Living Writers Poetry Series Brings Pulitzer Prize Winning Talent to Campus

The Literary House will host five poets for talks, workshops, readings and more. Literary lovers are welcome.

This fall, Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House and the Sophie Kerr Committee will collaborate to host the Living Writers Poetry Series, featuring two Pulitzer Prize winning poets as well as writers whose works have been recognized by the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the National Book Awards, the Whiting Foundation, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and Kundiman, among other prestigious organizations. All events are free and open to the public. A Q&A with the authors will follow each event and books will be available for sale and signing. 

 Kicking off the Living Writers Poetry Series is a reading by Cameron Awkward-Rich, poet and professor of gender studies at the University of Amherst. The reading will take place Tuesday, September 10 at 6:00 p.m. at the Rose O’Neill Literary House. Additional events will take place throughout the fall semester. For more information about this and other events in the series, visit the Literary House’s webpage. 

This year’s line-up of celebrated poets will highlight a diverse array of poetic technique and scholarship. The series boasts readings, craft-talks, workshops, and lectures focused on poetry as well as other literary modes such as podcasting. Each poet will also visit the Living Writers course and meet with Washington College's budding writers. 

Offered alongside the series is a Living Writers Poetry course taught by Literary House Director and Associate Professor of English James Allen Hall. Washington College students enrolled in this class will have the opportunity to study the contemporary greats of the poetic field, including writers who will then also visit the class. The Sophie Kerr Committee and the Literary House always collaborate on this series; Living Writers is offered every two years and rotates genres between journalism, fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. 

By the end of the semester, Washington College’s aspiring poets will have a vivid image of what it might look like to be a professional poet in the twenty-first century. By interacting personally with living poets and learning from their work, the hope is for young writers to better envision themselves finding a place in the broader literary world. 

 

Living Writers Poetry Series 

The writers appearing in the Living Writers Poetry Series represent a diverse assortment of expertise and honors. Below are the dates each poet will be visiting campus. 

Sept. 10 – Cameron Awkward-Rich, author of two poetry collections and scholar of trans theory and expressive culture in the U.S.  

Oct. 1-2 – Carl Phillips, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Then the War: And Selected Poems. He has just published his seventeenth poetry collection, Scattered Snows, to the North, and is the author of three books of essays and a translation of Sophocles’s Philoctotes.  

 Oct. 23-24 – Diannely Antigua, award-winning poet, author of two published collections, and educator.  

Nov. 13-14 – Rajiv Mohabir, acclaimed author of poetry collections, translated works, and a hybrid-memoir.  

Nov. 18 – Diane Seuss, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize and author of six books, most recently Modern Poetry.