We could not be more excited to announce our Spring 2025 Reading & Lecture Series, featuring an amazing slate of writers! We're grateful for support from the College of Humanities, the W.A. Franke Honors College, and from supporters in the Poetry Center's Walt Whitman Circle for their underwriting support.
Events take place at the Poetry Center and will be livestreamed at the time of the reading unless noted otherwise on the Poetry Center website.
Thursday, January 23, 7:00 PM
Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing In Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books. His work was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the LA Times Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, National Jewish Book Award, and more.
Katie Farris is a poet, writer of hybrid forms, and translator. She is the author of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, which Publishers Weekly named one of the Top Ten Books of 2023; the chapbook A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, which won the Chad Walsh Poetry Award; and boysgirls, a hybrid-form book. Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, Orison Prize, and Anne Halley Prize from Massachusetts Review.
Thursday, January 30, 7:00 PM
Tom Sanders Memorial Reading: Kimberly Blaeser
Kimberly Blaeser, poet, photographer, and scholar, is past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets. She is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist whose accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.
This reading is presented with support from Amerind Museum.
Thursday, February 13, 7:00 PM
Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections. Lighthead was the winner of the 2010 National Book Award and American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin was a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize. His prose collection, To Float In The Space Between, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism.
This reading is presented with support from the Borchard Center on Literary Arts.
Thursday, February 20, 7:00 PM
Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading: Niki Herd
Niki Herd is the author of The Stuff of Hollywood and The Language of Shedding Skin, as well as the chapbook _____ , don’t you weep. She coedited with Meg Day Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master. Her work has been supported by MacDowell, Ucross, Bread Loaf, and Cave Canem. She lives in Lancaster, PA where she teaches at Franklin & Marshall College.
Thursday, March 6, 7:00 PM
Divya Victor
Divya Victor is a Tamil American poet, essayist, and educator. She is the author of CURB, which won the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award and the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her next book, KIN, a collection of essays, is due out from Graywolf in 2027. She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Writing at Michigan State University, where she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program.
This reading is presented in collaboration with Border/Arte and is sponsored by John Hudak, in memory of his parents John A. Hudak Jr. and Dorothy M. Hudak.
Saturday, March 8, 11:00 AM
60,000th Book Celebration
Join us for a cake and lemonade reception to learn about the newest strategic direction at the Poetry Center, the Belonging Initiative, and help us celebrate a wonderful acquisition milestone: the 60,000th book at the Poetry Center! Rescuing Q is created by master book artist Suzanne Moore, who will be on hand during the celebration to share details about the making of Rescuing Q.
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 PM
Book Launch: Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration
Sin à Tes Souhaits is a poet, editor, and consultant from East Las Vegas. His poems have been published in The Sun, Rumpus, and The Academy of American Poets, among others. Sin teaches at Nevada State University.
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera (he/they) is the author of six poetry collections, including lo terciario/ the tertiary, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera es el autor de seis poemarios, entre ellos lo terciario/ the tertiary, que fue semifinalista para el Premio Nacional del Libro y ganó el Premio Literario Lambda a una obra transgénero.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of Magical/Realism, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Beast Meridian, recipient of a Whiting Award. She is a 2021 NEA Fellow and holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California.
Thursday, April 3, 7:00 PM
Alison Hawthorne Deming and Sally Ball
Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of six books of poetry and five books of nonfiction, with two books coming out in 2025: the poetry collection Blue Flax & Yellow Mustard Flower and the anthology The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, & Connection. With Lauret E. Savoy she coedited the anthology The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, & the Natural World. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships.
Sally Ball is the author of three collections of poems, Hold Sway, Wreck Me, and Annus Mirabilis. Professor of English and director of creative writing at ASU, Ball is also the long-time associate director of Four Way Books and a faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her collaborative artist’s book with Czech printmaker Jan Vičar has been exhibited across Europe, Japan, and the US.
Thursday, April 10, 7:00 PM
Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Pinsky’s work has earned him the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize, Italy’s Premio Capri, the Korean Manhae Award, and the Harold Washington Award, among other accolades. Pinsky is a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of English and creative writing at Boston University.
Thursday, May 1, 7:00 PM
Distinguished Visiting Writers Series Reading: Natasha Wimmer
Natasha Wimmer is the translator of nine books by Roberto Bolaño, including The Savage Detectives and 2666. Her most recent translations are Voyager, by Nona Fernández, and You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue. Her reviews have appeared in The New York Review of Books and The New York Times. She is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and Columbia University, and she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
This reading is presented with support from the Borchard Center on Literary Arts.
Saturday, May 3, 12:00 PM
Classes & Workshops Reading
Presenting students and instructors who participated in the 2024-2025 Classes & Workshops program.
Saturday, May 10, 12:00PM
Creative Writing MFA Graduate Reading
Students graduating from the MFA in Creative Writing program read from their work.