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Victoria Chang joins the Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series

Posted by on Tuesday, October 7, 2025 in event, faculty, news, reading series, spotlight.

Poet Victoria Chang joined the Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series on October 2 with her collection With My Back Against the World, which NPR called “poems of remarkable vividness and depth . . . engaging in a constant celebration of life in terms of its inexorable passing, a feast of grief in which ‘death still catches me by surprise.’ Victoria Chang’s finely tuned ear for microtones among the lower emotional notes makes this book good company as the days darken.” In addition to reading from the collection, Victoria joined a salon featuring the works of MFA students.

Images of Victoria Chang's reading
Students gather at the Special Collections Library; Chang reads; Associate Professor Rick Hilles, Assistant Professor Su Cho, Chang, Creative Writing Program Director Major Jackson; Chang reads; a book-signing precedes each reading in the series. Photos by Tim Gollins.