2024-2025 Visiting Writers Series
Sponsored by the Colorado College English Department with the support of the MacLean Visiting Writers Endowment. All events are free and open to the public.
Block One
Rebecca F. Kuang
September 6, 2024 7:00 PM
Celeste Theatre in Cornerstone Arts Space
Block Two
Maria Kelson
September 26, 2024 7:00 PM
Gaylord Hall
Maria Kelson has two collections of poetry (as Maria Melendez) with University of Arizona Press, which were finalists for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Colorado Book Award. Not the Killing Kind is her debut novel. It received the inaugural Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Crime Fiction Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime.
A former Santa Fe Arts Institute and Hedgebrook resident, she has given readings and workshops at campuses and literary festivals around the U.S. and served as an American Voices arts envoy in Bogotá, Colombia. Born in Arizona, raised in northern California, she has lived in one southeastern, three midwestern, and five western states. Connect at mariakelson.com.
Block Four
Bobby LeFebre
December 2nd
6 pm
Max Kade Theater in Armstrong Hall
Tommy Archuleta
December 9th
6 pm
Tim Fuller Event Space, Room 201 (Tutt Library)
Brandon Shimoda
December 12th
5:00 pm
This is a virtual reading. Please register here.
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Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently The Afterlife Is Letting Go (City Lights, 2024), which received a Creative Nonfiction grant from the Whiting Foundation; Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023); and The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Brynn Saito, of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration, which is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in April. He's an Assistant Professor at CC, where he teaches creative writing, creative research, and the literature of Japanese American incarceration. |
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Block Five
Rachel Hanson
Feb. 6th 7 pm
Cornerstone Screening Room
Rachel M. Hanson is the author of The End of Tennessee: A Memoir (University of South Carolina Press, 2024), and her work has won the Best of the Net in nonfiction and Best New Poets, and earned Notable Mention in Best American Essays. Other work can be found in Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, North American Review, South Dakota Review, American Literary Review, and many other literary journals. A recipient of the Olive B. O'Connor Fellowship in Nonfiction at Colgate University, Rachel holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Utah, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Asheville
Block Six
Juan Morales
Feb. 19 2025
7 pm
Cornerstone Screening Room
Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. He is the author of three poetry collections: Friday and the Year That Followed (2006), The Siren World (2015), and The Handyman’s Guide to End Times, winner of the 2019 International Latino Book Award. Poems have appeared in Acentos Review, Breakbeats Vol. 4 LatiNEXT, Crazyhorse, Hayden's Ferry Review, Pank, terrain.org, War, Literature, & the Arts, and elsewhere. He is a CantoMundo fellow, a Macondo fellow, the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press, and professor of Poetry at Colorado College.
Pádraig Ó Tuama
The Borders of Belonging: Exploring Belonging in Times of Conflict and Uncertainty
Mon, February 24, 2025, 07:00 pm - 09:00 pm
Shove Main Chapel
Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama's work centers around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He has worked with groups to explore story, conflict, their relationship with religion and argument and violence. Author of five books of poetry and prose including Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community (2017); In the Shelter (2105); Sorry for your Troubles (2013); Books of Exile (2012); and edited Poetry Unbound (2022), Pádraig currently presents the podcast Poetry Unbound with On Being studios, where he also has responsibilities in bringing art and theology into public and civic life. From 2014-2019 he led the Corrymeela Community, Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation community. He is based in Ireland.
Soul Vang
March 6 2025
6 pm
Cornerstone Screening Room
Soul is a poet, teacher, and U.S. Army veteran. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
His writing is published in Academy of American Poets (poets.org),Water ~Stone Review, Black Earth Institute, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others.
His poetry has been anthologized in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (New Rivers), How Much Earth: An Anthology of Fresno Poets (Roundhouse), Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans (Minnesota Historical Society), How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday), and NEW CALIFORNIA WRITING 2012 (Heyday).
Soul has received the Horizon Artist Award from the Fresno Arts Council, the Foundation for Art & Healing Veteran's Scholarship to attend the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, a Merit Scholarship to attend Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
Block Seven
Lee Ann Roripaugh
April 3, 2025
1 pm
The Fine Arts Center of Colorado College, Garden Room
Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Dandarians, was released by Milkweed Editions in September 2014. Her second volume, Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press), was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize. Her short stories have been shortlisted as stories of note in the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and two of her essays have been shortlisted as essays of note for the Best American Essays anthology. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Roripaugh is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.
Block Eight
Katie Barasch
May 7, 2025
6 pm
Cornerstone Screening Room
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