Release: Jan. 22, 2020
GAMBIER, Ohio — A number of award-winning writers will speak at Kenyon College this spring as part of the Kenyon Review’s 2019–20 Reading Series. All events are free and open to the public. Upcoming readings include:
Thursday, Jan. 23, at 4:30 p.m.: Natalie Shapero reads in the Finn House’s Cheever Room, 102 W. Wiggin St. Shapero, a former Kenyon Review Fellow, is professor of the practice of poetry at Tufts University. Her most recent poetry collection is “Hard Child,” which was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize. Shapero’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine and Poetry, among other outlets.
Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 4:30 p.m.: Michael Croley reads in the Finn House’s Cheever Room. Croley is the author of “Any Other Place: Stories,” and his writing has appeared in VQR, The Paris Review Daily, Kenyon Review Online and elsewhere. Croley teaches creative writing at Denison University.
Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m: Kenyon Review Editor David Lynn facilitates January’s Gramercy Book Club discussion about Ann Patchett’s novel “The Dutch House.” This event will be held at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., in Bexley.
Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 4:30 p.m.: 2002 Kenyon graduate Caitlin Horrocks and 1988 Kenyon graduate Allison Joseph read in Storer Hall’s Brandi Recital Hall, 105 College Drive. Horrocks is the author of the novel “The Vexations,” and her story collection “This Is Not Your City” was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. She is on the advisory board of the Kenyon Review, where she recently served as fiction editor, and currently teaches at Grand Valley State University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Joseph directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University and serves as poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, publisher of No Chair Press, and director of Writers In Common. She has authored numerous books and chapbooks, and her most recent full-length book of poetry, “Confessions of a Barefaced Woman,” was a 2019 nominee in the poetry category of the NAACP Image Awards, among other honors. This event is part of Kenyon’s yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of women at the College.
Wednesday, March 18, at 4:30 p.m.: Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers reads in the Finn House’s Cheever Room. Rogers’ newest collection of poems, “The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons,” will be released in February. Rogers, a contributing editor for the Kenyon Review, is a former Kenyon Review Fellow and most recently was the Murphy Visiting Fellow in English-Creative Writing at Hendrix College.
Thursday, March 19, at 4:30 p.m.: Journalist and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker Jennifer Ash Rudick, a 1985 Kenyon graduate, presents her film “Scandalous” in the Gund Gallery’s Community Foundation Theater, 101 ½ College Drive. “Scandalous” is a wild, probing look at how the National Enquirer’s prescient grasp of its readers’ darkest curiosities led it to massive profits and influence.
Tuesday, March 24, at 4:30 p.m.: Washington Post journalist Kyle Swenson, a 2007 Kenyon graduate, reads in the Finn House’s Cheever Room. Swenson’s reporting on the criminal justice system and features have won several national awards. He is the author of “Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America’s Rust Belt.”
Thursday, March 26, at 7 p.m.: Best-selling author TaraShea Nesbit will join Kenyon Review Editor David Lynn for a conversation about her new novel, “Beheld.” This event will be held at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., in Bexley.
Thursday, April 7, at 4:30 p.m.: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and Oliver de la Paz read in the Finn House’s Cheever Room. Castillo is the author of “Cenzontle,” which won the GLCA New Writer Award for poetry, among other honors, and was listed among one of NPR’s and the New York Public Library’s top picks of 2018. He teaches at the Ashland Low-Res MFA Program and also teaches poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in Northern California. De la Paz is the author of five collections of poetry and the co-editor of “A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry.” He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Monday, April 20, at 4:30 p.m.: Molly McCully Brown reads in Finn House’s Cheever Room. Brown, a Kenyon Review Fellow, is the author of the poetry collection “The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded,” which was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017, and the forthcoming essay collection “Places I’ve Taken My Body.” She also is the co-author of the forthcoming poetry collection “In the Field Between Us.”
All events are sponsored in whole or in part by the Kenyon Review, the Kenyon College Department of English, the GLCA New Writers Award, the Ohio Arts Council and the Kenyon Review Associates Program. For more information, visit kenyonreview.org.