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Tuesday, September 24: Taylor Byas
Poetry Talk with Taylor Byas

Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contest, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize.

Poetry Talk: 1 p.m. - Argyros Forum 209A
Poetry Readings: 4 p.m. - Argyros Forum 209A

Tuesday, November 19: Charles Jensen
The Queer Subject: Voice, Identity, and Memory

Charles Jensen (he/him) wrote Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres, published in May 2024 from Santa Fe Writer’s Project. His most recent collection of poetry is Instructions between Takeoff and Landing.

This is part of Wilkinson College's ETW: Leading the Conversation on Gender & Sexuality

Poetry Talk: 1 p.m. - Argyros Forum 209C
Poetry Readings: 4 p.m. - Argyros Forum 209C
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October 24: Angela Narciso Torres

Poet Angela Narciso Torres was born in Brooklyn to two physicians, was raised in Manila, and now resides in San Diego. Torres will discuss the ways that poetry can communicate the experience of diagnosis—the hour, the minute, the moment of knowing—and prognosis for individuals and families.

November 7: Suzanne Edison

As part of Wilkinson College's Engaging the World: Health Equity, Suzanne Edison will share her journey as a writer and as the American mother of a daughter from Guatemala who has an autoimmune disorder. Referencing her own work and that of other poets, Edison will explore how poets, patients, and physicians use image, metaphor, and language to communicate about health, illness, and disability.

September 13: Diana Khoi Nguyen

Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018), her debut poetry collection. Since its publication, Ghost Of was a finalist for the National Book Award, L.A. Times Book Prize, and recieved awards including the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award & Colorado Book Award.

November 8: Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché is a Presidential Fellow in Creative Writing at Chapman University. Renowned as a “poet of witness,” Forché is the author of five books of poetry including her latest work, In the Lateness of the World: Poems (Penguin Random House, 2021).

Watch her Poetry Talk

November 15: Blas Falconer

Blas Falconer is the author of two essay collections and three poetry collections, including Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018). Falconer has recieved a variety of awards for his work including a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, the Barthelme Fellowship, and more.

September 14: Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada is the editor of a hybrid collection of essays, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, collecting more than two dozen Hispanic and Portuguese poets. These essays explore the personal and academic practice of writing. He is the author of Revelations and Next Extinct Mammal: Poems.

He has served as poetry editor for AGNI, PANK, and Pleiades and as a poetry blogger for The Kenyon Review and Ploughshares. His writing appears in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kirkus, and Harvard Review. He is a Contributing Editor at Tab Journal at Chapman University.

November 9: Carolyn Forché
Acclaimed Poet and Chapman Presidential Fellow

Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate.

Forché's first poetry collection, Gathering the Tribes (1976), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, leading to publication by Yale University Press.[10] After her 1977 trip to Spain in which she translated the work of Salvadoran-exiled poet Claribel Alegría as well as the works of Georg Trakl and Mahmoud Darwish, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to travel to El Salvador, where she worked as a human rights advocate, mentored by Leonel Gómez Vides.

October 5: Michelle Brittan Rosado

Michelle Brittan Rosado is the author of Why Can't It Be Tenderness, which won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and published by University of Wisconsin Press in November 2018. Her chapbook, Theory on Falling into a Reef, was the winner of the inaugural Rick Campbell Prize (Anhinga Press, 2016). Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, Poet Lore, and The New Yorker, as well as the anthologies Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, Only Light Can Do That: 100 Post-Election Poems, Stories, & Essays, and Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience.

October 19: Angela Peñaredondo

Angela Peñaredondo is a queer Filipinx interdisciplinary writer, artist and educator. Peñaredondo is author of the chapbook Maroon (Jamii Publications) and All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize). Peñaredondo’s work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Black Warrior Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. Peñaredondo is a Kundiman, VONA/Voices of our Nations Art fellow, Macondista as well as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Humanities at California State University San Bernardino. Currently, Peñaredondo is a visitor, living in Alhambra, California, Gabrielino-Tongva land.

