GREAT WRITERS, GREAT READINGS

Lynda Barry is the A 2019 MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Barry has spent her career exploring the power of art across boundaries – between text and image, story and memory, classroom and community. Her books include The Good Times Are Killing me, What It Is, Cruddy, and Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor

Three longtime Brooklynites navigate careers, love, loss, and friendship against the rapidly changing landscape of their beloved city. With humor and keen observation, first-time feature director Rachael Abigail Holder invitesus into a world where past and present collide, mining Paul Zimmerman’s script and her charismatic cast for a layered, later-in-life coming-of-age story. The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Khaholi Bailey is a Writer of fiction and memoir.

The author’s essays and short stories have appeared in Catapult, Breadcrumbs, Midnight and Indigo, and Flapperhouse. Miseducation of a 90’s Baby is her first book. She holds a BA in creative writing from Hunter College.

June Gervais, author of the novel Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair.

Her essays and stories have appeared in Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, Sojourners, The Common, Cordella, Big Fiction, The Missouri Review, The Southampton Review, Image Journal, Consequence Magazine, and elsewhere. She grew up on Long Island and received her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College in Vermont. Alongside writing, she has worked as a full-time activist/organizer; a freelance graphic designer, writer, and editor; and arts director at a not-for-profit.

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir; The Still Point of the Turning World, a New York Times bestseller.

The author is an Editor’s Pick; Sanctuary; and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. A former Fulbright scholar and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, her work has appeared in numerous publications including VOGUE, The New York Times, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, O, The Oprah Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times.

Emily Rapp Black, will read from and discuss her latest memoir Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, an account of how the experiences, art, and disabilities of Frida Kahlo shaped Black’s understanding of her own life as an amputee.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is the author of three novels, Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013).

She has authored a short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck (2009), and three books of nonfiction, We Should All Be Feminists (2014) Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017), and Notes on Grief (2021). Ms. Adichie’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008). She has also been named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2015, and in 2017, Fortune Magazine named her one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

M.J. Flood is the author of Where Are You? Finding Myself in My Greatest Loss, a memoir of loss and healing.

Shaped by losses throughout his life, M.J. Flood writes about the deep ache of grief as well as the sought after hope. M.J. Flood is also the writer and director of Too Much Noise — a short film in American Sign Language — which appeared in several American and International film festivals and won the Best Original Idea award at New York City’s 2018 Chain Film Festival. He is currently working on his second book and a documentary on the effects of suicide on family members. He also writes regularly for Medium.com. M.J. Flood is a husband and a father of two girls.

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.

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.

George M. Johnson is 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.

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.

The book is currently being developed into 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.

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.”

Hofstra professors and authors discuss their recently published memoirs

with co-editor Kelly McMasters and contributors Aracelis Girmay and Domenica Ruta.

Phillis Levin’s poetry collections include 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 The New School Press chapbook idiot heart and Girl Boy Girl Boy (Corresponding Society).

Ralph Savarese, Essayist, poet, scholar and activist. His 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.

Joanna Rakoff, Author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year. She is also the author of 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.

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.

Michelle Hart ’11 was the assistant books editor at O, the Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily. Her first novel, We Do What We Do in the Dark. We Do What We Do in the Dark (May 2022), received praise from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and TIME, among others.

Edwidge Danticat is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and author of Claire of the Sea Light a New York Times notable book. She is the author of 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.

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.

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

Joshua Henkin, author of Morningside Heights (2021), selected by the American Booksellers Association as the #1 Indie Next Pick. The book was also named as 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.

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.

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

Brit Bennett, Author of New York Times bestseller The Mothers

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

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

Mary Norris, Author and longtime copyeditor for The New Yorker

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

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

Natasha Trethewey, former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner

Kenny Fries, award-winning memoirist, poet and librettist

Colson Whitehead, Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad

Mitchell Jackson, Author of the acclaimed debut novel, The Residue Years

Zingonia Zingone, Multilingual poet, novelist and translator

David Baker, Award-winning poet

Gary Janetti, TV writer/producer

Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review Editor

Daniel Mendelsohn, Bestselling author and Harper’s columnist

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

Claudia Rankine, Poet and MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient

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

Tara Betts, Poet and spoken word/performance artist

Phillip Lopate, Essayist, memoirist, poet and novelist

Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Hofstra professors: poet Miguel-Angel Zapata & novelist Álvaro Enrigue

Lia Purpura, Poet, essayist, and Pushcart Prize recipient

A. Van Jordan, Whiting Writers Award and Pushcart Prize-winning poet

Susan Orlean, Bestselling author and staff writer for The New Yorker

Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Whiting Writers’ Award and PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award-winning poet

Karen Russell, Author, short story writer, and Pulitzer Prize finalist

Julia Markus, Hofstra professor, novelist, and biographer

Emily St. John Mandel, Novelist and National Book Award finalist

Laurie Sheck, Poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist

Amy Herzog, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award-winning playwright

Dani Shapiro, New York Times best-selling memoirist and novelist

Michael Collier, Former poet laureate of Maryland

Jeffrey K. Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

Belinda McKeon, Kirkus Outstanding Debut Book Award winner

D.T. Max, Author and New Yorker staff writer

Quiara Alegría Hudes, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

Elizabeth Spires, Poet and children’s book author

Philip Levine, Former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner

Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Anne Fadiman, National Book Critics’ Circle Award-winner

Annie Baker, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

Phillis Levin, Hofstra professor and award-winning poet