2020-2021 Reading Series

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Karen Russell

Wednesday | Oct. 7, 2020 | 7:30–8:45 p.m. | Online/Virtual Event via Zoom

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut short story collection, the New York Times bestseller Friday Black, was the most acclaimed book of short fiction of 2018. Adjei-Brenyah’s work has been published in Esquire, Guernica, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. 

Karen Russell is one of the most acclaimed short story writers of her generation. Her novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, her most recent book is the story collection Orange World.

Sigrid Nunez and Camille Dungy

Wednesday | Feb. 24, 2021 | 7:30-8:45 p.m. | Online/Virtual Event via Zoom

Fiction writer Sigrid Nunez is the author of eight novels and a memoir of her time with Susan Sontag, Sempre Susan. Her novel The Friend was the winner of the 2018 National Book Award for fiction. Her latest book, What Are You Going Through, is out this fall.

Poet Camille Dungy is the author of four books of poetry. Her debut collection of essays, Guidebook to Relative Strangers, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. She is a professor in the English Department at Colorado State University. 

This event has been made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.

Rebecca Makkai and Jorie Graham

Wednesday | March 10, 2021 | 7:30-8:45 p.m. | Online/Virtual Event via Zoom

Short Story writer and novelist Rebecca Makkai’s most recent novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It won the ALA Carnegie Medal, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The author of three other books of fiction, her stories have been honored by The Best American Short Stories and Selected Shorts series. 

Jorie Graham is, according to the Poetry Foundation, “one of the most celebrated poets of the post-war generation.” She has been the winner of the Pulitzer and Forward Poetry prizes, and she is the first woman to serve as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. Her new collection, Runaway, is just out this fall.

This event has been made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.

Natalie Diaz and Kirstin Valdez Quade

Wednesday | May 5, 2021 | 7:30-8:45 p.m. | Online/Virtual Event via Zoom

Poet Natalie Diaz is the author of two books of poems, including the acclaimed debut When My Brother Was an Aztec. The winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Diaz teaches the Arizona State University M.F.A. program. Her second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, is out now from Graywolf Press. 

Fiction writer Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of the short story collection Night at the Fiestas, winner of the John Leonard Prize for debut work of fiction and a New York Times notable book. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Princeton University. Her first novel, The Five Wounds, will be published in April 2021. 

This event has been made possible with the support of the Jane Flanders Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.