In-Person Event— Wednesday, September 20th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Author and Co-Director of SDSU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Stephen-Paul Martin

Stephen-Paul Martin will read from his most recent book, TwentyTwenty. Martin has been described as “the American Albert Camus, if Camus had a sense of humor.”

Stephen-Paul Martin has published over twenty fiction, poetry, and non-fiction books. One of his short story collections, The Gothic Twilight, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1993. His most recent book is TwentyTwenty (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023).  His other fiction collections include The Ace of Lightning (FC2, 2017) and Changing the Subject (Ellipsis, 2010). From 1980-1996 he co-edited Central Park, an internationally acclaimed journal of the arts & social commentary. His writings have appeared in over 200 periodicals over the past 30 years, in several different languages. He received his doctorate from New York University in 1983.

In-Person Event— September 27th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Poet, Vandana Khanna

Vandana Khanna will read from her collected works, including her recent poetry collection, Burning Like Her Own Planet, which has been described as “…gorgeous, emotionally complex, always dazzling.”

Born in New Delhi, India, Vandana Khanna is a writer, educator, and editor. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Train to Agra, Afternoon Masala, and Burning Like Her Own Planet, as well as the chapbook, The Goddess Monologues. Her work has won the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize, The Miller Williams Poetry Prize, the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition, and the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. She has been published widely in journals and anthologies such as The New Republic, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, New England Review, Guernica, and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, October 18th at 7 p.m.: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning Author, Tracy Badua

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. The fall 2023 Okuma Author, Tracy Badua, will share excerpts from her recent novel, This Is Not a Personal Statement. Badua has been lauded as “an author to watch.”

Tracy Badua is an award-winning Filipino American author of books about young people with sunny hearts in a sometimes stormy world. By day, she is an attorney who works in national housing policy and programs, and by night, she squeezes in writing, family time, and bites of her secret candy stash. She lives in San Diego, California, with her family.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, November 1st: Acclaimed Author, Raul Palma

Raul Palma will read from his short story collection, In This World of Ultraviolet Light, which has been described as “…fiction to steal the breath of any reader, from any background”, and answer questions from attendees.

Raul Palma is the author of A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (forthcoming from Dutton), and In This World of Ultraviolet Light. He is a member of the fiction faculty at Ithaca College, and the Associate Dean of Faculty and New Initiatives in Ithaca College's School of Humanities and Sciences. Palma has also taught at Elmira Correctional through Cornell's Prison Education Program. His stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chattahoochee Review, the Greensboro Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and the Sonora Review. His very short fiction was included in Best Small Fictions 2018 (selected by Aimee Bender).

In-Person Event— Wednesday, November 8th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Poet and Essayist, Maya Tevet Dayan

Maya Tevet Dayan will read from her most recent publications including the poetry collection, Wherever We Float, That’s Home. This event is sponsored by the Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative (MGSDII).

Maya Tevet Dayan is an Israeli-Canadian poet and writer. She’s the recipient of the Israeli Prime Minister award for literature for 2018. Poems from her three critically acclaimed poetry collections have been translated into English, Spanish, German and Chines. Her poem “Foreign-ness” was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize for 2019, and her poem “Cotton” won the 2021 Rhino translation prize. Her latest book, Feminism, as I Told it to My Daughters (Israel, 2023) is a short memoir in essays based on her highly popular feminist columns and essays published over the years in “Haaretz” magazine.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, November 29th: Award-winning Poet and Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin will read from her most recent poetry collection, Sage, and answer questions from attendees. Chin has been lauded “as one of the most prolific and admired Asian American writers on the poetry scene today, [she] keeps readers guessing as each of her successive publications showcases new poetic strategies of what we might call — for lack of an appropriate, dictionary-backed adjective — her fusionary poetics.”

Marilyn Chin is an award-winning poet and author. Her books of poems include Sage, A Portrait of the Self as Nation, Hard Love Province, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, Dwarf Bamboo, and The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty. She also published a book of magical fiction called Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen. In addition to writing poetry and fiction, she has translated poems by the modern Chinese revolutionary poet Ai Qing and co-translated poems by the Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu. Chin has won numerous awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement in poetry, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the United Artist Foundation award, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, the PEN-Josephine Miles Book award, two NEAs, the Stegner Fellowship, and others. She has read and taught workshops all over the world.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, February 22nd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Author and Editor, Manuel Paul López

Manuel Paul López will read from his most recent book, Nerve Curriculum, which has been lauded as “…the thrilling confirmation of a unique élan that can fuel the Latinx imagination.”

Manuel Paul López's books include Nerve Curriculum (Futurepoem), These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Earnest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories: In the Time of Covid and Uprising (City Works Press), Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press), and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works Press), all three generated from a community-based writers' workshop of the same name that he's co-facilitated since 2016 in Southeast San Diego. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 1st at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Acclaimed Author, Andrew Kelly Stewart

Andrew Kelly Stewart will read from his debut novella, We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep, which has been described as “a lyrical and page-turning coming-of-age exploration of duty, belief, and the post-apocalypse.”

Andrew Kelly Stewart's writing spans the literary, science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural genres. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and ZYZZYVA. He is a Clarion Workshop alum and holds an MFA in Creative Writing. We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep is his first publication with Tor.com. Stewart lives and writes in southern California.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 15th at 7 p.m.: Celebrated Poet and Interdisciplinary Artist, Elisabeth Houston 

Elisabeth Houston will perform pieces from her book, Standard American English. Houston is celebrated as “…an inventor, a new voice to ready ourselves for, a voice we need.”

Elisabeth Houston wrote an author biography and then deleted said biography and then decided instead to write a paperback romance novel, which riffed off the prolific priestess of romance Miss Danielle Steel; this romance novel also required an encyclopedia to accompany its reading, a long thick index which contained towering columns of notes which distinguished facts from fiction, fiction from friction, words from gibberish, gibberish from poetry, and on and on. The books stalled at the final stages - printers got jammed, machines convulsed, ink and bodies and language run amok. Elisabeth Houston refused to write a proper author biography to be penned on the book's final page, and readers were tired and angry. Then the readers decided to riot. They demanded authorial integrity, they demanded coherence, and so they violently destroyed the book.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 22nd at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Author, Lance Olsen

Lance Olsen will read from his latest publication, Always Crashing in the Same Car, which has been praised as “a phantasmagorical mosaic of facts and fantasies concerning the life and art of David Bowie, entirely appropriate to its subject, for whom the mask always melted into the face and vice versa.”

Lance Olsen is the author of more than 30 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels Skin Elegies (Dzanc, 2021) and My Red Heaven (Dzanc, 2020). His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, Rockefeller Center Bellagio Residency, N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, Olsen teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.

Wednesday, April 5th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Multi-genre Author, Pedro Eiras

Pedro Eiras will share from his most recent publications, including new work translated from the Portuguese by Sandra Alcosser, Ricardo Vasconcelos, Thais Chagas, and Philip Maechling. This event is sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures and the Camões — Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua.

