Living Writers Series Spring 2023
Thursdays, 5:20 to 6:55 PM
Zoom or Humanities 1 Lecture Hall.
This event is free and open to the public. For in-person events, no registration is required. For Zoom events, register using the links below.
The Student Reading originally scheduled for June 8 has been moved to June 10, and will be a Senior Reading.
April 13: Zaina Alsous (Zoom: Register here)
Zaina Alsous is the author of the poetry collection A Theory of Birds (University of Arkansas Press, 2019), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award and the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Lemon Effigies (Anhinga Press, 2017), winner of the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Her poetry, reviews, and essays have been published in Poetry magazine, Kenyon Review, the New Inquiry, Adroit, and elsewhere. She edits for Scalawag Magazine, a publication dedicated to unsettling dominant narratives of the southern United States.
April 27: Laura Jaramillo (In-person)
Laura Jaramillo is a poet and critic from Queens, New York living in Durham, North Carolina. Her books include Material Girl (subpress, 2012) and Making Water (Futurepoem, 2022). She holds a PhD in critical theory from Duke University. She co-runs the North Carolina-based reading and performance series Paradiso.
May 11: Ryan Eckes (In-person)
Ryan Eckes is a poet from Philadelphia. He recently finished writing a book called General Motors about labor and the influence of public and private transportation on city life. Other books include Valu-Plus and Old News (Furniture Press 2014, 2011). His poetry can be found in Tripwire, Slow Poetry in America Newsletter, Public Pool, and elsewhere. He won a Pew Fellowship in 2016.
May 25: Karla Cornejo Villvicencio (Zoom: Register here)
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans. Her work, which focuses on race, culture, and immigration, has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vogue, Elle, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, n+1, The New Inquiry, and Interview magazine. Born in Ecuador, she later became one of the first undocumented students admitted to Harvard University.
June 1: Mai Der Vang (Zoom: Register here)
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, along with Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
June 10: Senior Reading (In-person)
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, Bookshop Santa Cruz, and Two Birds Books (where the writers' books are available for purchase)
