Emerson College Writing, Literature, and Publishing (WLP) Announces Spring Author Talks & Events

Boston, MA — 

The Emerson College Writing, Literature, and Publishing Department announces its spring events, featuring authors, alumni, and faculty members discussing a wide variety of topics relevant to the literary landscape today, including poetry exploring bias and violence, Afrofuturism, politics, and more.

All events are free and open to the public, and additional events may be added. Non-Emerson guests must RSVP for visitor access. For the latest information, please visit the WLP events page.

WLP Scholar Series: Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann

"Caliban Why? C.L.R. James in Cuba, 1968"

Thursday, February 21, 6:00 p.m., Walker Building Room 232, 120 Boylston Street

Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, & Publishing at Emerson College. She is currently completing the book, Constructing the Caribbean, which excavates how the choice of writing about the Caribbean archipelago influenced the ferment of literary evolution incubated by literary magazines during the decade of the 1940s.

How to Get a (Cool) Job: Recent Alumni on Finding Success

Monday, February 25, at 6:00 p.m., Union Bank Building, Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street

Panel members:

Faye Brennan (BA ‘09) is Sex and Relationships Director at Cosmopolitan magazine.

James Emmerman (BA ’14) is Associate Photo Editor at Document Journal and formerly an Assistant Photo Editor at Vanity Fair.

Jaweed Kaleem (BA ’07) is the national race and justice correspondent at the Los Angeles Times.

Anjali Pala (MA ’10) is Senior Designer and Production Manager at Prestel Publishing.

Rose Pleuler (BA ‘13) is an Assistant Editor at Harper Collins Children’s Books.

WLP Reading Series: Evie Shockley Reading

Tuesday, March 12, 6:00 p.m., Union Bank Building, Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street

Evie Shockley is the author of semiautomatic (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. She has published four other collections of poetry—including the new black (2011), which won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award—and a critical study, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011).

Faculty/Alumni Reading Series: Poetry Celebration

Thursday, March 14, 6:00 p.m., Visitors Center Lower Level, 104 Boylston Street

Professor and WLP Associate Chair John Skoyles has published six books of poems, including A Little Faith and Inside Job. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among others. His most recent project, Driven, a memoir in travelogue form, is forthcoming from MadHat Press.

Mary Kovaleski Byrnes is the author of So Long the Sky (Platypus Press, May 2018). Her work has appeared in Guernica, Salamander, Best of the Net, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of the EmersonWRITES program, a free creative writing program for Boston Public School students.

Brandon Melendez is a National Poetry Slam finalist and received the Academy of American Poets Award in 2018. His poems are featured in Black Warrior Review, Muzzle Magazine, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. His debut collection titled Gold That Frames the Mirror will be published in 2019 with Write Bloody Publishing.

Porsha Olayiwola is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston and has her first full collection of poetry forthcoming with Button Poetry in November 2019.

WLP Faculty/Alumni Reading Series: Associate Professor Kim McLarin & Edwin Hill MFA '02

Wednesday, March 20, 6:00 p.m., Piano Row & Max Mutchnik Campus Center Beard Room (2^nd floor) 150 Boylston Street

Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Popular Fiction and Publishing Kim McLarin is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, including the memoir Divorce Dog: Men, Motherhood and Midlife and Divorce Dog: A Play. Her most recent book is Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks of Life and Love.

Edwin Hill, MFA '02 is the author of two novels, Little Comfort and The Missing Ones, and is the vice president and editorial director for Bedford/St. Martin's, a division of Macmillan Publishing Company.

WLP Scholar Series: Dorothy Kim

"The Myth of the Pre-Racial in the Middle Ages"

Thursday, March 21, 6:00 p.m., Walker Building Room 232, 120 Boylston Street

Dorothy Kim addresses the centrality of race in the Middle Ages and how the historiography of the term "race" in the 19th and 20th century explains why so many scholars and the general public refuse to use race as a category of analysis for the pre-modern past.

