Fall 2018 Schedule
Stephanie Powell Watts
September 19 at 7 pm
New York Room, Cooper Hall
Stephanie Powell Watts won a 2018 NAACP Image Award and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great
New Writers choice for her debut novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us. Her collection of short stories, We Are Taking Only What We Need, was named one of 2013’s Best Summer Reads by O: The Oprah Magazine and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
Elena Passarello
October 3 at 7 pm
New York Room, Cooper Hall
Elena Passarello is an actor and writer and the recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her first essay collection, Let Me Clear My Throat, won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards. Her second collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses — a collection of essays investigating famous animals, including Dürer’s rhino and Mr. Ed — was a 2017 New York Times Notable Book.
Weike Wang
October 17 at 7 pm
New York Room, Cooper Hall
Weike Wang is the author of the novel Chemistry, winner of the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award. She
holds a doctorate in public health from Harvard University and an MFA from Boston University, and she is a 2018 Whiting Award winner. Her short stories have appeared in journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares.
Cornelius Eady - Writer’s Voice
November 7 at 7:30 pm
Rochester Educational Opport unity Center, 161 Chestnut St. in Rochester
Cornelius Eady is a poet and musician and the cofounder of Cave Canem, a nonprofit cultivating the
artistic and professional growth of African American poets. In a career that has included eight volumes of poetry, he has won the 1985 Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Eady was born in Rochester and attended MCC. He teaches poetry in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
The Writer’s Voice is made possible through the support of the Ingersoll Family Endowment Fund. Additional support this year has been provided by a grant from Brockport’s Promoting Excellence in Diversity fund.
Anne Panning
November 28 at 7 pm
New York Room, Cooper Hall
Anne Panning is the author of the novel Butter and the story collections Super America — winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor prize — and The Price of Eggs. Her work has appeared in journals including The Kenyon Review, Brevity, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, and Five Points. Her memoir Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss will be published in September 2018.