Innovative voices
Creative Writing Reading Series
Sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing, authors from around the world come to Saint Mary’s for readings, conversation, and community. All events are free and open to the public.
Fall Readings
Spring Readings
Afternoon Conversations
Wednesday, September 11, 2019, 7:30pm in Hagerty Lounge, De La Salle Hall
Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was named one of the top 5 poetry books of the year by the Washington Post. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the online and summer programs for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer in Lexington, Kentucky.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, from Copper Canyon in Fall 2019, as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-17 he held the annually rotated position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine. He teaches in the MFA and English Department at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020, 7:30pm in Claeys Lounge, Soda Center
Chris Feliciano Arnold has written essays for The Atlantic, Harper's, Outside, Vice News, The New York Times, and more. His fiction has been published by Playboy, The Kenyon Review, Ecotone and other magazines. His work has been noted in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Short Stories. He has recieved fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowmnet for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. His first book, The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First Century Amazon, is a work of narrative nonfiction published by Picador in June 2018.
Wednesday, March 11th, 2019, 7:30pm in Hagerty Lounge, De La Salle Hall
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree won the Silver Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards. Fruit of the Drunken Tree was an Indie Next selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Buzzfeed, The Believer, Nylon, Guernica, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. She is working on a family memoir about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 7:30pm in Hagerty Lounge, De La Salle Hall
Cyrus Cassells is the author of seven acclaimed books of poetry and two books translated from teh Catalan. Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, and To the Cypress Again and Again: Tribute to Salvador Espriu, which is forthcoming in 2021. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, he also recieved a Lannon Literary Award, two NEA grants, and a Pushcart Prize.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 7:30pm in Claeys Lounge, Soda Center
Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s memoir, Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye examines grief against the backdrop of the 2011 Great East Earthquake in Japan and was a finalist for the 2016 PEN Open Book Award, Indies Choice Best Book for Nonfiction and the Northern California Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her new work, American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland, forthcoming from Graywolf in April, 2020, follows her journey through seven heartland states in the company of evangelical Christian harvesters, and examines the role of GMOs, God, agriculture, and race in society.
Talks on craft, publishing & life after the MFA.
All talks take place in Hagerty Lounge (unless otherwise noted) at 2:30pm and are free and open to the public.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019, 2:30pm-3:30pm
Structure as Architecture with Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Often, the image that comes to mind when we think of dramatic structure is Freytag’s pyramid, a shape that visually illustrates rising action, climax, and denouement. Gustav Freytag was a nineteenth century German writer whose most famous novel contrasted virtuous Germans with uncivilized and immoral Poles and Jews and was celebrated at the time for its "unexaggerated realism.” In this lecture, we will move away from Freytag's European understanding of structure, and we will investigate how other cultures understand story, how different writers have thought of dramatic structure in architectural and visual language, and how these artists arrived at their visions. More than what happens in a story, more than plot, dramatic structure requires the author to pose an artistic question that is so complex it can only be answered throughout the progress of the work.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020, 2:30pm-3:30pm in Soda Center, Orinda Room
The Translated World: Crafting Global Poetry into Dynamic English with Cyrus Cassells
Poet Cyrus Cassells will draw on his experience as a translator of Catalan and Italian literature to discuss the challenges and craft of turning global poetry into dynamic English versions that convey the essence of the originals, stressing the importance of translation as a vital means of transmitting world history and culture.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 2:30pm-3:30pm
Nothing is One Thing: Hyrbids in Creative nonfiction with Chris Feliciano Arnold
Chris Feliciano Arnold will explore how creative nonfiction can blend genres and forms in mysterious, illuminating ways. To begin, we will discuss brief samples from a few daring books, focusing on intersections of memoir, lyric essay, journalism, history, poetry, criticism and more. From there, through generative writing exercises and small group discussions, students will deconstruct one of their own nonfiction ideas, examining their subjects from a multitude of angles to discover new potential shapes that defy quick categorization. Our goal is for all students to leave with a heightened sense of possibility—and an energizing idea for a new piece.
Wednesday, May 6, 2019, 2:30pm-3:30pm
Then We Came to the End with Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Whether your parents read you bedtime stories, or you watched a lot of television growing up, (or both), you were unknowingly imprinting on story structures that reflect the culture you are from. What’s more, the ending of those stories taught you to feel that a certain kind of resolution just seems more complete. In this talk, we will take a look at western fairy tales and eastern fairy tales. We will see over and over how the stories overlap, but resolve differently, reflecting very different worldviews. The beauty of this kind of story analysis is that it can not only give us an appreciation for stories outside the usual grab bag of patterns we turn to, but also may open us up to take greater creative risks, and expand our understanding of what it means to be human.
Events
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Jan
27Monday, January 27, 2020 - 5 P.M.
How To Pay For Graduate School Without Risking Your Future Financial Security...
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Feb
19Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 12:30 P.M.
Get a feel for what it's like to be a part of our incredible MFA community by joining...
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Feb
19Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 2:30 P.M.
De La Salle Hall: Hagerty LoungeQ&A and discussion with Steve Almond, author of William Stoner and the Battle for...
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Feb
25Tuesday, February 25, 2020 - 2:30 P.M.
Get a feel for what it's like to be a part of our incredible MFA community by joining...