Dr. Carl Calendar Visiting Writers Series

Fall 2023 Dr. Carl Calendar Visiting Writers Series

All readings are free and open to the public. No reservations are needed.

Tina Escaja and Mark Eisner
Editors of Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution

Recording of Presentation

A bilingual reading from and discussion of this collection of poems “rooted in a strong tradition of protest poetry… Within this momentous collection, poets representing every Latin American country grapple with identity, place, and belonging.”

In collaboration with Governmental Affairs and Community Relations, International Education Center, and Languages and ESL Department

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Award-Winning Novelist and Critic
Thursday, November 9 at 11:45am and 1:30pm
A Reading, SLC, Twin Lights I and Craft Talk, LAH, 108

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan will read and later talk about writing fiction and the writing life. Both events are open to all.

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan gives voice to girls and women with unruly bodies who dare to take up space in a world that shames them for being hungry for more. A tender and sumptuous offering of beauty.” ―J. Mock

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of three books: Big Girl, a NY Times Editors’ Choice and a Phenomenal Book Club pick; Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary; and The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the MLA. She has earned honors from Bread Loaf, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Fiction, the NEA and others. Originally from Harlem, NY, she is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC.

Casey Plett

Award-Winning Fiction Writer
Wednesday, December 13 at 7pm
SLC, Twin Lights I

“Plett has captured the multitude of emotions and decisions that can overwhelm our lives, from loneliness and self-destruction to the redemptive power of family and self-love.” -The Advocate (“Best Books of the Year”)

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman (2021), which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Little Fish(2018), winner of a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award in Canada; and A Safe Girl to Love (2014), also a winner of a Lambda Literary Award. She was the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers (2017) alongside Cat Fitzpatrick. Plett has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ontario.

For more information on the Dr. Carl Calendar Visiting Writers Series, please contact Professor Suzanne Parker, Director of the Creative Writing Program, at sparker@brookdalecc.edu.