The Visiting Writers Series (VWS) is held annually and is sponsored by the Writing Communities course at TCNJ. Students in the course select writers to bring to campus, organize the event to campus from booking to execution, and ensure the event’s widespread promotion. Invited writers come from a variety of backgrounds, being poets and storytellers, rising stars to established literary giants. Past VWS events have featured readings by George Sauders, C.K. Williams, Ben Lerner, Joe Wenderoth, and Denise Duhamel.
Books by the writers are typically available at the event. The event is usually followed by a book signing with light refreshments.
- Rachel McKibbens
March 12, 2015 at 8:30pm Library Auditorium
Poet, activist, playwright and essayist RACHEL MCKIBBENS is a New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of the critically acclaimed volume of poetry, Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009.) Regarded as one of the most dynamic speakers in the country, McKibbens is a legend within the poetry slam community, noted for her accomplishments both on and off the stage: she is a nine-time National Poetry Slam team member, has appeared on eight NPS final stages, coached the New York louderARTS poetry slam team to three consecutive final stage appearances, is the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam champion and the 2011 National Underground Poetry Slam individual champion. For four years McKibbens taught poetry through the Healing Arts Program at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and continues to teach poetry and creative writing and give lectures across the country as an advocate for mental health awareness, gender-equality and victims of violence and domestic abuse.
- Edward Hirsch
April 13, 2015 at 8:30pm Library Auditorium
EDWARD HIRSCH is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2008, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His most recent book, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), brings together thirty-five years of poems. Hirsch is also the author of five prose books, including A Poet’s Glossary (2014), the result of decades of passionate study, Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press).Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
