Events

Upcoming Events

Kesha Ajose-Fisher Reading

Thursday, April 11 | 6pm | SMSU 294

The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to present a reading by Kesha Ajose-Fisher. The event is free and open to the public.

Kesha Ajose-Fisher was born in Chicago and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut collection of fictional stories, No God Like the Mother, recently won the Ken Kesey Award For Fiction in the 2020 Oregon Book Awards. Fisher has won the 2020 Oregon Book Award for Fiction and The Phoenix Literary Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award for Short Fiction in both 2011 and 2012. Her writing has been published in several online and print collections, and in such publications as Multicultural Familia Magazine, the Alchemy Literary Magazine, and twice in Beyond Black & White Magazine.

Past Events

Endi Bogue Hartigan/Rob Schlegel Reading

Friday, March 8 | 6pm | SMSU 333

The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to welcome the poets Endi Bogue Hartigan and Rob Schlegel, who will read from their work. The event is free and open to the public.

Endi Bogue Hartigan's recent book oh orchid o’clock—released in 2023 from Omnidawn Publishing—explores histories of clock measure, temporal presence in today’s realities, and the impacts of our obsessions with time and instrumentation. In 2021, Oxeye Press published her series the seaweed sd treble clef, a handmade chapbook of poems and photographs. Her book Pool [5 choruses] (Omnidawn, 2014) was selected by Cole Swensen for the 2014 Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2015 Oregon Book Award for poetry. One Sun Storm (Center for Literary Publishing, 2008), her first book, was selected by Martha Ronk for the Colorado Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award for poetry. In 2012 she co-published the chapbook out of the flowering ribs in collaboration with visual artist Linda Hutchins. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals─including VOLT, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, Interim, Chicago Review, and others─as well as in collaborative projects with artists and writers. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and more on her work can be found at endiboguehartigan.com.

A recent James Merrill House Fellow, Rob Schlegel is the author of The Lesser Fields (Center for Literary Publishing 2009), January Machine (Four Way Books 2014), and In the Tree Where the Double Sex Sleeps (University of Iowa Press 2019). His fourth collection, Childcare, was published in 2023 by Four Way Books. With the poets Daniel Poppick and Rawaan Alkhatib, he co-edits The Catenary Press. He currently lives in eastern Washington and teaches at Whitman College.

Camille Roy Reading

Friday, February 16 | 6pm | Smith 338

The Portland State MFA Program Reading Series is pleased to announce a reading by Camille Roy. This event is free and open to all.

Camille Roy is a writer of fiction, poetry, and plays. Nightboat Books published her fiction collection Honey Mine in 2021. Previous books include Sherwood Forest (2011), a book of poetry and prose published by Futurepoem; Cheap Speech, a play published by Leroy Chapbooks; and Swarm, a fiction book from Black Star Series.

Recent work appears in FIELDNOTES #4 (UK), Amerarcana, and Open Space with SFMoma blog. Roy co-edited Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House 2004, reissued 2010), a book of essays by writers on their experimental practices. Earlier books include The Rosy Medallions (Kelsey Street Press, 1995) and Cold Heaven (O Books, 1993).

Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Book of Practical Pussies (Krupskaya Press, 2009); Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (Talisman House, 1998); The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (Semiotext(e), 1995); and Bay Poetics, edited by Stephanie Young (Faux Press, 2006). She is a founding editor of the online journal Narrativity with the San Francisco State University Poetry Center. Roy has taught creative writing in multiple genres and forms at several institutions, including San Francisco State University, California State University Summer Arts, and Naropa University.

Jose Antonio Villarán and Giancarlo Huapaya Reading and Bookmaking Workshop

Reading: Monday, January 22 | 7pm | FMH 302
Bookmaking Workshop: Tuesday, January 23 | 1pm | FMH 302

The Program in Creative Writing is pleased to announce a reading by Jose Antonio Villarán and Giancarlo Huapaya. Huapaya will also conduct a workshop in bookmaking. (More information on the workshop below.) Both events are free and open to the public. Villarán and Huapaya's visit is cosponsored by the Department of World Languages and Literatures and La Casa Latina Student Center.

The workshop will provide a hands-on experience in which community members participate in production, develop connections to the poetry, and widen their horizons of poetry and culture. Participants learn techniques to hand sew and bind pages, marble endpapers, linocut print, and create book covers from recycled cardboard. Documentation from prior workshops can be found here.