Pedro Eiras was born in Porto in 1975. Since 2001, he has published works of fiction (Bach, A Cura, Cartas Reencontradas de Fernando Pessoa, O Mapa do Mundo... ), poetry (Inferno, Purgatório, Paraíso), theater (Um Forte Cheiro a Maçã, Uma Carta a Cassandra, Um Punhado de Terra, Bela Dona...), essays (Tentações, Os Ícones de Andrei, Constelações, Língua Bífida...), and other genres, more difficult to classify. He has several books published in Brazil and in France, England, Italy, and Romania; his theater plays have been staged or read in ten countries. With Esquecer Fausto (2005) he won the Portuguese Pen Clube Essay Prize, and with Inferno (2020) the António Cabral Literary Prize. He is Professor of Portuguese Literature at the College of Letters of the University of Porto.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, April 12th: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning Poet and Editor, Naoko Fujimoto

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. The spring 2023 Okuma Author, Naoko Fujimoto, will share poems from her most recent publications and answer questions from attendees.

Naoko Fujimoto was born, raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University. Her poetry collections are "We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan", winner of C&R Press Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Award by C&R Press (2022), "Where I Was Born", winner of the editor's choice by Willow Books (2019), "Glyph: Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory" by Tupelo Press (2021), and four chapbooks. She is a RHINO associate & translation editor and Tupelo Quarterly translation editor.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, April 26th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Poet and Editor, Rick Barot

Rick Barot will read from his most recent publications, including The Galleons, which has been described as “…significant, the work of a poet at the height of his powers.”

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002), which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (2015), which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and received the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was listed on the top ten poetry books for 2020 by the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and was on the longlist for the National Book Award. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New Yorker. Barot directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University. 

In-Person Event— Wednesday, September 14th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Author and Founder of The Big Horror Poetry Series, Richard Martin

Richard Martin will read from his most recent book, Chapter & Verse, which has been lauded as “…required reading for the pandemic world.”

Richard Martin is the author of several books including Dream of Long Headdresses: Poems from a Thousand Hospitals; White Man Appears on Southern California Beach; Modulations; Marks; boink!; Sideways; Strip Meditation; Altercations in the Quiet Car; Buffoons in the Gene Pool; Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep; and most recently, Chapter & Verse. Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry, founder of The Big Horror Poetry Series (Binghamton, New York, 1983-1996), and a retired Boston Public Schools principal. He lives in Boston with his family.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, October 5th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Acclaimed Author, Lizz Huerta

Lizz Huerta will read from her debut novel, The Lost Dreamer. Huerta has been celebrated as “a powerful new voice in fantasy.”

Lizz Huerta is a widely admired short story writer and essayist, published in Lightspeed, The Cut, The Rumpus, Miami Rail, and more. Huerta has also been a 2018 Bread Loaf fellow; a five-time VONA Fellow; and the winner of the LUMINA fiction contest. She has taught creative writing to homeless youth through the San Diego nonprofit, So Say We All.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, October 19th at 7 p.m.: Celebrated Author, Yuvi Zalkow

Yuvi Zalkow will read from his most recent book, I Only Cry With Emoticons, which has been described as “A sly, forthright comedy about the intersection of love and technology…” and answer questions from attendees.

Yuvi Zalkow is the author of two novels: I Only Cry with Emoticons (Red Hen, 2022) and A Brilliant Novel in the Works (MP Publishing, 2012). His short stories have been published in Glimmer Train, Narrative Magazine, Carve Magazine, Rosebud, The Los Angeles Review, and others. Yuvi received an MFA from Antioch University. He uses his poor drawing skills to make YouTube videos and mobile apps that ooze with his worries and anxiety. To learn too much about him, visit https://yuvizalkow.com.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, November 9th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning Poet, Angela Narciso Torres

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. The fall 2022 Okuma Author, Angela Narciso Torres, will share poems from her most recent publications, including What Happens is Neither, which has been praised as “poems of intense reflection and loss, but also of rediscovery and delight.”

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books 2021), Blood Orange (winner of the 2013 Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry) and the chapbook, To the Bone (Sundress Publications 2020). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Harpur Palate, and Poetry Northwest. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She received the Yeats Poetry Prize from the W.B. Yeats Society of New York and was named one of Chicago's Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago by NewCity Magazine. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in San Diego. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry.

Wednesday, November 16th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: Award-winning Poet and Editor, Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer will read from his most recent publications, including The Art of Fiction: Poems, which has been described as “phenomenal in both senses of the word.”

Kevin Prufer's newest poetry collection, The Fears, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.  He is the author of several other books of poetry, including The Art of Fiction (2021), How He Loved Them (2018), Churches (2014), In a Beautiful Country (2011), and National Anthem (2008), all from Four Way Books. He's also edited several volumes of poetry. With Wayne Miller, Prufer directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the work of great but little known authors to new generations of readers. Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and the low-residency MFA at Lesley University. Among Prufer's awards and honors are many Pushcart prizes and Best American Poetry selections, numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation.

Wednesday, November 30th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430: The 25th Anniversary Celebration of Poetry International

Past and present poets, editors, and collaborators of SDSU’s beloved journal, Poetry International, will come together both in-person and via Zoom, to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of its publication. Of this edition, Editor-in-Chief, Sandra Alcosser writes, “For this anniversary edition assembled during a pandemic, climate crises and world uprisings, it’s never been more important to have these shared conversations in verse and prose on the page.”

Poetry International is one of the oldest and most respected literary journals in the world that’s specifically dedicated to poetry and poetics from around the globe. It is published annually at SDSU and made possible by a generous grant from the Edwin Watkins Foundation. Over the years, the journal has published work by such authors as Nobel Laureates Derek Walcott, Wislawa Szymborska, Jose Saramago, Eugenio Montale, Gabriela Mistral, Tomas Transtomer, Wole Soyinka, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, and numerous others. The special 25th anniversary issue contains a rich and exciting array of portfolios including new work from Kevin Prufer, and newly-translated work, presented in English as well as the original language, from Jóhann Hiálmarsson, Jorge Galán, Mariano Zaro, and poets from the Armenian diaspora, among others. Poetry International has dug deep into their archives to bring you a diverse, surprising, and moving collection of work by poets and translators from across the globe, including essays by Chana Bloch, Kwame Dawes, Khaled Mattawa, poems by Andrew Sofer, Daniel Simko, Li Ho, Zhang Oinghua, Carolyn Forché, Mona Høvring, César Vallejo, Warsan Shire, Oliverio Girondo, Kaveh Akbar, Chiamake Enyi-Amadi, and many, many more.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, February 16th at 7 p.m.: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning Author and Utah’s Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. The spring 2022 Okuma author, Paisley Rekdal, will share excerpts from her latest publications, including the multimedia project, West: A Translation, and the award-winning collection of poetry, Nightingale, and answer questions from attendees. This event is co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Initiative and the College of Arts and Letters.

Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and six books of poetry, most recently Nightingale, which won the Washington State Book Award. Her newest works of nonfiction are a book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam and Appropriate: A Provocation. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship, among many other honors. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of West: A Translation, as well as the community web projects Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City. In May 2017, she was named Utah's Poet Laureate and received a 2019 Academy of American Poets' Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, March 9th at 7 p.m.: Acclaimed Author, Elisabet Velasquez

Elisabet Velasquez will read from her debut novel, When We Make It, and answer questions from attendees.

Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua writer born in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in Muzzle Magazine, Winter Tangerine, Latina Magazine, We Are Mitú, Tidal, and more. Her debut novel, WHEN WE MAKE IT was named a book to watch for by the The New York Times.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, March 16th at 7 p.m. in LL-430: Conversations in Children’s, Middle Grade, and Young Adult Literature: A Reading and Discussion featuring Award-winning Authors and Scholars, Chris Baron, Lashon Daley, and Matt de la Peña

Chris Baron is the award-winning author of two Middle Grade novels in verse, ALL OF ME, and THE MAGICAL IMPERFECT (2021) & the forthcoming novels,  THE GRAY WORLD (2023) FOREST HEART (2024) all from Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan. He's a contributor to the Young Adult Anthology, EVERY BODY SHINES, (2021) from Bloomsbury, and the author of Lantern Tree: (poetry), (2012) from CityWorks Press winner of San Diego Book Award. He is a Professor of English at San Diego City College and the director of the Writing Center.

Lashon Daley is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature with a specialization in Black Children's Literature at SDSU. Her book project, Black Girl Lit: The Coming of (R)age Performances in Contemporary U.S. Black Girlhood Narratives, 1989-2019, charts how children's literature, film, television, and social media has helped shape our cultural understanding of what it means to be young, Black, and female in the U.S. She is the recipient of the Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry and the Mark Goodson Prize for Distinguished Artistic Talent, among other honors. Her children’s book, Mr. Okra Sells Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, was released in February 2016.

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times Bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and six picture books (including Love and Last Stop on Market Street). In 2016 he was awarded the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award and in 2019 he was given an honorary doctorate from UOP.

Virtual Event— Wednesday, April 6th at 7 p.m.: Award-winning Author, Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Maurice Carlos Ruffin will read from his most recent publications and answer questions from attendees. 

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

In-Person Event— Wednesday, April 27th at 7 p.m. in LL-430: Award-winning poet, Atsuro Riley

Atsuro Riley will read from his latest publications and answer questions from attendees.

Atsuro Riley is the author of Heard-Hoard, which has been longlisted for PEN America’s Voelcker Poetry Award, named a Boston Globe ‘Best Book of 2021,’ listed among the ‘Top 10 Books of the Year’ by Bookworm, and awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola prize. His first book Romey’s Order received the Whiting Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress. Riley’s work has been honored with the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Wood Prize given by POETRY magazine.

Wednesday, September 22 at 7 p.m.: SDSU MFA Program Faculty including Sandra Alcosser, Blas Falconer, Matt de la Peña, and April Wilder.

Faculty from SDSU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing will share excerpts from their latest publications and answer questions from participants.

Sandra Alcosser received two individual artist fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, and her books of poetry, A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature, received the highest honors from National Poetry Series, Academy of American Poets and Associated Writing Programs, as well as the Larry Levis Award and the William Stafford Award for Poetry. She founded and directs SDSU’s MFA each fall.

Blas Falconer is the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel, A Question of Gravity and Light, and The Perfect Hour. Falconer’s awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry, and the Barthelme Fellowship.

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times Bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and six picture books (including Love and Last Stop on Market Street). In 2016 he was awarded the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award and in 2019 he was given an honorary doctorate from UOP.

April Wilder is the author of the story collection, This is Not an Accident. She is a former James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow from the Institute for Creative Writing in Madison, WI. She is currently completing her novel, I Think About You All The Time, Starting Tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 29 at 7 p.m.: SDSU MFA Alumna and multi-genre author, Tara Stillions Whitehead

Tara Stillions Whitehead will read from her most recent publication, Blood Histories, and answer questions from attendees.

Tara Stillions Whitehead is a multi-genre writer and filmmaker teaching in Central Pennsylvania. Tara’s writing has been published in or is forthcoming from various award-winning journals, magazines, and anthologies, including cream city review, The Rupture, Fairy Tale Review, Gone Lawn, PRISM international, Chicago Review, Pithead Chapel, Jellyfish Review, and Monkeybicycle. She is Assistant Professor of Film, Video, and Digital Media Production at Messiah University. Tara’s writing has been included in the Wigleaf Top 50, has been nominated for Best of the Net, the AWP Intro Journals Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of a Glimmer Train Press Award for New Writers. Her full-length collection, The Year of the Monster, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in September 2022.

Wednesday,October 13 at 7 p.m.: Acclaimed poet, Alan Chazaro

Alan Chazaro will read from his poetry collection, Piñata Theory, and answer questions from attendees.

Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). His chapbook, Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge, is also now available on Ghost City Press. He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. He occasionally writes for SFGATE, KQED, and other publications, and is usually on Twitter and IG talking about basketball, anime, and Mexican American pochoisms @alan_chazaro.

Wednesday, October 27 at 6 p.m.: Author and essayist, Sayantani Dasgupta

Sayantani Dasgupta will read from her most recent publication, Women Who Misbehave, and answer questions from attendees.

Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She is the author of WOMEN WHO MISBEHAVE (Penguin Random House), FIRE GIRL: ESSAYS ON INDIA, AMERICA, & THE IN-BETWEEN (Two Sylvias Press) & the chapbook THE HOUSE OF NAILS: MEMORIES OF A NEW DELHI CHILDHOOD (Red Bird Press). She is currently at work on a memoir.

Wednesday, November 10 at 7 p.m.: Author and editor, Eric Nguyen

Eric Nguyen will share excerpts from his debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water.

Eric Nguyen earned an MFA in creative writing from McNeese State University in Louisiana. He has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary, Voices of Our Nation Arts (VONA), and the Tin House Writers Workshop. Nguyen is the editor-in-chief of diaCRITICS and lives in Washington, DC. ​Things We Lost to the Water ​is his first novel.

Wednesday, November 17 at 7 p.m.: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Award-winning poet, Nicole Sealey

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. Nicole Sealey will share excerpts from her latest publications and answer questions from attendees. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature.

Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her honors include a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review and a Poetry International Prize, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Poetry Project. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and also teaches in the low-residency MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.

Wednesday, February 17th at 7 p.m.: Poets and SDSU MFA Program Alums, Betsy Littrell and Ron Salisbury

Betsy Littrell and Ron Salisbury will share their work and answer questions from attendees.

Betsy Littrell is a whimsical soccer mom to four boys as well as a writing instructor at San Diego State University, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing. When she’s not writing (or when she is), she enjoys a good cup of tea, a glass of rosé and peaceful moments by the beach with a book in hand. Having grown up in Massachusetts, she is a superstitious Red Sox fan and also cheers for Liverpool soccer. Her work has appeared in several journals; This Woman is Haunted is her first full-length poetry collection.

