The Department of Writing, with support from the School of Humanities and Sciences, is excited to announce the Fall 2021 Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, which will take place both in person and virtually and feature Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown (9/23, in person), Dylan Thomas Prize-winning fiction writer Bryan Washington (9/30, virtual), and New York Times bestselling memoirist Terese Marie Mailhot (11/8, virtual).
In addition to delivering a public reading and Q&A, each author will also visit the one-credit Visiting Writers' Workshop class to teach a 90-minute craft class and conference individually with students about the students' own writing.
Read more about each of these authors below:
Jericho Brown is the author of three collections of poetry: The Tradition (2019), a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets; and Please (New Issues, 2008), which won the 2009 American Book Award. Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Best American Poetry. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.
Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He received the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award for his first book, Lot, which was also a finalist for the NBCC’s John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. His first novel, Memorial, was a New York Times Notable book of 2020 and one of TIME's books of the year. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Bon Appétit, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Houston, where he is a George Guion Williams Writer-in-Residence and Scholar-in-Residence for Racial Justice at Rice University.
Terese Marie Mailhot is from Seabird Island Band. Her work has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Medium, Al Jazeera, the Los Angeles Times, and Best American Essays. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries: A Memoir. Her book was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction, and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Her book was also the January 2020 pick for Now Read This, a book club from PBS Newshour and The New York Times. Heart Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper's Bazaar's Best Books of 2018. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, and she is also the recipient of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She teaches creative writing at Purdue University and VCFA.
This is an exciting opportunity for students, faculty, and the community to engage with three highly acclaimed authors and experience their voices up close. Find more details, including how to register for the virtual events, on the Distinguished Visiting Writers website.