Jose Antonio Villarán is the author of two books of poetry, la distancia es siempre la misma (2006), el cerrajero (2012); one book of cross-genre literature, open pit (2022); one book of translation, Album of Fences, by Omar Pimienta (2018); and is the creator of the AMLT project (http://amlt-elcomienzo.blogspot.pe), an exploration of hypertext literature and collective authorship. A Spanish edition of open pit was published in June 2023 by Álbum del Universo Bakterial in Peru, and his fourth book, a work of Auto-Fiction, titled Dear Excelsior, Kiko died in Vietnam while he was playing fútbol, is forthcoming from the same press in 2025. He holds an MFA in Writing from the University of California San Diego, and a PhD in Literature from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Giancarlo Huapaya (Lima, Peru) is an editor, writer, curator, and educational facilitator. His latest book, [gamerover], is a counter mapping in poetry of a neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona which puts in tension history, language, and landscape to reveal trajectories of violence and white supremacy. Huapaya’s practices focus on the archive, critical cartography, language justice and in the dialogues between poetry and the visual arts. He is the Editorial Director of Cardboard House Press, a project dedicated to the publication of Latin American literature in translation to English and the creation of bilingual spaces in the United States. As a curator of poetics, he has presented exhibitions at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. As literary translator, he has translated into Spanish work by Muriel Rukeyser, C.D Wright, Susan Briante, Carmen Giménez Smith, Zêdan Xelef, among others.

Past Events (cont.)

Alumni Reading with Colleen Burner, Benjamin Kessler, and Charity Yoro

Thursday, October 12 | 6pm | Smith 298

The PSU MFA Program in Creative Writing is pleased to host a reading by three alumni with recently published debuts: Colleen Burner, Ben Kessler, and Charity Yoro. Q&A to follow.

Alice Notley Reading

Thursday, November 9 | 6:30pm | Lincoln Hall 75

The Program in Creative Writing is pleased to announce a reading by the poet Alice Notley. This event is cosponsored by the PSU School of Music.

Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona in 1945 and grew up in Needles, California in the Mojave Desert. She was educated at the Needles public schools, Barnard College, and The Writers Workshop, University of Iowa. She has lived most extensively in Needles, in New York, and since 1992 in Paris, France. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, and of essays and talks on poetry, and has edited and co-edited books by Ted Berrigan and Douglas Oliver. She edited the magazine CHICAGO in the 70s and co-edited with Oliver the magazines SCARLET and Gare du Nord in the 90s. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Griffin Prize, the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize, a lifetime achievement award. Notley may be most widely known for her epic poem The Descent of Alette. Some more recent titles include Eurynome’s Sandals, Benediction, Certain Magical Acts, and For the Ride. And now available are Early Works, composed of Notley’s first four books along with a section of unpublished early poems; and the six-book epic, The Speak Angel Series. Notley is also a collagist and visual artist, and some of her artwork may be found in the book Runes and Chords. She is also the author of a new book of talks and essays called Telling the Truth as It Comes Up.

Justin Boening, Devon Walker-Figueroa, and Leni Zumas: A Joint PCC/PSU Reading

Friday, December 8 | 7pm | Independent Publishing Resource Center, 318 SE Main Street

The Program in Creative Writing is pleased to announce a reading featuring Prof. Leni Zumas with PCC Carolyn Moore Writers-in-Residence Justin Boening and Devon Walker-Figueroa. This event is free and open to the public. Please note that masks are required by the IPRC.

Justin Boening is the author of Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, as well as Self-Portrait as Missing Person, which was awarded a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. He is a recipient of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University, and a Henry David Thoreau Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review Online, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Narrative, and TYPO, among others. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Boening is currently a senior editor at Poetry Northwest, and is cofounding editor at Horsethief Books.

Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Philomath, selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Sally Keith, shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and awarded the 2022 Levis Reading Prize. She grew up in Kings Valley, a ghost town in the Oregon Coast Range, and received her education from Cornell University; Bennington College; the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and New York University, where she was the Jill Davis Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.

Leni Zumas is the author of three books of fiction, including the bestselling novel Red Clocks, which won the 2019 Oregon Book Award for Fiction. The novel was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and was named a Best Book of 2018 by The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Entropy, and the New York Public Library. Her fourth book, Wolf Bells, is forthcoming from Algonquin. A finalist for the 2021 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, Zumas is also the author of Farewell Navigator: Stories (2008) and the novel The Listeners (2012). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Guernica, The Cut, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is a professor in the creative writing program at Portland State University.