Ron Salisbury, selected as the inaugural Poet Laureate for San Diego 2020-2021, has taught poetry for the past forty years. Since moving back to San Diego thirteen years ago, Ron has taught classes and workshops in poetry for San Diego Writers, Ink. He graduated from San Diego State University with a Master in Fine Arts, Poetry in 2016. His book, Miss Desert Inn was the winner of the 2015 Main Street Rag Poetry Prize and was published in the fall of 2015. He has been widely published in journals.

Wednesday, March 3rd at 7 p.m.: Poet and CantoMundo Regional Chair, Sara Borjas

Sara Borjas will read from her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, and answer questions from attendees. This event is co-sponsored by SDSU Press and the MALAS Program. Sara Borjas’ collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, was published by Noemi Press in 2019 as part of the Akrilica series and received a 2020 American Book Award. She was named one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets, is a 2017 CantoMundo Fellow, represents California as a CantoMundo Regional Chair, and is the recipient of the 2014 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Poem-a-Day by The Academy of American Poets, and The Offing, amongst others. She is a lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Wednesday, March 10th at 7 p.m.: Author and SDSU MFA Alum, Thomas “Tex” Gresham

Thomas “Tex” Gresham will share excerpts from his book, Heck, Texas, and answer questions from attendees. Gresham is the author of Heck, Texas. His work has been published in Hobart, F(r)iction, The Normal School, and The Pinch, among other places. Tex is the recipient of the 2020 Humanitas David and Lynn Angell Comedy College Fellowship. Tex is co-host of Mumbo Jumbo: A Movie Podcast with Kurt Kroeber. Tex has a BA in Film Studies from Texas State University and an MFA in Fiction from San Diego State University, where he was also the editor for Fiction International. He currently studies screenwriting at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, where he lives with his partner, V Ruiz, and their kiddo.

Wednesday, March 24th at 7 p.m.: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Poet and Essayist, Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. Aimee Nezhukumatathil will share excerpts from her latest publications and answer questions from attendees. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: OCEANIC (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), LUCKY FISH (2011), AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO (2007), and MIRACLE FRUIT (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Wednesday, April 7th at 7 p.m.: Poet and CantoMundo Fellow, Michael Torres

Michael Torres will read from his debut collection of poetry, An Incomplete List of Names, and answer questions from attendees. This event is co-sponsored by SDSU Press and the MALAS Program. Torres is a VONA distinguished alum and CantoMundo fellow. In 2016 he was a winner of the Loft Mentor Series, received an Individual Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and was awarded a Jerome Foundation Research and Travel Grant to visit the pueblo in Jalisco, Mexico where his father grew up. In 2019 he received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and The Loft Literary Center for the Mirrors & Windows Program. He is a 2020 McKnight Writing Fellow, and a former Artist-in-Residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. His first collection of poems, AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF NAMES, (Beacon Press, 2020) was selected by Raquel Salas Rivera for the National Poetry Series and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020.

Wednesday, April 21st at 7 p.m.: Author and SDSU Professor, Harold Jaffe

Harold Jaffe will share excerpts from his recent publication, BRUT: Writings on Art & Artists. Jaffe is the author of 29 volumes of fiction, docufiction, and non-fiction, including BRUT: Writings on Art & Artists; Porn-anti-Porn; Goosestep; Death Café; Sacred Outcast: Dispatches from India; Revolutionary Brain; Induced Coma; Anti-Twitter: 150 50-Word Stories; Paris 60; Jesus Coyote; 15 Serial Killers; Beyond the Techno-Cave; Terror-dot-Gov; Straight Razor; Eros Anti-Eros; False Positive; Beasts; Mourning Crazy Horse; Madonna & Other Spectacles; and Dos Indios. Jaffe’s writing has been translated in Turkey, France, Spain, Germany, Romania, Japan, Italy, and Cuba. Jaffe is editor-in-chief of Fiction International.

Wednesday, September 23rd at 7 p.m.: SDSU MFA Program Faculty including Sandra Alcosser, Blas Falconer, Matt de la Peña, and April Wilder

Faculty from SDSU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing will share excerpts from their latest publications and answer questions from participants.

Sandra Alcosser received two individual artist fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, and her books of poetry, A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except By Nature, received the highest honors from National Poetry Series, Academy of American Poets and Associated Writing Programs, as well as the Larry Levis Award and the William Stafford Award for Poetry. She founded and directs SDSU’s MFA each fall.

Blas Falconer is the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel, A Question of Gravity and Light, and The Perfect Hour. Falconer’s awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry, and the Barthelme Fellowship.

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times Bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and five picture books (including Love and Last Stop on Market Street). In 2016 he was awarded the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award and in 2019 hewas given an honorary doctorate from UOP.

April Wilder is the author of the story collection, This is Not an Accident. She is a former James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow from the Institute for Creative Writing in Madison, WI. She is currently completing her novel, I Think About You All The Time, Starting Tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 30th at 7 p.m.: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Allison Hedge Coke

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma.

Allison Hedge Coke will share poems from her most recent collections, Burn and Streaming, and answer questions from participants. She is the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside and the 2020 Dan & Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals University of Hawai'i Mānoa. Her other publications include, Off-Season City Pipe (labor volume, Wordcraft Writer of the Year in Poetry), Dog Road Woman (American Book Award), Blood Run (a free verse-play regarding the Indigenous mound site in Iowa and South Dakota), and Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (a memoir).

Wednesday, October 14th at 7 p.m.: Cris Mazza

SDSU MA Alumna, Cris Mazza, will share selections from her forthcoming novel, Yet to Come, and answer questions from participants. Mazza is also the author of Charlatan: New & Selected Stories, Something Wrong With Her, and Various Men Who Knew Us As Girls. She has authored over a dozen other books, mostly novels and collections of short fiction. Mazza now lives in the Midwest and is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Wednesday, October 28th at 7 p.m.: Stephen-Paul Martin

Co-Director of SDSU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Stephen-Paul Martin, will share his story, “The Phantom Zone”, forthcoming in Fiction International. Martin has published over twenty books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. One of his short story collections, The Gothic Twilight, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1993. His most recent collections of fiction are The Ace of Lightning (FC2, 2017)) and Changing the Subject (Ellipsis, 2010). From 1980-1996 he co-edited Central Park, an internationally acclaimed journal of the arts & social commentary.

Wednesday, November 18th at 7 p.m.: Authors and Editors of the essay collection, Reclaiming Our Stories 2

Authors and Editors of Reclaiming Our Stories 2, including Khalid (Paul) Alexander, Manuel Paul Lopez, and Ebony Tyree, will share selections from the collection and discuss its impact. Reclaiming Our Stories 2 continues the tradition of a literature—beginning with the slave narrative—that counters hegemony and white supremacy. Most of the authors are first-generation college students who have all survived and continue their struggle to overcome the constant challenges of being Black, Brown, and poor in San Diego. These narratives deal with complex issues encompassing race, class, place, family, mental and physical health, gender, disability, and identity. Above all, they are stories of life, loss, and determination to thrive.

