Literatures in English Events

Description

The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading by Dante Micheaux and Alex Gilvarry
Thursday, February 19, 5 p.m.
Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70

The Spring 2026 Barbara & David Zalaznick Creative Writing Reading Series kicks off with the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading featuring Dante Micheaux, Poet, and Alex Gilvarry, fiction writer.

Dante Micheaux is the author of Circus, which won the Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T. S. Eliot Foundation, and Amorous Shepherd. His poems and translations have appeared in African American Review; The American Poetry Review; Callaloo; Literary Imagination; Poem¬-A-Day; Poetry; and Tongue—among other journals and anthologies. Micheaux’s other honors include the Oscar Wilde Award, an Amy Clampitt Residency, the Ambit Prize, and a fellowship from The New York Times Foundation. He is a Fellow and Artistic Director at Cave Canem Foundation. Micheaux’s most recent work is the libretto Sky in a Small Cage.

Alex Gilvarry is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, winner of the Hornblower Award for First Fiction (from the New York Society Library), Best New Voice by Bookspan, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and selected by the New York Times as an Editor’s Choice. He’s a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award-winner and has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center and the Normal Mailer Center.  He's been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome and Wesleyan University. And his essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Boston Globe, NPR’s All Things Considered, among others. His second novel, Eastman Was Here, was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award. He's an Associate Professor of the Practice at Cornell University where he teaches creative writing.

The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading was created in 2002 by family and friends of Richard Cleaveland, Cornell Class of ’74, to honor his memory.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Free and open to the public

Book signing and reception to follow the reading.

We are proud to partner with Buffalo Street Books at this event. Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s only non-profit independent bookstore, dedicated to serving its community through books and literary programming. Katie Kitamura’s books are available online, in-store, and on-site at the reading. Show your student ID at BSB and get 10% off every day!

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick or email englishevents@cornell.edu. 

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.

Description

The Spring 2026 Zalaznick Reading Series continues with a reading by poet Vievee Francis.
Thursday, March 12, 5pm
Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry: The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023); Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award; Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006). Forthcoming are a memoir, Ugly, and her fifth volume of poetry, Cleaning the Houses of the Dead. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, textbooks, and anthologies including Poetry, Best American Poetry, spin.com, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. Born in West Texas and raised in Metropolitan Detroit, Francis, along with composer Jonathan Berger and artist Enrico Riley, wrote the libretto for the transdisciplinary opera The Ritual of Breath. She received a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She has also been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a Kresge Fellowship. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

We are proud to partner with Buffalo Street Books at this event. Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s only non-profit independent bookstore, dedicated to serving its community through books and literary programming. Katie Kitamura’s books are available online, in-store, and on-site at the reading. Show your student ID at BSB and get 10% off every day!

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick or email englishevents@cornell.edu. 

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.

Description

The Spring 2026 Zalaznick Reading Series continues with a reading by author Danzy Senna.
Thursday, April 16, 5pm
Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70

Danzy Senna is the author of six critically acclaimed books of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, Caucasia, won the Book of the Month Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. The book was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Translated into twelve languages, Senna’s debut became a modern classic.

Senna’s latest novel, Colored Television, is a brilliant dark comedy about love and ambition, failure and reinvention that became an instant national bestseller. It was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. It was also a Good Morning America Book Club pick and was named as a Best Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, The New York Times and Time magazine.

Since publishing Caucasia, Senna has become one of today’s most widely respected voices tackling multiracial and complex social identities. Her other books include Symptomatic, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History, You Are Free, and New People. Senna is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and the 2016 Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vogue, among other publications. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

We are proud to partner with Buffalo Street Books at this event. Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s only non-profit independent bookstore, dedicated to serving its community through books and literary programming. Katie Kitamura’s books are available online, in-store, and on-site at the reading. Show your student ID at BSB and get 10% off every day!

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick or email englishevents@cornell.edu. 

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.

Description

The Department of Literatures in English presents the Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Modern Literature:

On the Poetry of Walking, a talk considering "walking" poems by William Cowper and William Wordsworth, among others, in relation to thinking, time, distance, and the imagination.

Susan Stewart is a poet, critic, and translator and the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities, emerita, at Princeton University. Her new book of poems, Bramble, and her co-translation of Milo De Angelis's Last Stops of the Night Journey have just appeared. Her previous books include Columbarium, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and Cinder: New and Selected Poems, as well as the prose works The Ruins Lesson, The Poet's Freedom, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, and On Longing.  She is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a MacArthur Fellow, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Her Clarendon Lectures, Poetry's Nature, were published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Q & A to follow lecture.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu or email englishevents@cornell.edu. 

The Gellman Lecture, featuring a distinguished scholar of modern literature, was established by a generous gift from Wendy Rosenthal Gellman ‘81, who majored in English at Cornell.

