♦ 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.

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

Spring 2025

♦ January 16: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Poetry, Begonia Labs

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, Buttrick 101

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, Buttrick 101

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, Buttrick 101

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, Buttrick 101

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, Buttrick 101

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, Buttrick 101

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: Literary Prize Winner Stephanie Niu, Poetry, Central Library Community Room

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.