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Mimi Lok: Wednesday, February 19th at 7 p.m.

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. Award-winning author and Executive Director and Editor of Voice of Witness, Mimi Lok, will read from her debut short fiction collection, Last of Her Name, as part of the Laurie Okuma Memorial Series. Lok is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award and an Ylvisaker Award for Fiction, a finalist for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Susan Atefat Arts and Letters Prize for nonfiction.

Margaret McMullan: Wednesday, February 26th at 7 p.m.

Award-winning author and NEA Creative Writing Fellow, Margaret McMullan, will share excerpts from her recent memoir, Where the Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss, and Return, which Joyce Carol Oates lauds as “A powerful testament to familial mourning…both searing and uplifting.” McMullan is the author of nine books including the young adult novel, Sources of Light, and the anthology, Every Father’s Daughter. She received a Fulbright professorship in Hungary to research her memoir.

MFA Faculty Reading: Wednesday, September 25th at 7 p.m.

Current and Guest MFA Faculty including Sandra Alcosser, Blas Falconer, Stephen-Paul Martin, April Wilder, Marco Wilkinson, and Moshe Zonder will share excerpts from their latest work and answer questions during a post-reading panel focused on literary citizenship the role of the author/artist in the 21st century.

Karla Cordero and Jennifer Minniti Shippey: Wednesday, October 9th at 7 p.m.

SDSU MFA Program Alumnae, Karla Cordero and Jennifer Minniti-Shippey, will share selections from their latest publications and speak about their experiences of building community in the MFA Program. Karla Cordero is the author of How To Pull Apart the Earth (Not a Cult, 2018) and a Macondo and VONA Fellow, a recipient of The Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship, and the SDSU Global Diversity Award. Jennifer Minniti-Shippey is the author of After the Tour (Calypso Editions, 2019) and the Managing Editor of Poetry International, Director of Poetic Youth programs, and a professor at SDSU.

Chris Baron and Matt de la Peña: Wednesday, October 16th at 7 p.m.

SDSU MFA Program Alumni, Chris Baron and Matt de la Peña, will read from their collected works and discuss the impact of young-adult and middle-grade literature. Chris Baron is the author of the poetry collection, Under the Broom Tree, which was published in the poetry anthology Lantern Tree, winner of the San Diego Book Award. His first novel, All of Me (Feiwel and Friends, 2019), has been lauded as “beautifully written, brilliant, and necessary.” Matt de la Peña is the author of six critically acclaimed young-adult novels, as well as three picture books, including Last Stop on Market Street, which won the Newbery Medal and was chosen for a Caldecott Honor.

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Karen An-hwei Lee: Wednesday, October 30th at 7 p.m.

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma. Poet, literary critic, and translator, Karen An-hwei Lee, will read from her latest novel, The Maze of Transparencies, as part of the Laurie Okuma Memorial Series. Lee is the author of three poetry collections, a book of literary criticism, and two novels. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and currently serves in the administration at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Juan Felipe Herrera: Wednesday, November 6th at 4 p.m.

Former California Poet Laureate (2012-2014) and U.S. Poet Laureate (2015-2017), Juan Felipe Herrera, will read from his collected works. Herrera has published over a dozen collections of poetry and has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature. He is also an activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. Herrera is a recipient of the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Focal Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN West Poetry Award. This event is presented in collaboration with the Department of History, Department of Spanish, Department of Chicana/o Studies, and the College of Arts and Letters.

Carlos Kelly and David Martinez: Wednesday, November 20th at 7 p.m.

SDSU MFA Program Alumni, Carlos Gabriel Kelly and David Tomas Martinez, will read from their collected works. Carlos Gabriel Kelly is a first-generation Mexican-American PhD student at The Ohio State University. His first book of poetry, Wounds Fragments Derelict, was released in May 2019. His work has also appeared in Pacific Review, Barzakh Magazine, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, and Latinx Cine in the 21st Century. David Tomas Martinez is a CantoMundo Fellow and recipient of a 2017 NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, and the Stanley P. Young Fellowship from Bread Loaf. He is the author of two poetry collections, Hustle (Sarabande, 2014), which won the New England Book Festival’s Poetry Prize, among other honors, and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder (Sarabande, 2018). This event is presented in collaboration with the M.A.L.A.S Program.

Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky: Wednesday, December 4th at 7 p.m.

Award-winning authors, Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky, will read from their most recent publications. Katie Farris is the author of boysgirls, (Marick Press, 2011) which has been lauded as “truly innovative,” (Prague Post), “a tour de force” (Robert Coover, PEN/Faulkner Award-winner), and “a book with gigantic scope,” (Louisville Courier-Journal), and Mother Superior in Hell (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Recently, her translations in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012 (Tupelo Press) received Poetry East/West's International Translation Award. Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004). He has also co-edited and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Foundation's Fellowship, and the NEA Fellowship.

Corinne Goria: Wednesday, February 20th at 7 p.m.

Perhaps the most important lesson the majority of our narrators would agree on is the necessity to speak up at all costs, to have all voices in the global economy heard, to have all raised hands counted.
--From, Invisible Hands: Voices From the Global Economy

Eugene Lim: Wednesday, February 27th at 7 p.m.

I ran through various chase scenes, loved and had bitter fights, mourned future and past dead, cursed and was cursed, tried grandiose heists only to be caught and jailed and tortured and then set free, went hungry, ate elegant meals at long tables, mourned and was chased and chased and fought and mourned and mourned and mourned and mourned.
--From, Dear Cyborgs

Peg and Robert Boyers: Wednesday, March 13th at 7 p.m.

Grow resourceful.
Become like me completely Venetian:
cling to debris, favor ruin.
--Peg Boyers, From, “Wall Moss”

Cowering against the steady rain under our small umbrella, we consult our map of the city and soon set off on foot to find our hotel, the chaos behind us on the packed sidewalks a vivid token of something we have long known.
--Robert Boyers, From, “The Sublime”

Ellen Doré Watson: Wednesday, April 10th at 7 p.m.

This event is co-sponsored by the J. Keith Behner and Catherine M. Stiefel Program on Brazil.

does not fly, is neither free nor bound, fastened only
to my daughter and my chest. If this sounds like a riddle,
it is. See how I make light—while this moving part throbs
in its shadow-cave, desperate to be the body’s window.
--From, “My heart is in no way first”

William Luvaas: Wednesday, April 24th at 7 p.m.

We go about life in our separate ways which tangle together in a single ravel, one strand inextricably linked with the others. We are never isolated, never fully alone.
--From, Welcome to Saint Angel

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Marilyn Chin: Wednesday, May 1st at 7 p.m.

Her release, her joy, her oil, her toil, her moxie, her terror, her swirl
Dig deeper into soil, deeper into her soul, what do you find my girl
Thrash of black hair and silken snare, face in the bottom of the world
Bound by ankles, poor deer, poor sow, O delicate hooves and fascicles
Dead doe, dead doe, dead doe
--From, “Bamboo, The Dance”

Mel Freilicher & Jim Miller: Wednesday, September 26th at 7 p.m.

