2024-2025 Gertrude and Harold Vanderbilt Reading Series
2024-2025 Gertrude and Harold Vanderbilt Reading Series
The Vanderbilt Department of English and Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce the Gertrude and Harold Vanderbilt Reading Series 2024-2025. Click here for the official press release with more details about this year’s series.
All readings begin at 7:00 pm on Thursdays.
Fall 2024
♦ September 12: Paisley Rekdal, Poetry, Buttrick Hall 102
Paisley Rekdal is the author of essays and poetry including Animal Eye, Imaginary Vessels, Nightingale, and West: A Translation, longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Poetry and winner of the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Prize. Her newest works of nonfiction include a book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam and Appropriate: A Provocation. She guest edited Best American Poetry 2020. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetryseries, and on National Public Radio. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative‘s Poetry Prize, and the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah. Between 2017-2022, she served as Utah’s Poet Laureate, receiving a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She currently serves as poetry editor for High Country News.
♦ September 26: Ilya Kaminsky, Poetry, Buttrick Hall 101
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic, The New York Times’ Notable Book, and Dancing In Odessa, and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine, and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. He is the recipient of The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize. His poems have been translated into over twenty languages, and his books are published in many countries. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.” He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
♦ September 26: Katie Farris, Poetry, Buttrick Hall 101
Katie Farris is the author of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive and boysgirls. She is also the author of the chapbook, A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving. Her work has been published in American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeneys, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, and Poetry. Farris also is the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from French, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian, including Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Her awards include The Pushcart Prize, Orison Prize, and Anne Halley Prize from Massachusetts Review. In addition to her poetry and translations, Farris also writes prose about cancer, the body, and its relationship to writing, such as in her recent, widely circulated essay in Oprah Daily. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University, and currently lives and teaches in New Jersey.
♦ October 17: Edward P. Jones, Fiction, Alumni Hall 206 Reading Room
Edward P. Jones is the author of the short-story collections Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar’s Children, and the novel The Known World, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 2004. His many other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Malamud Award. He is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle award, the International IMPACDublin Literary Award, the Lannan Literary Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship.
♦ October 31: V.V. Ganeshananthan, Fiction
V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of the novels Brotherless Night, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and an NPR Book of the Year, and Love Marriage. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the American Academy in Berlin. She has served as visiting faculty at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. She co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fictionpodcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
♦ November 14: Brandon Hobson, Fiction, Alumni Hall 202 Memorial Hall
Dr. Brandon Hobson is the author of the novels, The Removed, Where the Dead Sit Talking, finalist for the National Book Award, and other books. His fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, NOON, and in many other publications. He has received fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, the UCROSS Foundation and Ragdale. He teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma.
♦ December 5: Gregory Pardlo, Poetry, Buttrick Hall 101
Gregory Pardlo is the author of the poetry collections Spectral Evidence and Digest, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other books include Totem, winner of the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize, and Air Traffic, a memoir in essays. His honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is a faculty member of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-University-Camden and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-Camden. He is currently a visiting professor of creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Spring 2025
♦ January 16: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Poetry
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the poetry collections Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, Miracle Fruit, and the essay collections Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees and World of Wonder. With poet Ross Gay, she is also co-author Lace & Pyrite. Her poems and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Brevity, American Poetry Review, New England Review, and the Best American Poetry anthology. Her honors include the Pushcart Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters Award in poetry. She teaches at University of Mississippi and serves as poetry editor for Orion Magazine.
♦ January 30: Ottessa Moshfegh, Fiction
Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of four novels My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, Lapvona and Eileen, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella McGlue. She lives in Southern California. Originally from Boston, Ottessa Moshfegh now lives in Los Angeles. She has received the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Award, and a Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review for her short fiction as well as a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A prolific essayist, Moshfegh’s work has appeared in outlets including Vice, The New Yorker, Granta, and various online journals.
♦ February 13: Adam Haslett, Fiction
Adam Haslett is the author of the novels Mothers and Sons, Imagine Me Gone, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award; You Are Not a Stranger Here, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; and Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. His books have been translated into thirty languages, and his journalism on culture and politics have appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He has been awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Winship Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
♦ March 20: Adam Ross, Fiction
Adam Ross is the author of the short story collection Ladies and Gentlemen, and the novels Playworld and Mr. Peanut, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He has been a fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin and a Hodder Fellow for Fiction at Princeton University. Adam serves as editor of The Sewanee Review. Born and raised in New York City, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his two daughters.
♦ April 3: Alina Grabowski, Fiction
Alina Grabowski grew up in coastal Massachusetts and holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University. Her debut novel, Women and Children First, was published by SJP Lit in 2024. She lives in Austin, Texas.
♦ April 3: Kelsey Norris, Fiction
Kelsey Norris is a writer and editor from Alabama. She earned an MFA from Vanderbilt University and has worked as a teacher in Namibia, a school librarian, and a bookseller. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, and The Rumpus, among others. She is currently based in Washington, DC. Her debut story collection, House Gone Quiet, is a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and is available wherever books are sold.
♦ April 3: Tiana Clark, Poetry
Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and the chapbook Equilibrium. Clark is the recipient of a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, Rattle Poetry Prize, Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, Pushcart Prize, and the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.). Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters and is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.
♦ April 7: Stephanie Niu, Literary Prize Winner, Poetry
Stephanie Niu is the author of I Would Define the Sun, inaugural winner of the inaugural Vanderbilt University Literary Prize. She also is the author of the chapbooks Survived By: An Atlas of Disappearance, winner the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize and She Has Dreamt Again of Water, winner of the 2021 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Literary Hub, Copper Nickel, Ecotone Magazine and other publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University. She received a Fulbright scholarship for research on Christmas Island’s labor history, through which she led youth poetry workshops and published the zine Our Island, Our Future. She lives in New York City.