Every summer the School of Letters invites our acclaimed faculty and other prominent, nationally recognized writers and scholars to read their work and speak about the writing life.

Readings are held at Gailor Hall in the newly-named Naylor Auditorium at 4:30 PM unless otherwise noted, with a reception following in Gailor Atrium. We are pleased this summer to partner with Tower Community Bank, the Blake and Bailey Family Fund, the Friends of the Library, and the Dakin Fund. Most readings are on Wednesday, but note that two events this year are on other days. 

In the past few years, this list of prestigious visitors has included Alexander Chee, Kiese Laymon, Danielle Evans, Donika Kelly, Shruti Swamy, Lucy Alibar, Stephanie Pruitt, Caroline Randall Williams, Holly Goddard Jones, Patricia Smith, Ben Fountain, and many others.

2023 Events

MFA Candidate Reading

7:00 PM
Naylor Auditorium at Gailor Hall, Student Party following 8-10 pm

2023 Commencement Ceremony and Reception

2:30 PM
All Saints' Chapel

Come join us to celebrate the class of 2023! Reception following at the McGriff Alumni House.

Book signing with authors Patrick Dean and Rachel Martin

5:30 PM
University Bookstore

Patrick Dean is the author of "A Window to Heaven" (2021) and "Nature's Messenger" (2023). Rachel Louise Martin is the author of "Hot, Hot Chicken" (2021) and "A Most Tolerant Little Town" (2023).

Faculty Reading with Nickole Brown and Adam O'Fallon Price

4:30 PM
Naylor Auditorium at Gailor Hall, Reception Following

Nickole Brown's first poetry collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 and was recently reissued for print. She has since released autobiography-in-poems called Fanny Says (2015), two poetry collections called To Those Who Were Our First Gods (2018) and The Donkey Elegies (2020), and a book of poetry writing prompts called Write-It! (2020), co-authored with her wife and poet Jessica Jacobs. Adam O'Fallon Price is the author of two novels: The Hotel Neversink (2019) and The Grand Tour (2016). He works as a staff writer for the Millions, and his short fiction has been published in the Paris Review, VICE, Glimmer Train, and more.

Veranda Event: What is Southern Food?

5:00 PM
All Saints' Quad

Join Veranda at Sewanee and the School of Letters for a conversation with Rachel Martin, author of Hot, Hot, Chicken, and Lokelani Alabanza, creator of Saturated Ice Cream. This event is free and open to the public.

Reading with poet Matthew Olzmann, 2023 Grammer Fellow

4:30 PM
Naylor Auditorium at Gailor Hall, Reception Following

Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route (2022), as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines (2013), which won a Kundiman Poetry Prize, and Contradictions in the Design (2016). He is the poetry editor of the Collagist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prizes, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Sponsored by the Blake & Bailey Family Fund.

READ MORE

Conversation with Kevin Wilson

5:30 PM
Convocation Hall, Reception Following

Kevin Wilson is the author of the recently-released Now Is Not the Time to Panic (2022), as well as Nothing to See Here (2019), Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine (2018), Perfect Little World (2017), The Family Fang (2011), and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (2009). In partnership with Tower Community Bank.

DETAILS

Faculty Reading with Meera Subramanian and Ryan Chapman

4:30 PM
Naylor Auditorium at Gailor Hall, Reception Following

Meera Subramanian is the author of A River Runs Again (2015). She is a National Geographic Explorer and a contributing editor for Orion Magazine. Her work has appeared in Nature, the New Yorker, the New York Times, as well as many anthologies including Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 and 2022. Ryan Chapman is the author of Riots I Have Known (2019) and the forthcoming The Audacity (2024). His work has appeared in Literary Hub, BOMB, the New Yorker Daily Shouts, and more. Co-sponsored with Friends of the Library.

Faculty reading with Vievee Francis and Justin Taylor

4:30 PM
Naylor Auditorium at Gailor Hall, Reception Following

Vievee Francis is the author of The Shared World: Poems (2023), Forest Primeval (2015), Horse in the Dark: Poems (2011), and Blue-tai fly (2006). She is the associate editor of Callaloo. In 2021, she was awarded the Sewanee Review's Aiken Taylor Prize for Modern American Poetry. Justin Taylor is the author of Riding with the Ghost (2020), Flings (2014), The Gospel of Anarchy (2011), Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever (2010), and the forthcoming REBOOT (2024). His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Sewanee Review, Harper's and more. He currently serves as the director for the Sewanee School of Letters.

