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In this, Tess Gallagher's first reading for the Poetry Center, she performs poetry from three of her books and reads the work of Thomas Lux, Andre Breton, and Ciaran Carson.

Sharon Olds reads poems from her large body of work. This reading includes early versions of several poems that would go on to be collected in The Wellspring (1996). 

David Ignatow reads widely from his work. This reading includes poems collected in Facing the Tree (1975) and Tread the Dark (1978), as well as uncollected poems and early drafts of poems that would go on to appear in collections such as Whisper to the Earth (1981) and Leaving the Door Open (1984).

Billy Collins reads for the inaugural Tucson Festival of Books, including new poems that would be published two years later in Horoscopes for the Dead.

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads primarily from Emplumada (1981) and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (1991). She also reads several poems that would go on to be collected in Drive: The First Quartet (2006). 

Pamela Uschuck reads poems from Scattered Risks (2005), Greatest Hits (2009), and Crazy Love (2009).

In celebration of the University of Arizona Poetry Center's 50th anniversary, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins reads his poems, including work from the forthcoming collection Horoscopes for the Dead. He is joined by David Fitzsimmons, Howard Altmann, Jennifer Lee Carrell, and Ernesto Portillo, Jr., reading favorite poems by a variety of authors.

Sandra Cisneros reads short stories from The House on Mango Street (1984) and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) and poetry from My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987).

Jimmy Santiago Baca reads poems and prose from his body of work, including A Glass of Water (2009), A Place to Stand (2002), Healing Earthquakes (2001), Martín & Meditations on the South Valley (1987), and C-Train (Dream Boy's Story) and Thirteen Mexicans: Poems (2002).

Luis Alberto Urrea reads from Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993), The Fever of Being (1994), Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999), and also from The Best American Poetry (1996).

Rae Armantrout reads from Writing the Plot About Sets (1998), Up To Speed (2004), Collected Prose (2007) and Next Life (2007). This reading was originally given with Rodney Phillips.

Kate Bernheimer reads two fairy tales, one from the Brothers Grimm and one of her own from How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales (2014).

Jean Rukkila, a graduate student in Creative Writing at the time, reads her story "Andi and Ann." Ron Hansen reads four sections from his novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983).

Marcia Southwick reads poems from the second half of The Night Won't Save Anyone (1980), along with poems that would go on to be collected in Why the River Disappears (1990).

Ofelia Zepeda reads from her poems in O'odham and in English. She also reads from an unfinished translation of a story originally told by an O'odham medicine man.

Luci Tapahonso reads from her collections Seasonal Woman (1982) and A Breeze Swept Through (1987), beginning with a piece that combines spoken poetry with song.

Henry Carlile begins with his poem "The Fire"; this reading also includes "Grace," "Depression," "Keeper of the Towels," and "The Cloud and The Plough and The Meaning of Rhyme."

Rosemary Catacalos reads poems on themes such as identity, quirks of memory, borders and border towns, the effects of speaking three languages (Greek, Spanish, and English) as a child, and the Day of the Dead.

Leonard Michaels reads from short stories written throughout his career, and concludes the reading with an excerpt from his novel The Men's Club (1981). His uncompromising realist sketches catch characters at their darkest and most vulnerable moments, and are colored with absurdist humor. Stories include those published in his collections Going Places (1969) and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could (1975). 

Vivian Gornick reads from Fierce Attachments (1987), a memoir of the author's past and present relationship with her mother. This University of Arizona Creative Writing faculty reading was originally given with Mary Elsie Robertson.

Mark Doty reads from his collection of poetry Deep Lane (2015).

Poet David Baker gives a collaborative performance alongside Lauren Baba, Andrew Rowan, Alina Roitstein, Harrison Kirk, and Gregory Uhlmann of the River Song Quintet, who perform musical settings of his poems. Included in this performance are uncollected and new poems, as well as poems from Baker's collections The Truth about Small Towns (1998) and Scavenger Loop (2015).

Victoria Chang reads from her published works Obit (2020), Dear Memory (2021), and The Trees Witness Everything (2022). She also shares new, uncollected poems. Chang's poems touch upon grief from the death of her parents, as well as found material from family archives. She also reads work structured in a Japanese syllabic form called waka.