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MCC Daily Tribune

Announcing Spring 2024 Visiting Writer Series!

The English and Philosophy Department and Creative Arts have an exciting and textured Spring 2024 Visiting Writer Series lined up. Please scroll below for details and consider incorporating any/all of these events into your curriculum.

For more information, please contact Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu).

Visiting Fiction/Nonfiction Writer, Rachel Hall > Wednesday, February 7

  • Reading and Workshop, 9 to 9:50 AM, Room 9-242 and Join Rachel Hall via Zoom
  • McMurray Lecture on Writing about Gun Violence, 12 PM, Room 5-300

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 Nonfiction Writer, Ingrid Rojas Contreras > Wednesday, March 13

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.  

Visiting Playwright, Garrett Zuercher > February 29 and March 1

  • Thursday, February 29, 7 PM, MCC Theater, Reading and Conversation 
  • Friday, March 1, 10 AM, Black Box Theater, Playwriting Workshop 
  • Friday, March 1, 12 PM, 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 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 Garrett Zuercher's website (garrettzuercher.com). 

Visiting Poet, Rachel McKibbens > Wednesday, April 17

Rachel McKibbens is a Chicana poet and author of three full-length books of poetry, blud (Copper Canyon, 2017), Into the Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press, 2013), and Pink Elephant (to be re-released on Button Poetry.) In 2012, McKibbens founded The Pink Door Writing Retreat, an annual retreat held exclusively for non-men writers of color. In 2022, McKibbens was the subject of the podcast We Were Three, from The New York Times and the creators of Serial. She is currently working on a novel.

Maria Brandt
English and Philosophy and Creative Arts
01/04/2024