Events
For a list of all English department events, please visit the English department events calendar page.
Invited Speakers
Summer Literacy Reading Series
with local authors Jennifer Tseng & Patti Sullivan
Date: Thursday, June 19
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Bldg. 180, Room 114
The English Department announces authors Jennifer Tseng and Patti Sullivan will be reading onThursday June 19th at 7PM in Room 114 of the new Baker Building on the Cal Poly campus. (see flyer)
Poet and novelist Tseng was raised in San Luis Obispo, and artist and poet Patti Sullivan has lived here for sixteen years.
Tseng attended Cal Poly's Child Development Center for preschool and later graduated from San Luis Obispo High School. Her father James Tseng was an electrical engineering professor at Cal Poly from 1969 to 1994. Her mother Sue Coyle worked as a microbiologist at Sierra Vista Hospital.
Tseng’s first book The Man With My Face (AAWW 2005) won the 2005 Asian American Writers' Workshop's National Poetry Manuscript Competition and a 2006 PEN American Center Open Book Award. Her new book Red Flower, White Flower won the Marick Press Poetry Prize. Her debut novel Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is forthcoming from Europa Editions.
She has taught Asian American Studies and Creative Writing at UCLA and Hampshire College respectively and she is a member of the Artists Advisory Committee for the Millay Colony of the Arts. Presently Tseng is circulation assistant, literary events coordinator, and writing workshop facilitator for the West Tisbury Library on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
A fixture at many local art events since 1998, Patti Sullivan is the author of two chapbooks, For the Day (DeerTree Press 2012) and Not Fade Away (Finishing Line Press 2014).
Her poems have appeared in journals such as Solo Novo, Café Solo, Artlife, Askew, and Hummingbird.
Sullivan is a visual artist with works exhibited in San Luis Obispo and in print.
For many years, she has assisted with the long-running annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival and two monthly poetry series, Corners of the Mouth at Linnaea’s Café and Poetry at the Steynberg Gallery.
The reading is free and open to the public. The Baker Building is the tall structure in the center of the campus core. Parking passes are $5 and available from either of two ticket machines, one in the parking loop in front of the Performing Arts Center and the other upon entering enter campus on Highland Avenue.