Dorothy Kim teaches at Brandeis University and focuses on race, gender, digital humanities, medieval women's literary cultures, Jewish/Christian difference, book history, digital media, and the alt-right. Her monograph, Jewish/Christian Entanglements: Ancrene Wisse and its Material Worlds, is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press and she has two books, The Alt-Medieval: Digital Whiteness and Medieval Studies and Decolonize the Middle Ages, forthcoming with ArcPress. She is also co-editing A Cultural History of Race in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age (1350-1550) with Bloomsbury and a special issue of Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality.

Trustee and Alum Gary Grossman Reading, Q&A on Red Hotel

Monday, March 25, 2:00 p.m., Union Bank Building, Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street

Gary Grossman is a multiple Emmy Award-winning television producer and author of the bestselling international political thrillers including Executive Actions, Executive Treason, Executive Command, Executive Force, and Old Earth. He has also written two highly regarded non-fiction books on TV history. Grossman has been published by Dell/Delacorte, Byron Preiss Publishing, Diversion Books, Harlequin, Arlington House, and CBS/Popular Library. He has produced programs for NBC News, served as a columnist for the Boston Herald American, written for the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Grossman is Contributing Editor to Media Ethics Magazine and has produced more than 10,000 television programs for 40 networks.

WLP Reading Series: Kiese Laymon Reading

Tuesday, March 26, 6:00 p.m., Union Bank Building, Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street

Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. Laymon is currently the Ottilie Schillig Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nonfiction at the University of Iowa in Fall 2017. Laymon is the author of the novel Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s memoir Heavy was published in fall 2018 and his novel, And So On, will publish in 2019, both from Scribner.

WLP Reading Series: Ytasha Womack, Back to the Afrofuture Live!
Wednesday, April 3, 6:00 p.m. Union Bank Building, Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street

Ytasha L. Womack is an award-winning producer, director, author, and innovator. She is author of the critically acclaimed books Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi & Fantasy Culture, Rayla 2212, Post Black: How a New Generation is Redefining African American Identity; and co-edited Beats Rhymes and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip Hop. Afrofuturism is a 2014 Locus Awards Nonfiction Finalist, and Post Black was hailed as a Booklist Top 10 Black History Reader of 2010.

WLP Publishing Series: What It's Really Like to Run a Glossy Magazine

Monday, April 8, 6:00 p.m., Piano Row & Max Mutchnik Campus Center Beard Room (2^nd floor) 150 Boylston Street

Anne Fulenwider is the Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire, a position she has held since September 2012. She appears as a frequent judge on the Emmy-winning TV show Project Runway and the mentor on Project Runway All Stars. Fulenwider launched her career at The Paris Review and spent a decade at Vanity Fair. In 2017 she was named to the New York State Council on Women and Girls by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Faculty/Alumni Reading Series: Jabari Asim & Stacey Barney MFA '04

Thursday, April 18, 6:00 p.m., Piano Row & Max Mutchnik Campus Center Beard Room (2^nd floor) 150 Boylston Street

An associate professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson, Asim has authored several books for both adults and children. His most recent book, We Can’t Breathe, was recently a named a 2019 PEN America Literary Awards finalist. Prior to his appointment at Emerson, he was an editor for 11 years at the Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture, and social issues. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine, the NAACP's flagship journal of politics, culture, and ideas, he was the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim fellowship in Creative Arts. He was recently named the first recipient of the newly created Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellowship in the institution’s Social Justice Collaborative.

Stacey Barney is an Executive Editor at G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. She has edited the #1 New York Times bestselling The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh as well as Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award-winning Firebird by American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland, illustrated by Christopher Myers and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor-winning Ellen’s Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons, illustrated by Daniel Minter. She has also edited award-winning authors Kristin Levine (The Lions of Little Rock), Tara Sullivan (The Bitter Side of Sweet) as well as New York Times bestsellers The Reader by Traci Chee and Happy by Pharrell Williams.