Reading and Craft Talk with David Haskell

1:00 PM
Torian Room of the Library

David Haskell is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist author. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction (2022), is an Editor’s Choice at the New York Times and explores the story of sound on Earth. His other books include The Song of Trees and The Forest Unseen.

2022 Events

Reading with Debra Magpie Earling

4:30 PM
Convocation Hall

Sponsored by the Indigenous Engagement Initiative, The Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, the Lectures Committee, the School of Letters, the Department of English and Creative Writing, the Department of Psychology, and the Sewanee Review.

Debra Magpie Earling Reading

School of Letters Commencement Celebration

2:30 PM
All Saints' Chapel + McGriff Alumni House

To celebrate the Classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022

Information

4th Year Student Showcase

7:00 PM
Gailor Auditorium, Student Party following 8-10 PM McClurg Porch

Reading with Shruti Swamy, 2022 John Grammer Fellow

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium, Reception Following

Sponsored by the Blake & Bailey Family Fund. University Mask Policy in effect.

Faculty Reading with Allen Reddick, Jamie Quatro, and Nickole Brown

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium, Reception Following

Co-sponsored with Friends of the Library

Faculty Reading with Meera Subramanian, and Ryan Chapman

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium, Reception Following

Faculty Reading with Tiana Clark and Justin Taylor

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium

Interviewing for Imagery: Craft Lecture with Jessica Goudeau

7:00 PM
Gailor Auditorium

Reading with Gwen Kirby and Jenn Habel

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium

2021 Events

Fourth Year Student Showcase

4:30 PM

We end the academic term by celebrating our students and all the work they've created in their time at the School of Letters.

Faculty Reading with Justin Taylor and Tiana Clark

4:30 PM

We conclude this summer's School of Letters faculty events with a joint reading with Justin Taylor and Tiana Clark. Taylor is the director of the School of Letters and the author of EVERYTHING HERE IS THE BEST THING EVER, FLINGS, THE GOSPEL OF ANARCHY, and RIDING WITH THE GHOST. Clark is the author of EQUILIBRIUM and I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THE TREES WITHOUT THE BLOOD.

Guest Reading with 2021 Grammer Fellow Alexander Chee

4:30 PM

Please join us as we host this year's Grammer Fellow, Alexander Chee. This reading was made possible by a generous donation from the Blake & Bailey Family Fund, the award brings a noted writer or scholar to Sewanee for an extended visit each summer during the School of Letter's academic term.

Faculty Reading with Jessica Goudeau and Chris Bachelder

4:30 PM

We are so excited to host a joint faculty reading with 2021 School of Letters faculty members Jessica Goudeau and Chris Bachelder. Goudeau is the author of AFTER THE LAST BORDER: TWO FAMILIES AND THE STORY OF REFUGE IN AMERICA and a forthcoming book titled WE WERE ILLEGAL. Bachelder is the author of THE THROWBACK SPECIAL, ABBOTT AWAITS, U.S.!, BEAR V. SHARK, and LESSONS IN VIRTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY.

Faculty Reading with Jamie Quatro and Mark Rasmussen

4:30 PM

Please join us for a reading with 2021 School of Letters faculty members Jamie Quatro and Mark Rasmussen. Quatro is the author of FIRE SERMON and I WANT TO SHOW YOU MORE. Rasmussen is the Charles J. Luellen Professor of English at Centre College and a specialist on on Medieval and Renaissance literature.

Faculty Reading with Nickole Brown and Ryan Chapman

4:30 PM

You are invited to a joint reading with 2021 School of Letters faculty members Nickole Brown and Ryan Chapman. Brown is the author of FANNY SAYS, SISTER, and THE DONKEY ELEGIES. Chapman is the author of RIOTS I HAVE KNOWN.

Book of Joy Project

Sign up to join the School of Letters reading group with Jamie Quatro for the Sewanee Book of Joy Project, February - May 2020.