We had the sky up there all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether mankind was inherently monstrous and greedy, or if it was primarily the capitalist class.
--Mel Frelicher, From, American Cream

Through it all, the sound of the waves crashing in and receding went on and on like the heart of the universe beating, no matter what happened or to whom.
--Jim Miller, From, Last Days in Ocean Beach

Carly Joy Miller: Wednesday, October 17th at 7 p.m.

This is the body: take it or not. Yes, the body falls. Of course: we are meant for dents. Of course: we shiver in grief. Of course: try to shake up some glimmer of light. Turn ourselves loose on the wind.
--From, “Colony”

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Vi Khi Nao: Wednesday, October 24th at 7 p.m.

I stand before God for hours while the sea roams. Salt-fermented clusters of air chase the outer rims of waves. Sun. Gun. Gone. Where is winter now when I need her to fire and split a bullet of light into two?
--From, Fish in Exile

Lee Briccetti: Wednesday, November 14th at 7 p.m.

, touch— is this not, finally, coming to our senses?
, we make our souls
, not far from bears on the orchard trails, apples in their lusty mouths
--From, “Sky Notes/Sky Sonnet (4)”

Manuel Paul López: Wednesday, November 28th at 7 p.m.

10. To avoid bad luck hum the first verse of the greatest poem of all time, though use discretion, because many will disagree with your choice and attempt to cut you.
--From, “Ten New Superstitions”

Blas Falconer & April Wilder: Wednesday, December 5th at 7 p.m.

Below, the city rests. You’ll test
yourself the way you always have, a boy

stepping into the dark and the story
it held—whatever it was.
--Blas Falconer, From“To press the air, to bless the silhouette”

Normally what Kat didn’t like about swimming was the feeling, when she was submerged, of being the place in the water that wasn’t water, of being, herself, the negative space in the element, which is how the man from Atlantis had to feel out there, pumping his sad solitary conjoined legs, waiting for the sight of any other being at all like himself.
--April Wilder, From, This Is Not an Accident

Hadara Bar-Nadav: Wednesday, February 7th at 7 p.m.

Say sky here and blue opens.
Say black and night throws its drink.

The sky reminds us of an invitation
elsewhere. Even a storm has its charm.
--From, “Night”

Ephraim Scott Sommers: Wednesday, February 28th at 7 p.m.

So we have played our nights like a game of brutal dice
in the out-of-pocket way, something has forced us to eat
our own teeth, and now we worship, finally, at the cup of gravel
and loss because submission, too, is a body, and it swallows us all.
--From, “Up Against It”

Ana Luísa Amaral: Wednesday, March 7th at 7 p.m.

Good morning to all things glossy out on the balcony,
the leaves of the camellia, whose very name shines,
the song of that bird
--From “Mini-ode, in the form of a semi-biographical note”

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: Wednesday, March 21st at 7 p.m.

How beautiful the earth is when it moves properly. How pleasant to move with it. To forget that any other movement ever existed. That a different movement is even possible.
--From, Waking Lions

Chad Stroup: Wednesday, April 4th at 7 p.m.

Physical manifestations of musical notes twisted and strutted from between his parted lips, spinning around him in a wet whirlwind. They formed a fanciful merry-go-round. It was a Disney moment.
--From, Secrets of the Weird

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Jade Chang: Wednesday, April 18th

Earthquakes. Floods. Infidelity. Betrayal. Failure. The fields burn and the next harvest is assured. The world destroys itself and we rebuild it. The destroying is as important as the rebuilding. There can be as much joy in the destruction as the rebirth.
--From, The Wangs vs. the World

Lance Olsen: Wednesday, September 20th at 7 p.m.

When did stories become frantic night sky, each jittering white speck precisely a jittering white speck and nothing else?
--From, Dreamlives of Debris

Stephen-Paul Martin & Bill Yarrow: Wednesday, October 11th at 7 p.m.

I’m a stray dog haunted by moonlight in a town on the other side of the world. I’m in the yes of no and the no of yes. I’m the ace of lightning.
--Stephen-Paul Martin, from, The Ace of Lightning

Clichéd as a butterfly as an emblem of becoming.
Clichéd as a blossom as a metaphor of maturation.
“A good poem is a mirror,” he said reflectively.
--Bill Yarrow, from “Camp Atheism”

Tana & Timothy Welch: Wednesday, November 8th at 7 p.m.

I spent my life teaching her about men
and poison, making sure she knew a woman must behave
as a turtle: learn what to hide, what to show:
--Tana Jean Welch, from “The Same Wide Feet”

We’re carved from cold:
the jeweler’s panoptic diamonds
now dust
--Timothy Daniel Welch, from “The Snow People”

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Siel Ju: Wednesday, November 29th at 7 p.m.

For a moment I held her wrist; its pulse quivered and twitched, like a feather stuck in a revolving door.
--From, Cake Time

Erin Rodoni: Wednesday, December 6th at 7 p.m.

We’re one bead on the nation’s wet skin.
Traffic clears its throat into the open mic of evening.
--From, “Manifest”

 

Editors and Authors of Reclaiming our Stories: Narratives of Identity, Resilience, and Empowerment: Wednesday, February 22nd at 7 p.m.

There’s something so beautiful about writers who write about the stuff of their lives…this writing transcends the run of the mill and actually means something, has an internal purpose and integrity too rarely seen...
--Jimmy Santiago Baca (on ROS)

Karla Cordero: Wednesday, March 8th at 7 p.m.

There is demon between my eyes,
a fanged beast, a nightmare in shadowed veils
who rips root from bone, some maniac killer of ancestry
a cyclops stitching brown girl nicknames,
el diablo dressed in America.
--From, “A Brown Girl’s Blues”

Christian Wiman: Wednesday, March 15th at 7 p.m.

Whacking glints
bash-dancing on the cellar’s fire
I am the sound the sun would make
if the sun could make a sound.
--From, “And I Said to My Soul, Be Loud”

Elena Karina Byrne: Wednesday, April 12th at 7 p.m.

O Obedience like a horse, we are
trained to the bit, mouth-made. Heresy. Here. Say.
the mouthy to the bombast in secret.
--From, “Mouth”

Matt de la Peña: Wednesday, April 19th at 7 p.m.

Real life isn’t always your daydream.
--From, I Will Save You

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Wednesday, April 26th at 7 p.m.

Under this moon, a single car cools its engine,
forgets the cough of commute until morning.
What driveway and roadmarker blown past?
What rest stop and roar will it next learn?
--From, “Under the Pascal Moon”

Richard Martin: Wednesday, September 14th at 7 p.m. in Love Library, Room 430.

There were ghost planes in the sky of homeless soldiers
When consciousness slips on a noose of flowers
eye is not so bad or mad a witness
--From, “Witness”

Kimball Taylor: Wednesday, September 28th at 7 p.m.

