Writers at Rutgers Reading Series

Douglas Kearney has published nine books ranging from poetry to essays. In 2023, Optic Subwoof, a collection of his Bagley Wright lectures, won the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Prize for Poetry Criticism and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. His seventh, Sho, (Wave Books) is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner and a National Book Award, Pen America, and Kingsley Tufts Award finalist. Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), is the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). BOMB says: “[Buck Studies] remaps the 20th century in a project that is both lyrical and epic, personal and historical.” M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up that disturbs the tongue.” Kearney’s collection of writing on poetics and performativity, Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” Starts Spinning (Rain Taxi), a chapbook of poetry, saw publication in 2019.

Fodder, an LP featuring Kearney and frequent collaborator/SoundChemist, Val Jeanty, was published by Fonograf Editions (2021). WIRE Magazine calls it “Brilliant.”

His work is widely anthologized, including Best American Poetry (2014, 2015), Best American Experimental Writing (2014), Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Culture and Literature, The Creative Critic: Writing As/About Practice, What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, The Future of Black, and Conceptualisms. He is also widely published in magazines and journals, including Poetry, Callaloo, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, Jacket2, and Lana Turner. His work has been exhibited at the American Jazz Museum, Temple Contemporary, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and The Visitor’s Welcome Center (Los Angeles).

Kearney received OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. He has had four operas staged, most recently Sweet Land, which received rave reviews from The LA Times, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Weekly, and was named Opera of the Year (2021) by the Music Critics Association of North America. He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, a McKnight Writing Fellowship, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. A Howard University and CalArts alum, Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities where he is a McKnight Presidential Fellow. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in St. Paul.

Donika Kelly is the author of The Natural Order of Things The Renunciations winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and Bestiary winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize

Mat Johnson has explored the complexities of American racial identity through satire historical fiction and graphic novels Drawing on his experiences as the son of a Black mother and an

Lisa Ko is the author of the new novel Memory Piece and the nationally bestselling novel The Leavers which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and

On Wednesday, November 19, Writers at Rutgers, cosponsored by the Zimmerli Art Museum, will host the award-winning poet, Natalie Diaz. Her visit is in conjunction with the Zimmerli's current exhibition "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now, and Always," and the reading will be held at the museum. Diaz is the author of

Join us on Wednesday, October 15, as we host Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, best-selling author of the short story collection Friday Black, which won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award in 2019, and, more recently, the novel Chain-Gang All-Stars, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and on the New

We are so pleased to welcome poet Shane McCrae to our final spring 2025 Writers at Rutgers reading series McCrae is the author of several poetry collections including Mule 2011

W e are thrilled to have Lauren Groff as one of our spring 2025 Writers at Rutgers guests Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York

J oin us for our first Writers at Rutgers event for the spring 2025 semester with Roxane Gay Roxane Gay is a writer editor and professor She is the author

Join us for a reading conversation book signing and refreshments with Ed Pavli author of more than a dozen books and pieces in over sixty magazines Pavli is an American

Save the date for the fall Writers at Rutgers Reading Series featuring the esteemed novelist, Meg Wolitzer.  Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Female Persuasion, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel

Writers at Rutgers is a series that creates the opportunity for exchange between well-known writers of diverse backgrounds and Rutgers students, faculty, and the general public. The event includes an author reading, Q&A session, book sale and signing, and catered reception. Free to attend. Register for free parking here. On Tuesday,

Writers at Rutgers is a series that creates the opportunity for exchange between well-known writers of diverse background and Rutgers students, faculty, and the general public. The event includes an author reading, Q&A session, book sale and signing, and catered reception. Free to attend. Register for free parking here.  Hafizah Augustus

Writers at Rutgers is a series that creates the opportunity for exchange between well-known writers of diverse background and Rutgers students, faculty, and the general public. The event includes an author reading, Q&A session, book sale and signing, and catered reception. Free to attend. Register for free parking here. Victor LaValle is

Writers at Rutgers is a series that creates the opportunity for exchange between well-known writers of diverse background and Rutgers students, faculty, and the general public. The event includes an author reading, Q&A session, book sale and signing, and catered reception. Free to attend. Register for free parking here. Angie Cruz is

Join us as we hear work from two Rutgers alumni writers, Jared Beloff and Anthony Cappo.  Jared Beloff is a teacher and poet who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find his work in Contrary Magazine, Rise Up Review, Barren Magazine, The Shore,  and

Writers at Rutgers is a series that creates the opportunity for exchange between well-known writers of diverse background and Rutgers students, faculty, and the general public. The event includes an author reading, Q&A session, book sale and signing, and catered reception. Free to attend. Register for free parking here. Monica Youn is

We are very happy to host writer Raven Leilani for the second Writers at Rutgers Reading Series. Leilani's book, Luster, was awarded the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the 2020 John Leonard Prize at the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the 2021

Save the date for the return of the Writers at Rutgers series. Writers at Rutgers is an exchange between well-known writers of diverse backgrounds and the Rutgers students and faculty. This semester you'll be able to hear from Joyce Carol Oates on Wednesday October 19 at 6 PM with a

Monique Truong is the writer of the forthcoming novel The Sweetest Fruits which will be published by Viking Press in September 2019 Her second novel Bitter in the Mouth Random