Rivka Galchen

Sept. 13, 7 p.m.

Isaacs Auditorium

Rivka Galchen is the prize-winning author of two novels, a short story collection, an essay collection and a novel for children. She is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, which in 2010 named her to its “20 Under 40” list of fiction writers. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American series and elsewhere, and she has in the past been a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine. Her most recent novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, is centered on the true history of the witch trial of the mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler.

Rachel Wiley

Oct. 11, 7 p.m.

Stretansky Concert Hall

Rachel Wiley is a queer, biracial poet and performer living in Cleveland, Ohio, with a pretty spoiled cat. She has performed at slam venues, colleges and festivals nationwide. Wiley is the author of three full-length poetry collections published by Button Poetry: Fat Girl Finishing School, Nothing Is Okay and the recently released Revenge Body.

Emily Raboteau

Nov. 15, 7 p.m.

Isaacs Auditorium

Emily Raboteau’s books include The Professor’s Daughter, Searching for Zion, winner of the American Book Award, and Lessons for Survival, forthcoming from Holt in 2023. Her fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best American Travel Writing, The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at Orion Magazine. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, The Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. Raboteau resides in New York City and teaches creative writing in Harlem at City College.

Salvatore Scibona

Feb. 7, 7 p.m.

Isaacs Auditorium

Salvatore Scibona is the recipient of the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, The Volunteer, was called a “masterpiece” by The New York Times and won the Ohioana Book Award. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award; and The New Yorker named him one of its “20 Under 40” fiction writers. He is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Ken Chen

March 28, 7 p.m.

Isaacs Auditorium

Ken Chen is an assistant professor and the associate director of creative writing at Barnard College. He is currently working on his next book, Death Star, which follows his journey to the underworld to rescue his father and his encounters there with those destroyed by colonialism. His poetry collection, Juvenilia, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Louise Glück. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. He has published work in Best American Essays, N+1, The New Republic, Frieze, The New Inquiry, Poetry and has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Jess Ram ’18

Making Public: Publications Launch 

April 25, 7 p.m.

Isaacs Auditorium

A Pushcart nominee, Jessica Nirvana Ram ’18 is an Indo-Guyanese poet and essayist. She is the 2022–23 Stadler Fellow in Literary Arts Administration at Bucknell University. She recently completed her MFA at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and is currently a poetry reader at Okay Donkey Mag. Her work – about inheritance, expectations and radical self-love – appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, HAD and Honey Literary, among others. Her chapbook in the aftermath is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press