Everybody likes bikes, I’ll say, and when I saw this motley collection of tubes and cranks and frames and wheels—the bicycle equivalent of a shipyard after a hurricane—I discovered that I liked these bikes most of all.
--From, The Coyote’s Bicycle

One Book, One San Diego 10th Anniversary Celebration featuring, lê thi diem thúy: Wednesday, October 19th at 7 p.m.

War has no beginning and no end. It crosses oceans like a splintered boat filled with people singing a sad song.
--From, The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Stephanie Berger: Wednesday, October 26th at 7 p.m.

Even this endless heaven requires an umbrella. Even this eternity retired and hired a timekeeper.
--From, “Gentlemen Prefer Bows Over Dinner”

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Sayantani Dasgupta: Wednesday, November 9th at 7 p.m.

From the skies, Bangladesh looks like a wound. The patches of paddy fields and forests resemble soft welts submerged in grey bathwater.
--From, Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between

Ellen Bass: Wednesday, November 16th at 7 p.m.

The plums bloom extravagantly,
the dolphins stitch sky to sea.
Each pebble and fern, pond and fish
is yours whether or not you believe.
--From, “Ode to the God of Atheists”

Glover Davis: Wednesday, December 7th at 7 p.m.

But water turning into blood or wine
grows darker on lips trembling near a light
fluttering like a clogged heart shutting down.
--From, “Rain After Drought”

Editors and Contributors of Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana: Wednesday, February 24th at 7 p.m.

Local San Diego authors and educators including Jim Miller, Chris Baron, Ella deCastro Baron, Francisco J. Bustos, and Sydney Brown, will celebrate the release of the highly anticipated collection, Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (City Works Press).

“Sunshine/Noir II continues the work of unmasking the tourist spectacle in a city that holds illusion as a civic virtue.”
--Mike Davis

Assaf Gavron with special guest, Aviya Kushner: Wednesday, March 9th at 7 p.m.

Gavron is the author of seven books and has won the Israeli Prime Minister’s Creative Award for Authors, among other honors. Kushner is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, a contributing editor at A Public Space, and a mentor for The National Yiddish Book Center.

A chill settled on the hilltop during the course of the night and sparkled when morning broke in millions of refractions of frost from among clods of earth, gardening tools, cacti, upturned push cars, and on the windshields of vehicles. The day opened its eyes with a wide yawn, and hours would go by before it would shake off the cold.
--From, The Hilltop


The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Vievee Francis: Wednesday, March 23rd at 7 p.m.

Each semester, thanks to an endowment created by her family and friends, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading honors the memory of SDSU alumna, Laurie Matsueda Okuma.

Cave Canem fellow and award-winning poet, Vievee Francis, will read from her newest poetry collection,Forest Primeval. Francis is the recipient of the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. Forest Primeval has been shortlisted for a 2016 PEN Literary Award.

What chaos the face when gutted so. We gasp
on the shore of it, our skin chafed by the sand of it,
our chambers ruptured on its rocks.
--From, “Grasp”

Malena Mörling: Wednesday, April 6th at 7 p.m.

Noted Swedish poet and translator, Malena Mörling, will share her collected work and discuss the art of translation. Mörling is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She has published two collections of poems, Ocean Avenue and Astoria.

Not a dress, a death—
Not a coat, a coffin—
Not the sole of a shoe, a soul
that can’t be glued to the underside of anything—
--From, “Wearing a Death”

Garth Greenwell with special guests, Mary Rakow & James Byrne: Wednesday, April 13th at 7 p.m.

Celebrated author, Garth Greenwell, will read from his debut novel, What Belongs to You. Greenwell holds graduate degrees from Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His novel has received rave reviews from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Mary Rakow is the author of The Memory Room and the recipient of two Lannan Foundation Residencies and a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. James Byrne is the editor and co-founder of The Wolf poetry magazine. His debut poetry collection, Passages of Time, was published by Flipped Eye in 2003.

…but then our fantasies are always more vivid than the stuff of life that feeds them, life which always disappoints us until we can embellish it in memory.
--From, Mitko

Poets and Writers from SDSU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing will celebrate their impending graduation and read from their thesis manuscripts: Wednesday, April 27th at 7 p.m.

An Evening of Spoken Word Poetry featuring, Mercedez Holtry & Brian Oliva: Wednesday, May 4th at 7 p.m.

Holtry is a slam poet, writer, student, mentor, and Chicana feminist. Holtry is a slam poet, student, mentor, and Chicana feminist. Brian "SuperB" Oliva is an accomplished writer and spoken word artist.

I am birthed from oppressed and oppressor.
--From,“My Blood is Beautiful”

Maria Rybakova: Wednesday, September 23rd at 7 p.m.

When he was becoming a god or a woman
he knew the life he was destined to live
was only a chapter
in the thick book of opportunity.
--From, Gnedich

Malachi Black: Wednesday, October 21st at 7 p.m.

With the flicker of a fishtail now
push down: Enter into under
water and the onset of the shudder
buckling the lungs: In sudden
thunder, bones are bent to song—
--From, “Whalesong”

Jane Hirshfield: Wednesday, November 4th at 7 p.m.

Grief shifts,
as a grazing horse does,
one leg to the other.
--From, “I Wanted Only a Little”

Martin Woodside and Piotr Florczyk: Wednesday, November 18th at 7 p.m.

I don’t know what else to do
but write slow and free
like the soft rain
of spring.
--Angela Marinescu, Trans. by Martin Woodside, “Dadaism Versus Surrealism” From, Of Gentle Wolves: An Anthology of Romanian Poetry

Be careful. If roadside crosses are God’s periscopes,
then what to make of the maple that holds the world in place
outside your window?.
--Piotr Florczyk, From, Los Angeles Sketchbook

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Carolyn Finney: Wednesday, December 2nd at 7 p.m.

Just like “nature,” the legacy of human experience on this soil will always find a way to express itself.
--From, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimaging the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors

The Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series, conjointly with the Department of English and Comparative Literature, invite you to celebrate 25 years of SDSU’s MFA in Creative Writing-- 25 years of elegance and moxie— with events featuring MFA Faculty, Students, Affiliates, and Alumni.

On Wednesday, February 11th, MFA Students, Alumni, and Faculty will gather for a festival of reading and greeting.

The evening will begin with a reading and book fair featuring distinguished MFA Alumni from 5-6:30 p.m., followed by a MFA Faculty reading from 7-8:30 p.m. featuring Sandra Alcosser, Sherwin Bitsui, Katie Farris, Ilya Kaminsky, and David Matlin. Festivities will continue on Friday, February 13th, with refreshments and a reading featuring MFA Students and Alumni at 7 p.m. in the Museum of the Living Artist (Balboa Park).

Editors from Locked Horn Press discuss their compilations, Gendered and Written and Read Women: Wednesday, February 18th at 7 p.m.

In collaboration with the Jewish Studies Program and Poetry International, the Living Writers Series is excited to host the Israeli Poets Symposium on Wednesday, February 25th at 7 p.m.