2020 Events

Fall 2020 American Shakespeare Center Virtual Performances

6:00 PM

We were enthralled by not one but two LIVE online performances from the ASC, thanks to our leadership consortium: OTHELLO on Friday, Sept. 25 and 12th NIGHT on Friday, Oct. 16 (John Harrell and Jessika D. Williams. Photo by Lauren Parker.)

2020 Wednesday Readings

6:00 PM

Events in Summer 2020 went virtual after it was announced that classes would be taught remotely. We held zoom readings with faculty and invited guests and also hosted coffee breaks, happy hours, and other informal readings so our students and faculty could spend some time together. Take a look at our Wednesday reading schedule: 6/10 Faculty reading with Tiana Clark and John Jeremiah Sullivan; 6/17 Faculty reading with director Justin Taylor, Virginia Craighill, and Chris Bachelder; 6/24 Scholarly presentation of new edition of Olive Schreiner’s Dreams by editors Dr. Barbara Black, Carly Nations, L’20, and current MA student Anna Spydell; 7/1 John Grammer Fellow reading with author Kiese Laymon; 7/8 Sewanee Review panel with editor Adam Ross and contributors Danielle Evans, Ben Fountain, and Donika Kelly; 7/15 Senior MA/MFA reading.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

7:00 PM
Guerry Auditorium

The American Shakespeare Center performs A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Live music by the actors begins at 7:00 p.m. and the performance begins at 7:30 p.m. There will also be a "Talkback" with the actors following the performance.

American Shakespeare Center

Imogen

7:00 PM
Guerry Auditorium

The American Shakespeare Center performs IMOGEN, a reimagining of CYMBELINE. Live music by the actors begins at 7:00 p.m. and the performance begins at 7:30 p.m. There will also be a "Talkback" with the actors following the performance.

American Shakespeare Center

Guest Reading with 2020 John Grammer Fellow Kiese Laymon

4:30 PM
Gailor Auditorium

Please join us for a reading with Kiese Laymon, the 2020 John Grammer Fellow at the School of Letters. Made possible by a generous donation from the Blake & Bailey Family Fund, the award brings a noted writer or scholar to Sewanee for an extended visit each summer during the School's academic term.

John Grammer Fellowship

Archive of 2019 Events

Poetry Reading with 2019 John Grammer Fellow Jessica Jacobs

Please join us for a reading with Jessica Jacobs, the 2019 John Grammer Fellow at the School of Letters. Made possible by a generous donation from the Blake & Bailey Family Fund, the award brings a noted writer or scholar to Sewanee for an extended visit each summer during the School’s academic term.

Faculty Reading with Lee Conell and Chris Bachelder

You are invited to a joint reading by our fiction faculty, Lee Conell and Chris Bachelder, on Wednesday, June 26 at 4:30 pm in Gailor Auditorium. Lee is the author of the short story collection Subcortical and Chris is the author of the novels The Throwback Special, Abbott Awaits, U.S.!, Bear v. Shark, and Lessons in Virtual Photography.

Faculty Reading with Tiana Clark

Please join us for a poetry reading from faculty member Tiana Clark. Tiana is the author of the poetry collection I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium, winner of the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition.

Faculty Reading and Conversation with Meera Subramanian

Please join us for a reading by Meera Subramanian and a conversation on environmental writing, sponsored in conjunction with the Friends of duPont Library. Meera is an award-winning independent journalist whose work has been published in national and international publications. Her book A River Runs Again: India's Natural World in Crisis was a finalist for the 2016 Orion Book Award.

What Shakespeare's Actors Know: An Inside Look at the Rehearsal and Performance Techniques in Shakespeare's Theatres

Join the American Shakespeare Center and students from Dr. Macdonald's Shakespeare class as they engage the acting techniques from Shakespeare's time, with help from actors-in-residency.

Poetry at the Edge of Silence: A Lecture with Dr. Jennifer Michael

Please kick off the Summer 2019 School of Letters Reading and Lecture Series with a lecture entitled "Poetry at the Edge of Silence" with poet and professor Dr. Jennifer Michael on Wednesday, June 5, at 4:30 pm in Gailor Auditorium. The lecture is co-sponsored by St. Mary's Sewanee: The Ayres Center for Spiritual Development.

