Distinguished Visiting Writers Series

The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series brings writers to campus to offer a reading and teach an advanced class that offers IC students in the Visiting Writers Workshop the unique opportunity to learn from some of country's foremost writers. All readings are open to the public.

K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ choice novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook BONE HOUSE was published by Bull City Press. Her story collection GODS OF WANT (One World/Random House) won a Lambda Literary Award, and her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, Turkish, and other languages. Her latest books are ORGAN MEATS (One World, 2023) and a novella titled CECILIA (Coffee House Press, 2024). Her next two books, a horror novel and short story collection, are forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Her writing is frequently described as “not for everybody” and occasionally as “for the freaks.”

Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2011) and, mostly recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), named one of the best poetry book of 2020 by The New York Times and The NPR, and the winner of the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. Mort teaches at Cornell University and writes in English and Belarusian.She translates between English, Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish. She has received the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the National Endowment for the Arts grant in translation for her work on Polina Barskova’s book of selected poems Air Raid (Ugly Duckling, 2021).Her translation, together with Hanif Abdurraqib, of Motherfield: Poetry and Belarusian Protest Diaryby Julia Cimafiejeva, came out in 2022 from Deep Vellum Press and was longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize.