Visiting Writers Series Welcomes giovanni singleton Feb. 27
SPOKANE, Wash. — The 2018-19 Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series continues at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 27 in the Hemmingson Center Ballroom with a presentation by award-winning poet giovanni singleton. The event is free and open to the public.
She is the author of the poetry collections “AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper” and “Ascension,” which won a California Book Award for Poetry and earned praise for its evocative use of white space, silence and omissions.
singleton is the founding editor of the nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts journal. Her honors and awards include fellowships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Cave Canem and the Napa Valley Writers Conference.
Her work has been anthologized widely and appeared on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building. Coordinator for the Lunch Poems reading series at the University of California-Berkeley, singleton has taught at Saint Mary’s College, Naropa University and New Mexico State University.
April 2: Helena Maria Viramontes
In the final presentation of this year’s series, author Helena Maria Viramontes will read from her work at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 2 in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room.
She is the author of “The Moths and Other Stories” and “Under the Feet of Jesus.” Her most recent novel, “Their Dogs Came with Them,” focuses on the dispossessed, the working poor, the homeless and the undocumented of East Los Angeles, where Viramontes was born and raised.
In the 1980s, Viramontes became co-coordinator of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association and literary editor of the XhistmeArte Magazine. Later in the decade, Viramontes helped found Southern California Latino Writers and Filmmakers. In collaboration with feminist scholar Maria Herrara Sobek, Viramontes organized three major conferences at University of California at Irvine, resulting in two anthologies: “Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature,” and “Chicana Writes: On Word and Film.” Named a USA Ford Fellow in Literature in 2007 by United States Artists, she has also received the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Luis Leal Award. A teacher and mentor to countless young writers, Viramontes is currently a creative writing professor at Cornell University.
The 2018-19 Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the Davenport Hotel and the following Gonzaga University entities: the dean’s office of the College of Arts and Sciences; the Center for Public Humanities; the office of diversity and inclusion; the departments of art, communication studies, English, history, and religious studies; and the “Powers Chair” lecture series.
An Inland Northwest cultural gem, the series stimulates interest in literature and reading through dynamic encounters with some of our nation’s most accomplished and respected writers whose voices express new and different perspectives. The series was started and developed by Tod Marshall, Gonzaga English professor and former Washington State Poet Laureate. Meagan Ciesla, GU assistant professor of English, directs the series this year.
For more information, please contact Meagan Ciesla at (509) 313-6671 or ciesla@gonzaga.edu.