George Mason University’s Creative Writing Program joins Watershed Lit and Mason’s University Libraries in presenting the Fall 2024 Visiting Writers Series.
Writers will meet for afternoon workshops with students from Mason’s MFA program in creative writing and will then participate in programs that same evening—open to the public, with readings and conversations hosted by Mason’s creative writing community.
Evening programs will be held in person on Mason’s Fairfax Campus—either at 6 p.m. (for events co-presented by Fall for the Book) or at 7:30 p.m. with venues to be announced later.
Visit creativewriting.gmu.edu for updated information ahead.
ANDREW BERTAINA (NONFICTION)
Thursday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the short story collection, One Person Away From You, which won the 2020 Moon City Press Award in Short Fiction. He has a collection of essays, The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place, coming out in 2024 with Autofocus Books. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness, Redivider, Orion, Moon City Review, and The Best American Poetry. He has an MFA from American University, where he now teaches.
AARON BURCH (NONFICTION)
Wednesday, October 16, 6 p.m. — Part of the Fall for the Book Festival
Aaron Burch is the author, most recently, of the novel Year of the Buffalo and an essay collection, A Kind of In-Between. He edited the craft anthology How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, and is the editor of the literary journals HAD and Short Story, Long. He teaches writing at University of Michigan.
V.V. GANESHANANTHAN (FICTION)
Thursday, October 17, 6 p.m. — Part of the Fall for the Book Festival
V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (winner of the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Carol Shields Prize, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and an NPR Book of the Year) and Love Marriage (longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post). Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Since 2017, she has co-hosted the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
MICHAEL MARTINEZ (POETRY)
Friday, October 18, 6 p.m. — Part of the Fall for the Book Festival
J. Michael Martinez is the author of four collections of poetry, including Heredities (LSU Press), which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Museum of the Americas (Penguin), which was selected for the National Poetry Series Competition and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry; his most recent work is Tarta Americana (Penguin). He is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.
DON MEE CHOI (POETRY)
Thursday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Don Mee Choi is the author of the KOR-US trilogy: Mirror Nation (Wave Books, 2024), the National Book Award winning collection DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020), and Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016). She is a recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur, Guggenheim, Lannan, and Whiting Foundations, as well as the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Her translation of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry won the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
April 09, 2024