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MCC Daily Tribune

Visiting Writer Series 2023-2024

MCC's Creative Arts Committee and English/Philosophy Department are thrilled to announce our 2023-2024 Visiting Writer Series. All information is below. Please review and consider including some of these electric events into your curriculum.

Contact Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu) or Tony Leuzzi (tleuzzi@monroecc.edu) with any questions and/or ideas for potential involvement.

Visiting Poet, Danusha Lameris, October 18

  • Pre-recorded Poetry Reading: zoom link available starting August 30
  • Live Poetry Workshop (via Zoom): Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 1 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.

Danusha Laméris is a poet and essayist. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, POETRY, The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and Orion. She was the 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award and her second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the Paterson Award, and the winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. As the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, Laméris co-founded The Hive Poetry Collective: a radio show, podcast, and event hub. She is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA program, and along with James Crews, co-leads the online Poetry of Resilience series and HearthFire Writing Community.

Visiting Fiction Writer, Joe Baumann, November 2 thru 3

  • Live Fiction Reading: Thursday, November 2, 2023, 7 p.m., Monroe B
  • Live Workshop: Friday, November 3, 2023, 12 p.p to 12:50 p.m., Room 8-200 

Joe Baumann is the author of three collections of short fiction, Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise, The Plagues, and Hot Lips.  His fiction and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Passages North, Phantom Drift, and many others.  He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.  He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction.  His debut novel, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, is forthcoming from Deep Hearts YA.  He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com.

Visiting Poet, Rachel Byrd, December 1

  • Friday, December 1, 2023, 1 p.m. to 1:50 p.m., Room/Zoom Link TBA  

Rachel Byrd is a poet from Rochester, NY. Graduating with a degree in Creative Writing from MCC, she has gone on to publish her debut book, a collection of poetry, titled The Moon in My Attic. Rachel’s writing explores themes of mental health and growing older — and draws inspiration from nature, memory, and human interaction. She has a love for exploring the world around her and finding meaning in the little things. Ultimately, she hopes that her writing inspires others to unravel the light within existence.

Visiting Fiction/Nonfiction Writer, Rachel Hall, February 7

  • Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 9 a.m. to 9:50 a.m., Room/Zoom Link TBA

Rachel Hall is the author of Heirlooms (BkMk Press), which was selected by Marge Piercy for the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize. Winner of the Phillip McMath Post Publication Award, Heirlooms was also the runner-up for the Edward Wallant award. Rachel’s short stories and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, and New England Review. She has received honors and awards from Lilith, Glimmer Train, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ conferences, Ragdale, the Ox-Bow School of the Arts, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Hall is a Professor of English in the Creative Writing program at the State University of New York at Geneseo where she holds two Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence—one for teaching and one for her creative work. She is at work on a collection of stories about gun violence.

Visiting Playwright, Garrett Zuercher, February 29 thru March 1

  • Thursday, February 29, 2024, 7 p.m., Black Box Theater, Reading and Conversation
  • Friday, March 1, 2024, 10 a.m., Black Box Theater, Playwriting Workshop
  • Friday, March 1, 2024, 12 p.m., Room 8-200, Playwriting Workshop

Garrett Zuercher (he/him) is a profoundly Deaf theater and film artist and award-winning playwright who holds an MFA from Hunter College, class of 2022. Based in New York City, he serves as the founding artistic director of Deaf Broadway, for which he is currently producing an all-Deaf, all-ASL staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Company at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023, in which he will also star. Recently, he was awarded a residency commission from The Shed to create an original narrative piece about the lives and work of Deaf artists, which will be produced on the mainstage in the summer of 2024. His most recent short film, “Flirting (With Possibilities),” continues to garner honors at film festivals around the world. Dedicated to bringing authentic Deaf voices to the mainstream, he continues to advocate for awareness and representation within the theatre and film industries. For more, please visit garrettzuercher.com.

Visiting Nonfiction Writer, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, March 13

  • Pre-recorded Reading (link TBA)
  • Live Zoom CNF Workshop, Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 12 p.m. to 12:50 p.m. 

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Hailed as “original, politically daring, and passionately written” by Vogue, her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree earned the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. Her debut memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds is a National Book Award Finalist in Non-fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, People, NPR, Vanity Fair, Boston Globe, among others. Rojas Contreras brings readers into her childhood, where her grandfather, Nono, was a renowned community healer gifted with “the secrets”: powers that included talking to the dead, fortunetelling, treating the sick, and moving the clouds. The Man Who Could Move Clouds interweaves enchanting family lore, Colombian history, and a reckoning with the bounds of reality. Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Rojas Contreras is a Visiting Writer at the University of San Francisco.

Maria Brandt
Creative Arts
06/28/2023