Great Writers, Great Readings

Past Guest Authors

Spring 2024

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Elizabeth Schmermund

Elizabeth Schmermund
Schmermund is a poet, essayist, and professor. Her work has appeared in The Independent, Mantis, and Gyroscope Review, among other venues. Her first poetry chapbook, Alexander the Great, is published by Finishing Line Press. She lives in New York with her family and is currently an assistant professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury.

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Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. Nunez’s other honors include a Whiting Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Photo by Marion Ettlinger.

Fall 2023

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George M. Johnson

George M. Johnson
Award-winning Black non-binary writer, author, and activist. They are the New York Times bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue and We Are Not Broken. They were named to the 2022 TIME100 Next, TIME‘s annual list of rising stars across industries, and they were nominated for an Emmy award for their dramatic reading of All Boys Aren’t Blue.

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Adrienne Brodeur

Adrienne Brodeur
Author of the novel Little Monsters and the memoir Wild Game, which was selected as a "Best Book of the Year" by NPR and The Washington Post and is in development as a Netflix film. She founded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with Francis Ford Coppola, and currently serves as executive director of Aspen Words, a literary nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute.

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Samuel G. Freedman

Samuel G. Freedman
Former columnist for The New York Times and a professor at Columbia University. Author of acclaimed books, including the newly-released Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, described by Jon Meacham as “a compelling and important account of Humphrey’s critical role in the freedom struggles of the mid-20th century.”

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Kelly McMasters, Martha McPhee, Kristal Brent Zook

Kelly McMasters, Martha McPhee, Kristal Brent Zook
Hofstra professors and authors discuss their recently published memoirs. Watch this event.

Spring 2023

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Women Writing About Desire: Wanting

Wanting: Women Writing About Desire
Guthart Cultural Center Theater
with co-editor Kelly McMasters and contributors Aracelis Girmay and Domenica Ruta. Watch this reading

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Phillis Levin and Christie Ann

Phillis Levin and Christie Ann Reynolds '05
Phillis Levin is the author of five poetry collections, including Mr. Memory & Other Poems, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Levin has completed her sixth collection and is working on a memoir. (Photo ©Sigrid Estrada)

Christie Ann Reynolds is the author of Revenge for Revenge and The New School Press chapbook idiot heart and Girl Boy Girl Boy (Corresponding Society). Watch this reading

Fall 2022

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Ralph Savarese

Ralph Savarese
Essayist, poet, scholar and activist, whose most recent book is See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor (Duke University Press 2018). 2007's Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption (Other Press), won an Independent Publishers Gold Medal. Watch his reading

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Joanna Rakoff

Joanna Rakoff
Author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction, the Elle Readers’ Prize, and a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller. Rakoff’s books have been translated into 20 languages and nominated for major prizes in The Netherlands and France. Watch her reading

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Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas
Poet, essayist, and translator. Among the more recent of her many books are two volumes of poetry, Pandemic Almanac (2022), Love and Dread (2021), and a book of essays, Piece by Piece (2021). She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant in poetry, and an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

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Michelle Hart

Michelle Hart
A member of Hofstra’s Class of 2011, Hart was the assistant books editor at O, the Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily. Her first novel, We Do What We Do in the Dark (May 2022), received praise from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and TIME, among others. Watch her reading

Spring 2022

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Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat
Recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and author of Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times notable book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; and Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection.of the essay collection Trick Mirror.

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Jason Schneiderman

Jason Schneiderman
Author of four books of poems, including Hold Me Tight (Red Hen, 2020). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he is co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile.

 

Fall 2021

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Larissa Pham

Larissa Pham
Essayist and critic whose work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Bookforum, Guernica, The Nation, and elsewhere. Her 2021 essay collection, Pop Song, is about love and about falling in love - with a place, or a painting, or a person.
Watch Her Reading.

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Joshua Henkin

Joshua Henkin
Author of Morningside Heights (2021), selected by the American Booksellers Association as the #1 Indie Next Pick and named an Editors' Choice Book by The New York Times. He is the author of Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book; Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book; and The World Without You, named an Editors' Choice Book by The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune.
Watch His Reading.

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Connie Roberts

Connie Roberts
A 2010 recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award for her manuscript Not the Delft School. Her poetry collection, Little Witness (Arlen House, 2015), was inspired by her experiences growing up in an industrial school (orphanage) in the Irish midlands. Roberts is a Hofstra Adjunct Assistant Professor of English.
Watch Her Reading.

Spring 2021

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Tolentino

Jia Tolentino
Staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror.

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Bennett

Brit Bennett
Author of New York Times bestseller The Mothers

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Jackson

Major Jackson
Author of New England Book Award winner The Absurd Man

Fall 2020

Martha McPhee

Martha McPhee
Hofstra professor, novelist and recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Mary Norris

Mary Norris
Author and longtime copyeditor for The New Yorker

Linda Gregerson

Linda Gregerson
Author of six collections of poetry, finalist for the National Book Award, and chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Spring 2020

Emily Wilson

Emily Wilson
MacArthur "Genius" grant recipient. Author, translator, and professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fall 2017-Spring 2018:

Lily King, Elisabeth Schmitz

Author Lily King and Grove Atlantic Vice President and Editorial Director
Elisabeth Schmitz

Claudia Rankine

Poet and MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient
Claudia Rankine

John McPhee

Longtime New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author
John McPhee

Kelly McMasters

This Is the Place contributors and editor
Sonya Chung, Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas, and Kelly McMasters

Giovanna Calvino

Literary translators
Giovanna Calvino, Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee

Tara Betts

Poet and spoken word/performance artist
Tara Betts

Fall 2010 to Spring 2011:


Tomaž Šalamun


Stephen Dunn


Thomas Lynch


Amy Hempel


Martha McPhee


Christopher Durang

Fall 2009 to Spring 2010:


Patricia Hampl


Frank Bidart


Craig Lucas


Mona Simpson


Rosanna Warren

Fall 2008 to Spring 2009:


Ann Beattie


Molly Peacock


Deborah Eisenberg


Paul Muldoon


Sarah Ruhl

Fall 2007 to Spring 2008:


Eavan Boland


Antonio Cisneros


Kiran Desai


Edmund White


Jonathan Letham


Lynn Nottage