath Community Garden in Denver.  

Gillian Conoley is a poet, editor, and translator. Often comprising narrative, lyric, and fragmented forms, her work takes up an inquiry into spirit and matter, the individual and the state. The author of ten collections of poetry, including Notes from the Passenger (Nightboat Books, 2023), Conoley received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. Conoley has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Denver, Vermont College, Tulane, and Sonoma State University. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she is editor of VOLT magazine. Her translations of three books by Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, appearing in English for the first time, is with City Lights. Conoley has collaborated with installation artist Jenny Holzer, composer Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Butoh dancer Judith Kajuwara.