November 9: Brent Armendinger

Brent Armendinger was born in Warsaw, NY, and studied at Bard College and the University of Michigan, where he received an Avery Hopwood Award in Poetry. His most recent book, Street Gloss, is a finalist for the 2019 California Book Award in Poetry. A hybrid work of site-specific poetry and experimental translation, Street Gloss features Argentinian writers Alejandro Méndez, Mercedes Roffé, Fabián Casas, Néstor Perlongher, and Diana Bellessi (The Operating System, 2019). Brent is also the author of The Ghost in Us Was Multiplying (Noemi Press, 2015), a finalist for the California Book Award in Poetry, and two chapbooks, Undetectable (New Michigan Press, 2009) and Archipelago (Noemi Press, 2009). His poems and translations have appeared in many journals, including Anomaly, Asymptote, Aufgabe, Bloom, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Ghost Proposal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, LIT, Puerto del Sol, Volt, and Web Conjunctions. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Blue Mountain Center, the Community of Writers, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Mineral School. Brent teaches creative writing at Pitzer College and lives in Los Angeles.

October 21: Vandana Khanna

Born in New Delhi, India and raised in Falls Church, Virginia, Vandana Khanna earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her MFA from Indiana University, where she was the recipient of the Yellen Fellowship in poetry. She is the author of two full length collections: Train to Agra and Afternoon Masala, as well as the chapbook, The Goddess Monologues. Her poems have won the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize, The Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize, the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize and has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes.

September 18: Valerie Wallace

Valerie Wallace’s debut poetry collection House of McQueen was chosen by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry and published in March 2018. In their starred review, Publishers Weekly said that Wallace created “a literary seance…serving as a scholar of and medium for the late iconic fashion designer Alexander McQueen.” Her work was chosen by Margaret Atwood for the Atty Award, and she has received awards from the Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference, as well as grants to support her work. See more at https://valeriewallace.net.

September 25: Sarah Ann Winn

Sarah Ann Winn’s Alma Almanac was selected by Elaine Equi for the Barrow Street Book Prize and published in 2017. Winn is the author of five chapbooks, most recently Exhibition Catalog Pamphlet to the Grimm Forest Open Air Museum from Yellow Flag. Her poems, prose, and hybrid works have appeared in Five Points, Kenyon Review Online, Smartish Pace, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Inner Loop's Arcadia Residency at Woodlawn Plantation, and others. She serves the reviews editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and teaches workshops in Northern Virginia and Washington, DC. Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling.

October 30: Michelle Bitting

Michelle Bitting’s third collection, The Couple Who Fell to Earth, was published by C & R Press and named to Kirkus Review’s Best Books of 2016. She has poems published or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Diode, Tabula Poetica, Tupelo Quarterly, the Paris-American, AJP, Green Mountains Review, Catamaran, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Bitting won the 2018 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, and her fourth collection, Broken Kingdom, won the Catamaran Prize and is due out in the fall of 2018. Bitting is a Ph.D. candidate and joins the faculty at Loyola Marymount University this fall. See more at www.michellebitting.com.

September 18: Katie Manning

Katie Manning is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Whale Road Review and an Associate Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, and her first full-length poetry collection, Tasty Other, is the 2016 winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She has received The Nassau Review Author Award for Poetry, and her writing has been published in Fairy Tale Review, New Letters, Poet Lore, So to Speak, Verse Daily, and many other journals and anthologies. Find her online at www.katiemanningpoet.com.

Watch her Poetry Talk
Watch her Manning's Poetry Reading

October 2: Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer, splitting her time between Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California. See more at www.adalimon.com.

Watchher Poetry Talk

Watch her Poetry Reading

November 27: Genevieve Kaplan

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of in the ice house from Red Hen Press, winner of the poetry publication prize from A Room of Her Own Foundation, and three chapbooks: in an aviary, travelogue, and settings for these scenes), a chapbook of continual erasures. Her recent poems appear in Copper Nickel, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, BOAAT, and Sugar House Review. Kaplan earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and her Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Her research centers around book arts and visual and tactile poetics. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. See more at www.genevievekaplan.com.

September 15: Cecelia Woloch

Cecilia Woloch is a poet, writer, teacher, and traveler based in Los Angeles. She has published six collections of poems, most recently Earth from Two Sylvias Press and Carpathia from BOA Editions. Her second collection, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, was published in French translation in 2014 and has been adapted for multimedia performances in the United States and Europe. Her novel, Sur la Route, was published by Quale Press. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and CEC/ArtsLink International. She collaborates regularly with artists in other disciplines and conducts workshops for writers around the world.

October 6: Alan Shapiro

Alan Shapiro has published many poetry collections, most recently Reel to Reel, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Night of the Republic, a finalist for the National Book Award. He has published four books of prose, including The Last Happy Occasion, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Broadway Baby, a novel. Winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, LA Times Book Prize, and an award in literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, two new books appear in 2016: Life Pig, a book of poems, and That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration, essays on convention, suffering, and self-expression.

