Afternoon Reading with Aracelis Girmay

Part of the Creative Writing Visiting Writers Series

You're invited to join Saint Mary's Creative Writing Department for a poetry reading and conversation with writer Aracelis Girmay happening on Wednesday, March 25th, 2026 from 2:30-3:30 pm in Hagerty Lounge on the Saint Mary’s College campus.

Aracelis Girmay is a Whiting Award winner, a finalist for the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing Professor of English at Stanford University. Girmay was born in Southern California to an Eritrean father and an African American and Puerto Rican mother from Chicago. 

In talking at the Library of Congress, and in answer to a question about finding the heart of a poem, Girmay said: “I love the way the birds dart and ride wind at the top of El Morro, over the sea… It makes me feel small, and helps me to remember how much bigger and longer geological time, and then the universe, is. My life is tiny, tiny—and, yet, to me, large. I think a poem can have many hearts. Many cores. I suppose a volta is a kind of heart. The turn. But the heart can also be very quiet, the condensed moment of matter or language or white space or silence that pushes chills through a body. Maybe I’m thinking about duende now. How sometimes the heart is hard to find but you feel its work and pulse there. Or you don’t.”

Visiting Writer events at Saint Mary's are free, open to the public, and ADA Accessible. Visitor parking is available on campus and light refreshments will be served. 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.