Archive of 2018 Events

2018 MA & MFA Candidate Reading

Please join us as we celebrate our students and the work they have been producing in their time at the School of Letters!

Reading with 2018 John Grammer Fellow Lucy Alibar

Please join us for a reading with Lucy Alibar, the 2018 John Grammer Fellow at the School of Letters. Lucy Alibar is an American screenwriter and playwright who has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA award, and the Scripter Award for the film Beasts of the Southern Wild. The film was an adaptation written with Benh Zeitlin based on Lucy's play, Juicy and Delicious. Beasts of the Southern Wild also earned the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Film Festival Camera D’Or.

Reading and Conversation with Roger Hodge

Roger Hodge is the author, most recently, of Texas Blood: Seven Generations Among the Outlaws, Ranchers, Indians, Missionaries, Soldiers, and Smugglers of the Borderlands. He is deputy editor of The Intercept, an online news magazine devoted to investigative journalism, and his writings have appeared in many publications, including the Sewanee Review, Texas Monthly, Oxford American, The New Republic, and Harper’s Magazine. He was formerly the editor of Harper's Magazine 2006 - 2010, and the editor of the Oxford American from 2012-2015.

Faculty Reading with Jamie Quatro

Jamie Quatro's debut novel, Fire Sermon, was just published in 2018 with Grove Press in the U.S., Picador in the U.K., and Anansi International in Canada. The highly anticipated, provocative debut novel charts with bold intimacy and immersive sensuality the life of a married woman in the grip of a magnetic affair. Anthony Domestico of Commonweal writes of Fire Sermon, “Quatro is a true cartographer of desire, showing that the longings of the body and the soul aren’t two autonomous states but constitute a singularly vast and singularly wild territory. Her fiction is sexy, it’s theological, and it’s consistently and surprisingly both at the same time.” Fire Sermon is an Indie Next pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. In the U.K. the novel is a “Foyles Five” title, as well as one of W.H. Smith's 2018 Fresh Talent picks. Fire Sermon is forthcoming in translation in The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and Poland.

Lecture with Dr. Maha Jafri

Please join us for Maha Jafri's lecture entitled Reading for Pleasure, Reading for Spite: Gossip and Victorian Literature. Jafri is an Assistant Professor of English at Sewanee. She specializes in Victorian literature, with research and teaching interests in the history of the novel and narrative, psychology, ethics, and intellectual history. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and her B.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in the Oxford Forum for Modern Language Studies and The Henry James Review. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Between Us: Gossip, Sociability, and the Victorian Novel.

Faculty Reading with Nickole Brown

Nickole Brown's first collection of poetry, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 by Red Hen Press and a new edition will be reissued by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015 and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. The audio book of that collection became available in 2017. Nickole received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years until she gave up her beloved position there to write full time. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches periodically at a number of places in addition to the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program, including the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA and the Hindman Settlement School.

The American Shakespeare Company Presents: Macbeth

The Sewanee School of Letters invites you to a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth in honor of faculty member Ann Jennalie Cook on Thursday, February 15 by the American Shakespeare Center, in Guerry Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. Doors will open at 6:30 pm, with period music from the company beginning at that time.

 

Archive of 2017 Events

“Literary Manhattan, the Modern Press, and Southern Literature” by Dr. Sarah Gardner

You are invited to attend “Literary Manhattan, the Modern Press, and Southern Literature,” a lecture by Professor Sarah Gardner, Director of The Center for Southern Studies and Distinguished University Professor of History, Mercer University.

Heavy: An American Memoir. A reading and conversation with Kiese Laymon

We're excited to welcome author Kiese Laymon to Sewanee on Monday, Nov. 13 for Heavy: An American Memoir, a reading and conversation in Convocation Hall at 7 pm. Laymon is currently a Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

Kelly Grey Carlisle Reading

Kelly Grey Carlisle is a 1998 graduate of Sewanee, where she earned departmental honors in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her personal essays have appeared in Salon, Ploughshares, New England Review, The Sun, Cherry Tree, The Rumpus, and The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction and have been listed as “notable” three times in Best American Essays. She earned the MA and PhD degrees at the University of Nebraska and teaches creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio, where she also edits 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

