Events/Visiting Writers and Scholars

If you would like to coordinate or share your event with the department, please contact us at English@nmu.edu. For staying up to date on events, check back often and stay connected with us on Facebook!

Fall 2021

Visiting Writer Tracy Ross

Thursday, September 9, 7:00 P.M.

Visiting Writer Moheb Soliman

Thursday, September 23, 6:30 P.M. (at Peter White Library, co-sponsored by the NMU English Department)

Visiting Writer Ira Sukrungruang

Thursday, October 7, 7:00 P.M

Peninsula Room V @ The Northern Center

Northern Michigan University Campus

Award-winning writer Ira Sukrungruang was born in Chicago to Thai immigrants. He is the recipient of the 2015 American Book Award for Southside Buddhist: Essays, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Arts and Letters Fellowship, and the Anita Claire Scharf Award in Poetry. He is the author of four nonfiction books: This Jade World (2021), Buddha’s Dog & Other Meditations (2018), Southside Buddhist (2014) and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy (2010), the short story collection The Melting Season (2016), and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night (2013). His work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Rumpus, American Poetry Review, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is the president of Sweet: A Literary Confection, a literary nonprofit organization, and is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.

Reading followed by Q&A. Free and open to the public.

This event is sponsored by the Department of English and the Diversity Common Reader Program (DCRP). 

Visiting Scholar Dr. Kyle Bladow

Tuesday, October 12, 7:00 P.M.

Dr. Kyle Bladow studies the ways literature informs our connections to land and water and our interactions with the more-than-human world. His research encompasses environmental justice, queer ecology, sustainable foodways, and contemporary American literature. Dr. Bladow is also a graduate of NMU's BA and MA programs in English; the Department English is thrilled to welcome him back as our inaugural speaker for a new Visiting Scholar series. His lecture on “Environmental Justice in Louise Erdrich’s Speculative Fiction” promises to address some of the most pressing issues of our time in relation to a giant of American letters. Please join us!

Visiting Writer Erika T. Wurth 

Thursday, November 4th, 7 p.m.

NMU Northern Center: Peninsula 1

Erika T. Wurth’s publications include two novels, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend and You Who Enter Here, two collections of poetry and a collection of short stories. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Boulevard, The Writer’s Chronicle, Waxwing and The Kenyon Review. She is a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Scholar, attended the Tin House Summer Workshop, and has been chosen as a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver.

Reading followed by Q&A. Free and open to the public.

Two Book Two Communities Events Flyer Fall 2021

Visiting Writers Series

MFA Faculty Showcase Reading

Thursday, February 10th – 7 p.m. (E.S.T.)
**Note: This is a virtual event via ZOOM*

https://nmu.zoom.us/j/97535000818?pwd=dUJSS2xaQk8xSVpKc2JnS3N5VmRsZz09

Passcode: NMUENGLISH

The Visiting Writers Series goes LOCAL for the month of February!

Please join the NMU Department of English for an MFA Faculty Showcase featuring readings of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and hybrid texts from Jennifer A. Howard, Matthew Gavin Frank, Lynn Domina, Patricia Killelea, Monica McFawn and Rachel May. Q&A session to follow reading.

Matthew Gavin Frank’s latest nonfiction book, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers, was selected as one of NPR's Best Books of 2021, and as a finalist for the 2021 Heartland Booksellers Award in Nonfiction.  He is also the author of the nonfiction books, The Mad Feast (a 2015 Ploughshares Best Book of the Year), Preparing the Ghost (a New York Times Editors’ Choice), Pot Farm, and Barolo, and three books of poetry.
 

Rachel May is the author of An American Quilt, The Experiments, At St. Christopher's, and Quilting with a Modern Slant. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wellcome Collection, Guernica, LitHub, Parents, and Outside, among others.

Jennifer A. Howard teaches creative writing and edits Passages North in Michigan's snowy Upper Peninsula. Her most recent chapbook, Flat Stanley Reports Back to His Third-Grader, was published by The Cupboard Pamphlet.

Monica McFawn is a multidisciplinary whose short story collection, Bright Shards of Someplace Else, won a Flannery O'Connor Award and was named an NPR “Great Read." An NEA Fellowship recipient, her illustrations have appeared on the cover of national literary magazines, and her animations and art have appeared in galleries, including the Small Wonders miniature film festival in Detroit. She also writes and performs comedy; most recently her short film, Baby’s Carbon Footprint, was runner up in American University's Eco-Comedy Film Festival.

Patricia Killelea is the author of two poetry collections, Counterglow (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019) and Other Suns (Swan Scythe Press, 2011). She also produces digital videopoems, which have been featured at Fence, Atticus Review, Moving Poems, Poetry Film Live, screened and shortlisted for the Ó'Bhéal International Poetry Film Competition, and long-listed for the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Prize.

Please join us TOMORROW at 7pm for the Diversity Common Reader keynote lecture. Writer and scholar Tamiko Nimura will discuss Japanese American incarceration during WWII, the resisters profiled in her new graphic novel We Hereby Refuse, and her own connection to their stories. Register here for this free online event: https://nmu.zoom.us/.../register/WN_MDrHBp5yQPaWIkcUhVt8Gw