Description

The Spring 2026 Zalaznick Reading Series concludes with a reading by poet and scholar Susan Stewart.
Thursday, April 23, 5pm
Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70

Susan Stewart is a poet, critic, and translator and the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities, emerita, at Princeton University. Her new book of poems, Bramble, and her co-translation of Milo De Angelis's Last Stops of the Night Journey have just appeared. Her previous books include Columbarium, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and Cinder: New and Selected Poems, as well as the prose works The Ruins Lesson, The Poet's Freedom, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, and On Longing. She is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a MacArthur Fellow, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Her Clarendon Lectures, Poetry's Nature, were published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

We are proud to partner with Buffalo Street Books at this event. Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s only non-profit independent bookstore, dedicated to serving its community through books and literary programming. Katie Kitamura’s books are available online, in-store, and on-site at the reading. Show your student ID at BSB and get 10% off every day!

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick or email englishevents@cornell.edu. 

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.

Description

The Ammons Reading
Featuring Undergraduate Poetry & Flash Fiction

The Ammons Reading Series, supported by a gift from Beverly Tanenhaus (BA '70), honors the legacy of the late A.R. Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, by showcasing the work of Cornell's undergraduate creative writing community.

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English. Refreshments provided during the reading.

A. R. Ammons (1926-2001) was Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell, where he taught from 1964 to 1998.  Recognized for his integration of science into poetry, his close attention to natural phenomena, and his bridging of everyday life and sublime vision, Ammons received many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and two National Book Awards.  A beloved teacher and mentor, he was known to his friends and students as Archie. 

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

Masking is encouraged.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/english-events or email englishevents@cornell.edu.

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.

Description

The Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program proudly presents the 2025 MFA in Creative Writing Graduation Reading!

Join the Graduating MFA Poets and fiction writers as they celebrate their MFA completion with readings from their thesis or works-in-progress!

Reception to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Free and open to the public

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University

Gerardo Azpiri Iglesias is a writer from Puebla, Mexico. He graduated from Bennington College with a degree in Literature and French. His poems have been recognized by The Adroit Journal, The Academy of American Poets, among others. He's currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University.

Bridget Huh is a queer Korean Canadian poet from Toronto (Tkaronto). She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Cornell University, and she holds a BA from Concordia University. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Walrus, Gulf Coast, The Margins, The Ex-Puritan, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award, and has been recognized for awards in CV2, Fugue Journal, and Palette Poetry. Her debut collection of poetry, Fugue Body, was published by Véhicule Press in March 2025.

Otis Fuqua (he/him) is a fiction writer from Boulder, Colorado. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Nimrod International Journal, Jet Fuel Review, and elsewhere. He’s worked in ghostwriting, nonprofit communications, and briefly, a wind turbine blade factory. He has a mean and loving cat named Bowie.

Among other occupations, Miklos Zoltan Mattyasovszky has rolled burritos, built decks, shelved books, sold 3D printers, directed business development at an AI institute, and ghostwritten for a living. He is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Cornell University. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal and F(r)iction. He writes the Substack Myth, Man, Machine. His website is mikloszoltan.com. He lives with his family in Ithaca, NY, USA.

Zibusiso Mpofu (he/they) is a queer writer from Zimbabwe. His work has been published in The Hong Kong Review, 20:35 Africa, Brittle Paper, A Long House Journal, Intwasa Anthology, Water Damaged Anthology and Work In Progress Hong Kong. He is the winner of the 2022 Brunel African Poetry Prize. Zibusiso is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell where they are also an editor at Epoch magazine.

Samantha Samakande is a Zimbabwean poet based out of New Jersey, where she resides with her husband. She holds a B.A. from Allegheny College and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Cornell University. She also serves as a reader for Sugar House Review. In 2020, she was the second-place winner of Frontier Poetry’s Award for New Poets. Her work has appeared in Terrain.org, Sugar House Review, The Indianapolis Review, Hobart Pulp, Okay Donkey, and Gordon Square Review, among other journals.

Ella Shively (she/her) is a writer and naturalist from Wisconsin. She received a degree in Natural Resources and Writing from Northland College before embarking on a career as a salamander chauffeur. She is the winner of the 2021 Runestone Digital Storytelling Contest and the 2018 Barbara Bretting Award in Poetry. Her work can be found in South Florida Poetry Journal, RockPaperPoem, Bracken, and elsewhere.

Mengyang Zeng is a fiction writer born and raised in Guangzhou, China. She holds a BA in Psychology from New York University. She writes short stories in two languages and attempts to write in a third. Her story and essay have appeared in West 10th and Mercer Street, where she was awarded the 2020-2021 Diversity and Inclusion Award.

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.