The event will feature four poets including, Haviva Pedaya (recipient of the prestigious Yehuda Amichai Award), Tal Nitzan (noted poet, translator, and children’s book author), Shimon Adaf(award-winning poet and director of the Creative Writing Program at Ben Gurion University), and Anat Zecharya (poet, dance critic, and recipient of the Poetry in the Streets Prize). This event will be moderated by, Tziona Shamay (director of the Helicon Society for Advancement of Poetry in Israel).

NAACP Image Awards Nominee, Jericho Brown, will read from his new collection of poetry, The New Testament on Wednesday, March 11th at 7 p.m.

“His lyrics are memorable, muscular, majestic. Brown’s poems are living on the page, and they give the reader that much: a sense of having been alive fully…”
--Ilya Kaminsky

On Wednesday, March 25th at 7 p.m., celebrated author, Benjamin Hollander, will read from his prophetic book, In the House Un-American.

"It is difficult to speak of Benjamin Hollander's masterpiece, so America, so like an inner emigration, as if we had all changed names...A book of this order comes very rarely to our consciousness."
--David Shapiro

Artists from So Say We All and participants in the Veteran Writers Program celebrate the release of their collection, Homecoming, on Wednesday, April 15th at 7 p.m.

So Say We All is a literary and performing arts non-profit whose mission is to create opportunities for individuals to tell their stories, and tell them better, through three core priorities: publishing, performance, and education.

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, esteemed novelist, Nahid Rachlin. On Wednesday, April 22nd at 7 p.m., Rachlin will share selections from her celebrated memoir, Persian Girls.

"I am so impressed with Nahid Rachlin’s style--its purity and sparseness and immediacy…The voice is cool and pure. Bleak is the right word, if you will understand that bleakness can have a startling beauty."
--Anne Tyler

Author and SDSU Professor, Hal Jaffe, will share selections from his newest release, Induced Coma, on Wednesday, May 6th at 7 p.m.

“Harold Jaffe’s acts of literary terrorism work to wrestle control of the future of literature away from the dominant culture. Those who have benefited have seldom been literary artists. Jaffe has worked brilliantly to save literature from its unwitting complicity in the elimination of readers who dare question authority.”
--Eckhard Gerdes

Marilyn Chin: Wednesday, September 24th at 7 p.m.

In the land of missing pronouns
Sun is a continuous performance
And we my love are nothing
--From, “Quiet the Dog, Tether the Pony”

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Toni Jensen: Wednesday, October 8th at 7 p.m.

In the morning, the sun would still be shining. I knew that. In the morning, a quiet was going to descend that could expand, could make that other quiet grow in a way that would bring on even more sadness.--
From, From the Hilltop

Matt de la Peña: Wednesday, October 22nd at 7 p.m.

And this time he just has his eyes on mine and a smile that’s fading off his face, draining like water from a bathtub, like sand through your fingers at the beach. This time his eyes get mad big and wide and scared and then they drift to the side, emptying out.
--From, We Were Here

Peter Cole: Wednesday, October 29th at 7 p.m.

Gone is the griffin, the phoenix, the faun.
Only angels in the poem live on
--From, “Actual Angels”

Editors from Locked Horn Press discuss their compilation, Gendered and Written: Wednesday, November 12th at 7 p.m.

Marvin Bell: Tuesday, November 18th at 4 p.m.

The clean rain is like the peeling spine, papery,
of an important book title—it comes to mean the day
as words come to mean the things they wrap around,
--From, “In My Nature: 3 Corrective Dialogues”

David Tomas Martinez: Wednesday, December 3rd at 7 p.m.

Silence makes us explain ourselves.
--From, “Innominatus”

Spring Kickoff Poetry Salon featuring, Srikanth Reddy and Suzanne Buffam: Wednesday, February 5th at 12:30 p.m.

Monika Zobel: Wednesday, March 5th at 7 p.m.

Trees are shelters and wounds—
The longest fall occurs
between leaf and leaving.
--From, “To Begin at Breath”

Sherwin Bitsui: Wednesday, March 12th at 7 p.m.

Born with leaves under our coats,
two years of solitude,
the sky never sailed from us,
--From, “Blankets of Bark”

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents, Renee Swindle: Wednesday, March 19th at 7 p.m.

He’s built like a wrestler and wears a silver suit that strains against his Popeye-like biceps; his chest bubbles out from his shirt like a growth. He looks, in fact, like a baby shark standing on its dorsal fins.
--From, Shake Down the Stars

Mel Freilicher: Wednesday, March 26th at 7 p.m.

In my youth, I liked to believe that as long as I was sufficiently obsessed, nothing could touch me.
--From, The Encyclopedia of Rebels

Jessica Piazza: Wednesday, April 9th at 7 p.m.

Like lighter flame in wind, you wind your hand
around the ember of my bending body.
--From, “Clithrophilia”

Janice Steinberg: Wednesday, April 16th at 7 p.m.

The rage…it’s as if embers have leaped out of the fireplace and set me alight. My body is smoldering, my brittle hair a torch.
--From, The Tin Horse

MFA Graduate Reading: Wednesday, April 30th at 7 p.m.

Rick Bass: Wednesday, May 7th at 7 p.m.

Blue like a scent trapped in the ice, waiting for some soft release, some thawing, so that it can continue spreading.
-- From, The Hermit’s Story

The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading presents: Pireeni Sundaralingam: Wednesday, September 18th at 7 p.m. 

My country is a white blindness,
an absence of newsprint,
a vacuum of words
--From, “My Country is a White Blindness”

Halina Duraj: Wednesday, October 9th at 7 p.m.

He wears a striped silk cravat, has a closed-lipped smile, a large nose, sharp eyes, a slick black widow’s peak. When he speaks, his new gold tooth winks in the light.
--From, Fatherland

Dana Gioia: Thursday, October 31st at 3:30 p.m.

The heart of the matter, the ghost of a chance,
A tremor, a fever, an ache in the chest.
The moth and the candle beginning their dance,
A cool white sheet on which nothing will rest.                 
--From, “The Heart of the Matter” (Pity the Beautiful)

Tomaz Salamun: Wednesday, November 6th at 7 p.m. 

Wanderer, the moon has its own saying:
I would pour over your face with a bucket so
the water would flow onto your clothes.   
--From, “Movements” (There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair)

Ofelia Zepeda: Wednesday, November 13th at 7 p.m. 

Should we ask to be rainmakers
Should we ask to be good runners
or should we ask to be heartbreakers.
No, we are not ready to be here at this ocean.     
--From, “Ocean Power” (Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert)

William Luvaas: Wednesday, November 20th at 7 p.m.

Histories reside in this ash—the palimpsest of a distant purposefulness. Ashes pile in drifts against fences, turn our lawns calcium white, make a foul, acrid soup of water in dogs’ bowls.  
--From, Ashes Rain Down

Sandra Alcosser: Wednesday, December 4th at 7 p.m. 

Grizzlies walk the trail in green moonlight.
It’s smoother, more silent. Dream-white
antelope float across your clearing,
tasting, marking footrocks.               
--From, “A Night on Goat Haunt” (A Fish to Feed All Hunger)