The Living Writers Series at SDSU is one of the longest continuously running series in the nation.
Authors who have visited us in the recent years included: Edward Albee, Derek Walcott, Billy Collins, Philip Levine, Norman Rush, Alice Fulton, Gary Snyder, Carol Muske, Nahid Rachlin, Tess Gallagher, Dorianne Laux, Judy Grahn, Toi Dericotte, C.K. Williams, Rick Bass, David Mura, Clayton Eshleman, Jerome Rothenberg, Debra Magpie Earling, Wanda Coleman, Alicia Ostriker, Al Yong, Alan Gurganus, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
Also, our alumni, such as award-winning authors Sherod Santos, Richard Katrovas, Susan Luzzaro, Diana Garcia, Susan Vreeland, and others have participated in these events as well. Numerous publishers, such as Ted Pelton of Starcherone Books, Mathew Zapruder of Wave Books, Kate Gale of Red Hen Press and others also participate in our annual panels on publishing.
Spring, 2013 Season
Katie Farris: Wednesday, February 6th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Come giddy yourself atop these sheer drops. Come shake victorious with delirium tremens and carpe diem. Come frolic with bared teeth.
From, boysgirls
Sallie Lowenstein: Wednesday, March 6th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Flying. A great white bird, I spread my tail feathers, stretch my shady pink neck into warm updrafts that carry me away, away from the towers below.
From, In the Company of Whispers
Featured Discussion: An Evening with Performance Artist, Sheree Rose: Wednesday, March 13th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Featured Symposium: Occupy the Page: Literary Criticism and Activism, featuring: editor and anthologist, Dominic Luxford, and poet and translator, Alissa Valles: Wednesday, March 20th, Editor’s Panel at 2 p.m. and reading at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents: Mariela Griffor: Wednesday, April 10th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
If your mountains tumble with the howls of an injured woman
It is because my assassin nostalgia thinks of you.
From, “Seven: Song of Goodbye” (House)
Christopher Merrill: Wednesday, April 17th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
“Christopher Merrill is one of the most gifted, audacious, and accomplished poets of an extraordinarily rich generation.”
—W.S. Merwin
Forrest Gander and Pura López-Colomé: Wednesday, April 24th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Palpable, the pressure of absence,
under my eyelids.
From, “Aurora” (No Shelter, Translated by Forrest Gander)
Harold Jaffe: Wednesday, May 1st at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Isolation is hard, old and iso are harder.
Unfriend your fair-weather friends asap.
Alone is to be alien.
From, “Iso” (Revolutionary Brain)
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Fall 2012
Joanna Brooks: Wednesday, September 12th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
“Lyrical, resonant . . . Brooks writes with an urgent intimacy reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ coating even the most painful memories with a honeyed warmth. There is a steady strength here.” –Boston Globe (on The Book of Mormon Girl)
Jeff Biggers: Wednesday, October 3rd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
“Jeff Biggers has the unblinking gaze of the honed journalist, a novelist’s sense of image and story, and a prophet’s cache of outrage. He stands in my very short list of American literary heroes.” --Luis Urrea (on Jeff Biggers)
Marilyn Chin: Wednesday, October 17th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
There are days when the sun is a great gash
Nights, the moon smokes hashish and falls asleep on your lap
From, Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen
The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Camille Dungy: Wednesday, October 24th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
The poet’s cup is filled too full, a weight she cannot carry
from the table to her mouth, her lips, her tongue.
The poet’s hands are congenitally spoiled.
From, Arthritis is one thing, the hurting another
A Celebration of SDSU MFA Alumni, featuring: Chris Baron, Heather Eudy, Cali Linfor, and Sabrina Youmans: Wednesday, November 7th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Lantern Tree: Four Books of Poems is a luminous collaboration that explores life's spaces- the lantern of relation, journey, spirit, desire, loss, and home. The voices found here are those of Chris Brown in Under the Broom Tree, Heather Eudy in Bills of Lading, Cali Linfor in A Book of Ugly Things, and Sabrina Youmans in Pacific Standard Time.
Lance Olsen: Wednesday, November 28th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.
Olsen is among the finest writers of social critique and speculative fiction today.
—American Book Review
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Spring 2012
The Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series is now offered as a course at SDSU (ENGL 579). Students of all experience-levels and genres can interact directly with award-winning authors, participate in creative writing and publishing workshops, and learn about literature from those who have created and shaped it!
CORIE SKOLNICK
Monday, February 6th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*Corie Skolnick is a California licensed marriage and family therapist
and a “sometimes” psychology instructor at California State University, Northridge and Moorpark College. Orfan is her first novel.
LAUREL CORONA
Monday, February 20th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*Laurel Corona, on her aesthetic: “My goal as a historical novelist is to provide you, the reader, with high-quality fiction about women and the forgotten and undervalued roles they played in their societies.”
The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading, Featuring:
MINDY ZHANG
Monday, March 5th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*You are beaming as before, with a smile barely perceptible
and jealousy tucked into the pleats of your dress or into your dewlaps.
You do not toy with the trick of “-isms,” and yet
you are still the born killer, leaving me terminally unrecoverable.
From, “Sappho’s Lover”
DAVID MATLIN
Celebrates the release of his new novel, A HalfMan Dreaming
Wednesday, March 14th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*Praise for A HalfMan Dreaming, from Ilya Kaminsky: "In this work of luminous prose, terrifying and gorgeous, David Matlin has found a new form for a narrative, and has given that form the tale of empathy, sensuality, and great depth." For more information, visit: matlinwriter.com
Spotlight: small press publishing, featuring:
CHRIS BARON, TONY BONDS, ELIZABETH MYHR, & MARTIN WOODSIDE
Monday, March 19th, Panel Discussion at 4 pm, Reading at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
THOMAS LUX
Monday, April 9th at 7 p.m. in Scripps Cottage
*There is something democratic
about that, grown-up; a long
and slender walking stick set against the house.
From, “Virgule”
GARTH GREENWELL AND ANUSHKA RAVISHANKAR
Monday, April 16th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*Garth Greenwell, on teaching: “the very process of education
is the process by which we learn to seek the world’s sweetnesses—
sweetest among them Eros—which are at once so intoxicating and
so quickly ground out.”
*Anushka Ravishankar, on her aesthetic: "I don't write to teach or moralize anything. You could end up finding messages but consciously I have never tried to do that."
ERIC GOODMAN
Monday, April 23rd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430
*Eric Goodman is a novelist, rock lyricist, travel writer, journalist, and tv writer. By day, Eric is a Professor of English and directs the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Our events are free and open to the public. For more information and to join our mailing list, please contact Meagan Marshall at marshall_Meagan@yahoo.com or “friend” us on Facebook.