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Oct. 8th | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

Edward Hirsch, a MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poems, including The Living Fire (2011). Gabriel: A Poem (2014) a book-length elegy for his son, and Stranger by Night (2020). He has also published eight books of prose, among them How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart (2021), and The Heart of American Poetry (2022). Amongst other awards, he has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pablo Neruda Medal of Honor. His newest book is a memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, A Skokie Elegy (2025). Since 2003, he has served as president of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Oct. 22nd | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

Nicole Dennis-Benn is an award-winning novelist whose books place working-class Jamaicans, especially women and queer folk, at the center of the universal human experience. Her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016 and was recently listed as a New York Times Most Notable Book of the decade. Patsy, her second novel, was a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and was named best book of the year by TIME, Oprah, People, NPR, among others. Nicole was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Pen/Faulkner Award in Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award Fiction Prize. Her books have remained as must-reads on various major lists since publication and have been translated into multiple languages, including German, Italian, French, and Portuguese. She is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in Creative Writing at ÒÁÈËÖ±²¥. Her highly anticipated 3rd novel with Random House is forthcoming in July 2026.

Nov. 12th | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

'Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. Her short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine. Ghostroots, her debut story collection, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. 

Feb. 18th | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room

Claire Messud’s bestselling novels include The Emperor’s Children, a New York Times Book of the Year in 2006; The Woman Upstairs (2013); and The Burning Girl (2017), a finalist for the LA Times Book Award in Fiction. She is also the author of a book of novellas, The Hunters (2001), and a memoir-in-essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write (2020). Her work has been translated into over twenty languages. She writes for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books and the New York Times, among other publications. She was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2020, and was awarded the Deborah Pease Prize by A Public Space in 2024. Her most recent novel, This Strange Eventful History, published in 2024 by W.W. Norton, was shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Book Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Giller Prize. It was also selected as a book of the year by the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Scotsman, the Evening Standard, The New York Post, the New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and a top ten historical novel by the New York Times. Messud teaches regularly at the New York State Writers Institute, Sewanee Writers Conference and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and has taught creative writing at Harvard University since 2015.

Mar. 18th | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. She is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award. Griffiths is also a recipient of fellowships from many organizations, including Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, and other publications. Her first novel, Promise, was published in 2023 by Random House.

Apr. 1st | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and the Kirkus Prize. How to Say Babylon was included on over 17 Best Books of 2023 lists, including the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the year, the Washington Post Top 10 Books of 2023, TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023, and The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books of 2023. She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Sinclair’s other honours include a Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Granta, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Apr. 13th | 6:30 p.m. | Goodhart Hall | Music Room 

Rita Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993–1995. Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the 2023 honorary National Book Award, she also received the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Other recent honors are the 2021 Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she currently serves as vice president for literature, a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation and both the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award and the 2024 Leadership Award from the Academy of American Poets. Among her numerous books are Thomas and Beulah, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, Sonata Mulattica, Playlist for the Apocalypse and  Collected Poems 1974-2004. Her drama The Darker Face of the Earth was staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the National Theatre in London, and her song cycles with composers John Williams, Tania Leon, Richard Danielpour and others were widely performed at venues such as Tanglewood, Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington. Rita Dove teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.