December 1: Elline Lipkin

Elline Lipkin is a poet, academic, and nonfiction writer. Her book The Errant Thread was chosen by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award. Her second book, Girls’ Studies, explores contemporary girlhood in the United States. Currently a Research Scholar with the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA, Lipkin also teaches for Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She has been a resident at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She recently served as a mentor for AWP’s Writer-to-Writer program and is the current Poet Laureate of Altadena.

September 10: Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché’s first volume, Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was followed by The Country Between Us, The Angel of History, and Blue Hour. She has translated Mahmoud Darwish, Claribel Alegria, and Robert Desnos. Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice,” and is followed by the 2014 anthology The Poetry of Witness. In 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award for her human rights advocacy and the preservation of memory and culture. She is currently at work on a memoir.

October 1: Hélène Cardona

Hélène Cardona is an award-winning poet, literary translator, actor, and author of Dreaming My Animal Selves (Salmon Poetry), The Astonished Universe (Red Hen Press), and Ce que nous portons (Éditions du Cygne), her translation of Dorianne Laux. Two books are forthcoming: Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry) and Beyond Elsewhere (White Pine Press, 2016), her translation of Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac. She holds a Master’s in American Literature from the Sorbonne, taught at Hamilton College and LMU, and received fellowships from the Goethe-Institut & Universidad Internacional de Andalucía. She co-edits Dublin Poetry Review, Levure Littéraire, and Fulcrum: An Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics.

Watch her Poetry Reading

October 29: Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky's poetry has received American Academy of Arts and Letter's Metcalf Award, Whiting Writers Award, Lannan Fellowship, and other honors. He is the author of Dancing In Odessa, co-translator (with Jean Valentine) of Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, and co-editor (with Susan Harris) of Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. He is the Professor of Poetry and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University.

November 12: Jessica Piazza

Jessica Piazza authored two full-length poetry collections with Red Hen Press: Interrobang and Obliterations (with Heather Aimee O'Neill, forthcoming). She has also published a chapbook, This is not a sky (Black Lawrence Press.) She holds a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and teaches for the USC Writing Program and the University of Arkansas at Monticello’s online MFA program. She is the poetry editor at Southern Pacific Review and curates the Poetry Has Value project. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she currently live in Los Angeles.

October 7: Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor’s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, The Boston Review, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her latest collection, The Forage House, was selected for The Believer Poetry Award Editor's Short List, and The San Francisco Chronicle calls it "stunning." Taylor also writes book reviews for NPR’s All Things Considered and lives in El Cerrito.

October 28: Bin Ramke

Bin Ramke’s first collection of poems, The Difference Between Night and Day, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. The Massacre of the Innocents and Wake were awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Denver, edits the Denver Quarterly, and is the author of more than eight collections of poetry.

November 11: Lorene Delany-Ullman

Lorene Delany-Ullman’s book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, was the winner of the 2011 Sentence Award. Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear in Agni, Lunch Ticket, Santa Monica Review, Prime Number, Sports Literate, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and Warscapes. Delany-Ullman teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

September 10: Maureen Alsop

Maureen Alsop is the author of two full collections of poetry, Mantic and Apparition Wren. She is the winner of Harpur Palate's Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry and The Bitter Oleander’s Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in various journals including The Laurel Review, AGNI, Blackbird, Tampa Review, Action Yes, Drunken Boat, and The Kenyon Review.

September 24: Sholeh Wolpé

Sholeh Wolpé is the author of three collections of poetry, two books of translations, and a play and is the editor of three anthologies. She is the recipient of Lois Roth Persian Translation Award for her book Sin—Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. Wolpé teaches poetry and literary translation at the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.

October 15: C. K. Williams

C. K. Williams has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors. In 2010, he published a critical study, On Whitman, and a book of poetry, Wait. In 2012, he published a book of poems, Writers Writing Dying, and a book of essays, In Time: Poets, Poems, and the Rest.

November 5: Nina Corwin

Nina Corwin is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her poetry has appeared in From the Fishouse, Drunken Boat, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review/nor, Southern Poetry Review, and Verse. Corwin, a Pushcart nominee, is also an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal. In daytime hours, she is a psychotherapist known for her work on behalf of victims of violence.

November 19: Seth Michelson

Seth Michelson’s most recent books are Eyes Like Broken Windows, winner of the 2013 International Book Awards, and El Ghetto/The Ghetto: A Bilingual Edition, which is his translation of El ghetto by the internationally acclaimed Argentine poet Tamara Kamenszain. He teaches at the University of Southern California, and he can be found at sethmichelson.com.