MCC Daily Tribune

Creative Arts Visiting Writer Series 2022-2023

The Creative Arts Committee is thrilled to announce our 2022-2023 Visting Writer Series! Details are listed below. Please contact Tony Leuzzi (aleuzzi@monroecc.edu) or Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu) with any questions.

Visiting Fiction Writer, Cleyvis Natera
Pre-recorded Reading (link available after August 16)
Live Zoom Workshop, Monday, October 24, 2022
11 a.m. Fiction Workshop (host)
Zoom Link: Available after August 16
Free and Open to Public

Cleyvis Natera is the author of the debut novel Neruda on the Park. She was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University. She’s received honors from PEN America, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Her fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration, TIME, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal, among other publications. Cleyvis teaches creative writing to undergraduate students at Fordham University and graduate students at the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.

Visiting Poet, Diane Seuss
Pre-recorded Reading (link available after August 16)
Live Zoom Workshop, Wednesday, November 9, 2022
12 p.m. ENG 105-013 (host)
Zoom Link: Available after August 16
Free and Open to Public

Diane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. Seuss is the author of the poetry collections Frank: Sonnets (2021), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018); Four-Legged Girl (2015), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010), winner of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry; and It Blows You Hollow (1998). Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988. Seuss earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University.

Visiting Poet, Jessica Jacobs
Pre-recorded Reading (link available after August 16)
Live Zoom Workshop, Thursday, September 29, 2022
12:30 p.m. Poetry Workshop (host)
Zoom Link: Available after August 16
Free and Open to Public

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University and the Goldie Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, Eric Hoffer, and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, was an Over the Rainbow selection by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Julie Suk Awards. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press.

Visiting CNF Writer, Lilly Dancyger
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
12 PM, CNF Workshop (host)
Zoom Link: https://monroecommunity.zoom.us/j/86726323567
Free and Open to the Public

Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space (2021), a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press. She is currently at work on an essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship. Lilly’s writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She lives in New York City, and you can find her on Twitter at @lillydancyger.

Visiting Playwright, Brian Quijada
Thursday, April 27, 2023, 7 PM, Black Box Theater, Reading and Conversation
Friday, April 28, 2023, 10 AM, Black Box Theater, Playwriting Workshop
Friday, April 28, 2023, 12 PM, 8-200, Playwriting Workshop (host)
Free and Open to the Public

Brian Quijada is an actor, playwright, and composer whose original work has been developed and produced all across the country. His hip-hop solo show Where Did We Sit on the Bus? has been produced at Victory Gardens, Geva Theatre (Emmy Nomination for digital stream), Teatro Vista (Jeff Award), Ensemble Studio Theatre (Drama Desk Nomination), Boise Contemporary, 1st Stage, City Theatre Pittsburgh, and a digital production at Actors Theatre of Louisville (Drama League Nomination). His play Kid Prince and Pablo premiered at The Kennedy Center in 2019. Brian’s plays have been developed at The Kennedy Center, Pittsburgh CLO’s Spark Festival, Victory Gardens’ Ignition Festival, New Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Festival, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Musical Theatre Conference. Commissioning institutions include A.R.T., 1st Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Wooly Mammoth, and The Kennedy Center, and he is a proud member of The Ensemble Studio Theatre. Brian’s song “The Always Song” was the 2021’s Hispanic Heritage Month Song for Nickelodeon.

Maria Brandt
Creative Arts
06/15/2022