Visiting Writer Reading Series
VISITING WRITER SERIES Fall 2026
A semester featuring a Gotham Book Prize finalist, a Lambda Award winner, a Professor Emerita and a Pulitzer Prize award winner.
Every semester, the Saint Mary's Creative Writing Department brings distinguished poets, fiction, and nonfiction writers to campus to deliver readings, lectures, and conversations. The Visiting Writing Series is a meeting place, where the most forward-thinking minds in the Bay Area share their work and inklings into their artist process and work. Since the SMC MFA program’s founding in 1995, the series has welcomed writers from across the globe to share their art and insights here on campus. Recent visitors include Sam Sax, Aria Aber, R.O. Kwon, Leila Mottley, Alexis Madrigal, Jonathan Escoffery, Cristina Garcia, Jamil Jan Kochai, and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, among others.
Visiting Writer events at Saint Mary's are free, open to the public, and ADA Accessible. All attendees are eligible for a fee waiver for the MFA in Creative Writing application—please reach out to Collin Skeen, Assistant Director of Admissions, at cas38@stmarys-ca.edu for more information.
October 4, 2026
Andrew Boryga
5:00pm Local Economy, 6028 College Ave. Oakland
Andrew Boryga is the author of Victim. A satirical sendup of tear-jerking trauma plots, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes. Boryga will be in conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras at Local Economy, 6028 College Ave, Oakland. The two will discuss trauma and the contested spaces of self, art, market, and the effort of second books.
November 18, 2026
KB Brookings
7:30pm LeFevre Theater, Saint Mary's College
KB Brookins is the author of Freedom House and How to Identify Yourself with a Wound. They have earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, Equality Texas, and others. Their memoir, Pretty, is a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race. The book was a 2025 Lambda Award Winner.
December 9, 2026
Robert Hass & Brenda Hillman
7:30pm. LeFevre Theatre, Saint Mary's College
The Creative Writing Department is honored to welcome U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass and the legendary poet Brenda Hillman for a rare evening in which the two will discuss their remarkable new books, A Third Commonness and Still House in the Desert.