"Exile is Arrival: Kurdish Poetry" a lecture by Alana Levinson-LaBrosse

Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse is a translator, poet, and teacher who has lived and worked in Iraq for the last six years. She served as the founding chair of the English Department at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS). She received her MFA at Warren Wilson and MEd from the University of Virginia. Handful of Salt (The Word Works, 2016) introduced Kajal Ahmad’s poetry to English. A new and selected works of Abdulla Pashew is forthcoming from Phoneme Media in 2017. Poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Epiphany, The Iowa Review, Words Without Borders, and the Poetry Society of America. She is currently co-director at AUIS’ Kashkul and a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Kurdish Studies.

A Reading with David Haskell

David Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. His latest book, The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (Viking, 2017), examines the many ways that trees and humans are connected.

John Grammer Fellow Reading with Stephanie Pruitt

Stephanie Pruitt appears as the inaugural John Grammer Fellow through the generosity of the Blake & Bailey Family Fund. Read more here: http://letters.sewanee.edu/programs/john-grammer-fellowship

A Reading with Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson is the author of the collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and two novels, The Family Fang (Ecco, 2011) and Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017).

Archive of 2016 Events

A Reading with Jennine Capo Crucet

Wednesday, July 6, at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception and book signing following, Gailor Atrium.

Take Shelter Screening

Film screening of Take Shelter, in conjunction with the Film Studies course taught by Michael Dunaway.

What Was the New Journalism? A Dialogue with John Grammer and Neil Shea

Marshall Frady called it an “odd unchurched coupling between the novel and journalism.” Tom Wolfe gave it the name that stuck, “the New Journalism,” a designation John Sullivan glosses like this: “the long, weird, quasi-essayistic, documentary-infused magazine piece, a form older than the novel, despite a heritable instinct in critics to continually be calling it New.” New or old, the form experienced a remarkable flowering in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s, when writers like Frady and Wolfe—and Mailer and Talese and King and Morris—created a remarkable moment in American letters, one that continues to inspire writers like Sullivan. John Grammer, Director of the School of Letters, and Neil Shea, School of Letters faculty and National Geographic writer, discuss the moment and its influence on nonfiction writing today.

Crimson Peak Screening

Film screening of Crimson Peak, in conjunction with the Gothic in Literature course taught by Kelly Malone.

 

A Reading with Chris Bachelder

Wednesday, June 22 at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Book signing following, Gailor Atrium.

The One-Man Traveling Tennessee Williams Festival presents sometimes there's God so quickly starring David Roby

Saturday, June 18 at 7:00 pm, McCrory Hall on the campus of St. Andrew's-Sewanee School.

A Reading with Jennifer Habel

Wednesday, June 15 at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception and book signing following, Gailor Atrium.

Bonnie Bishop in Concert

Friday, June 10 at 7:00 pm, Angel Park, Downtown Sewanee. Free and open to the public.

A Reading with Ed Tarkington

Wednesday, June 8 at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception and book signing following, Gailor Atrium.

A Reading with Hank Lewis

Author Hank Lewis will read from his fiction on Wednesday, April 13, at 5:30 PM in Gailor Auditorium. Lewis is the spring semester Brown Foundation Fellow at the University of the South, and the reading is sponsored by the English Department, the School of Letters, and the Foundation.

 

Archive of 2015 Events

A Reading with Amy Greene

Wednesday, September 30, at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception and book signing following, Gailor Atrium.

A Reading with Lucy Alibar and a Screening of Beast of the Southern Wild

Screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild on Monday, July 6, at 8:00 pm, Sewanee Union Theater. Free and open to the public.

 

Reading by Lucy Alibar on Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception following, Gailor Atrium.

 

A Reading with Diane Thiel

Wednesday, July 1, at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception following, Gailor Atrium.

A Reading with Harrison Scott Key

Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Booksigning following the reading.

From Plate to Page: Panel on Food Writing

With Eliza Borné, Alice Randall, Caroline Randall Williams, and Kevin West.

 

Wednesday, June 17, at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception following, Gailor Atrium.

A Reading with Holly Goddard Jones

Wednesday, June 10, at 4:30 pm, Gailor Auditorium. Reception following, Gailor Atrium.