The Visiting Writers Series sponsored by the Colorado College English Department with the support of the MacLean Visiting Writers Endowment offers many great opportunities to learn from and and engage with a variety of writers throughout the year. All events free and open to the public. For more information, call (719) 389-6853. Look for the most up to date schedule events HERE
Block 3
October 26 – 7 p.m., Gaylord Hall – Indigenous Reading Series (Layli Long Soldier, Byron F. Aspaas, and Jennifer Elise Foerster)
Layli Long Soldier has received a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and a Whiting Award for her debut book of poetry, “Whereas.” “Steeped in Native American history and current politics, Long Soldier’s poetry is a melodious battle cry, an argument, and a prayer for our nation’s future.” — Morgan Parker
Byron F. Aspaas is Diné and has earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has appeared in Red Ink, Yellow Medicine Review, As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, Denver Quarterly, and The Rumpus. He is Red Running into the Water; born for the Bitter Water People. “Aspaas’s words bubble out of the land as though it were never disturbed and, in writing about place and experience using lyric rhythms and flowing constructions, he shows that we have no experience that isn’t made by the land that made us.” — Elissa Washuta
Jennifer Elise Foerster, whose first book of poems is titled “Leaving Tulsa,” was awarded a 2017 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Foerster graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts and held a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. “In these sharp, visceral poems, [Foerster] journeys through the American landscape and maps what has burned and vanished and yet persists. This is a book of endings and beginnings, of immediate memory and urgent, lyrical insight.” — Arthur Sze
November 9 – 7 p.m., McHugh Commons – A Celebration of Colorado Poet Belle Turnbull
A new book in the Unsung Masters Series (Pleiades Press) reintroduces the work of Colorado writer Belle Turnbull, who published poems in The New York Times, The Saturday Review of Literature, Poetry magazine, and other publications. Writers including David Rothman, Uche Ogbuje, and David Mason will present and discuss Turnbull’s work.
“To discover Belle Turnbull is to discover Colorado from the inside out. Here we have a deeply original poet braving the elements, choosing a life of wilderness and hardship, giving voice to the invisible streams, rugged peaks, and high country characters of the early 20th century.” — Wendy Videlock
Block 4
November 30 – 7 p.m., McHugh Commons – Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Ramona Ausubel
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s works of fiction include “All the Broken Things,” “ Perfecting,” “The Nettle Spinner,” and “Way Up.” She received the Sidney Prize for Fiction and a Danuta Gleed Award, and her work has been shortlisted for Canada Reads, the Toronto Book Award, the ReLit Prize, and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
“By illuminating one tiny corner of the world, Kuitenbrouwer opens an almost infinite space to think about responsibility, the meaning of family and the connectedness of things. — The National Post
Ramona Ausubel’s “Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty” was a San Francisco Chronicle and NPR best book of the year. She is also the author of “No One is Here Except All of Us,” winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction, and “A Guide to Being Born,” a New York Times Notable Book.
“Ramona Ausubel’s sparkling second novel, ‘Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty,’ is packed with wisdoms. . . [this] glorious work will surely confirm her as a vibrant, memorable voice in contemporary American letters.” — The San Francisco Chronicle
