Dr. Carl Calendar Visiting Writers Series

Spring 2022 Dr. Carl Calendar Visiting Writers Series

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

Suzanne Roberts

Award-Winning Memoirist, Poet, and Travel Writer Award-Winning Memoirist, Poet, and Travel Writer

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 7:00 p.m.

In-Person at the SLC, Navesink III

Suzanne Roberts is a travel writer, memoirist, and poet who was named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic Traveler Magazine. Her books include the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award-winning Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail,  the award-winning memoir in travel essays Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, a collection of lyrical essays, Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties, and four collections of poetry.

About Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel: “In this collection of essays, Roberts recounts her adventures while traveling mostly solo to 15 countries. Along the way she navigates mishaps both large and small, from a dangerous mudslide in Peru to a tricky romantic entanglement in Greece. Each experience offers a chance to probe her inner ‘bad tourist,’ as she wrestles with issues of privilege, cultural blind spots, and her own insecurities on a journey to self-discovery.”—National Geographic

About Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties: “Animal Bodies is a marvel, a heartbreaking road map of living, loving, and grieving. Roberts bravely recalls the deaths of her alcoholic father, her dear friend, and her mother, a complex force in her life. Here, we read about rape, escape, affairs, and repair. There is wilderness and then, somehow, the clearing… Roberts knows the thin line between grief and joy… the importance of living fully and fighting for freedom without apology.” — Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower and Gardening Secrets of the Dead 

Kay Ulanday Barrett

Poet and Performer Kay Ulanday Barrett

Tuesday, April 19, 2022, 6:30 p.m., On Zoom

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet and performer living life as a disabled Filipinx-American transgender queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. Their second book, More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award and was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Barrett is a three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and two-time Best of the Net Nominee. They have performed at The United Nations, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Museum, Princeton, & more.

About Kay’s Work: “We deeply need disabled queer of color writers to be writing and performing our lives, and do not have nearly enough of our voices writing and publishing in the world. Kay’s work fills a much needed void.” -Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Click here to join the Zoom.

Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Bitch Media, Colorlines, Asian American Literary Review, Al Jazeera English, NYLON, Vogue, The Rumpus, Frontier Poetry,  RaceForward,  The Advocate, Bitch Magazine, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, PBS NewsHour,  & more.  Recent publications include contributions in the anthologies, Q&A: Queer & Asian in North America (Temple University), Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter), Subject To Change (Sibling Rivalry Press), Outside the XY: Queer Black & Brown Masculinity (Magnus Books), and Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices (Trans-genre Press).

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.

This event is Co-Sponsored by the Office of Diversity & Inclusion.