grandfathers

Camille T. Dungy reads primarily from What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (2006). This reading was originally given with Richard Siken and Heriberto Yépez as part of the Next Word Series.

Essayist and poet Erik Reece reads poems from A Short History of the Present (2009) and essays from An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (2009) as well as Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016).

Laurie Ann Guerrero reads from across her body of work as collected in I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New and Selected Poems (2020). This includes portions of her heroic sonnet crown, A Crown for Gumecindo, written for her grandfather, alongside other poems rooted in family experience. Guerrero also reads from Redwork, her manuscript in progress. This reading was originally given alongside Carl Marcum.

Joy Williams reads from the final section of her fifth novel, Harrow (2021), sharing a stream-of-consciousness passage from the perspective of Jeffrey, a precocious, ten-year-old judge presiding in a post-apocalyptic future. This reading was presented as part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series.