Fall 2023 Visiting Writers Series

George Mason University’s Creative Writing Program joins Watershed Lit and Mason’s University Libraries in presenting the Fall 2023 Visiting Writers Series.

Writers will meet for afternoon workshops with students from Mason’s MFA program in creative writing and will then participate in programs that same evening—open to the public, with readings and conversations hosted by Mason’s creative writing community. 

The programs will be in person in the Fenwick Library Reading Room on Mason’s Fairfax Campus, except for Ruth Joffre's event, which will take place in George's, top floor of the Johnson Center. The October events—co-sponsored by Fall for the Book—will begin at 6 p.m. to accommodate the festival schedule, and Dan Beachy-Quick’s reading on Thursday, November 9, will begin at 7:30 p.m. 

Visit creativewriting.gmu.edu for updated information ahead.

 

SHANE McCRAE (POETRY)

Wednesday, October 11, 6 p.m., Fenwick Library Reading Room

Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

Shane McCrae is the author of several poetry collections, including Mule (2011); Blood (2013); The Animal Too Big to Kill (2015); In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Gilded Auction Block (2019). His latest book is Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (forthcoming, August 2023). His work has also been featured in The Best American Poetry 2010, edited by Amy Gerstler, and his honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. McCrae earned a BA at Linfield College, an MA at the University of Iowa, an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a JD at Harvard Law School. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

 

CJ HAUSER (NONFICTION)

Thursday, October 12, 6 p.m., Fenwick Library Reading Room

Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

CJ Hauser is a multi-genre, non-binary, queer amphibian of a person who splits time between rural Central New York and Brooklyn. Their memoir, The Crane Wife, is published by Doubleday in the US and Viking in the UK. The paperback is coming in July 2023. They are also the author of two novels: Family of Origin (Doubleday 2019) and The From-Aways (William Morrow 2014). Some places their work has appeared include: Tin House, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, The Kenyon Review, The Guardian, Bon Appetit, Elle Magazine UK, Vogue UK, and The New York Times. They hold an MFA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Florida State University.

 

RUTH JOFFRE (FICTION)

Friday, October 13, 6 p.m., George's, Johnson Center

Part of the Fall for the Book Festival

Ruth Joffre is the author of the story collection Night Beast, which was longlisted for The Story Prize. Her work has been shortlisted for the Creative Capital Awards and been supported by residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Whiteley Center. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Lightspeed, NightmareHayden's Ferry ReviewWigleaf, the anthologies Best Microfiction 2021 & 2022, and elsewhere. Her interview series with the authors, editors, and curators of craft books and resources is freely available in Catapult’s Don’t Write Alone and the Kenyon Review blog. Joffre earned her BA from Cornell University and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. After graduate school, she moved to Seattle, where she served as the 2020-2022 Hugo House Prose Writer-in-Residence and co-organized the Fight for Our Lives performance series. She now lives in Columbia, MO.

 

DAN BEACHY-QUICK (POETRY)

Thursday, November 9, 7:30 p.m., Fenwick Library Reading Room

Dan Beachy-Quick's poetry collections include North True South Bright (2003); Spell (2004); Mulberry (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry; This Nest, Swift Passerine (2009); Circle's Apprentice (2011); Of Silence and Song (2017); Variations on Dawn and Dusk (2019), and Library Of— (2021). His most recent book is Wind—Mountain—Oak: The Poems of Sappho, a translation forthcoming in June 2023. He is also the author of A Whaler's Dictionary (2008), a collection of linked essays responding to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. He was educated at Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the University of Iowa. He has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Colorado State University and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his family.