Recent News
Writers-at-Work Poetry Reading Series, Winter 2024
Feb 9, 2024
MT Vallarta
Wednesday, February 14, 2:10-3:30, Building 38, Room 221
MT Vallarta (they/them) is a poet and Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. They will be reading from their debut collection What You Refuse to Remember. A Pushcart Prize nominee, they are the author of the micro chapbook, The Science of Flowers (Blanket Sea). They have received awards and fellowships from Kundíman, Roots. Wounds. Words., The Rowan Foundation, and Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc. Their poetry is published and forthcoming in The Selkie, Shō, Nat. Brut, Apogee, and others. They are hard at work on a research monograph titled Dismantle Me: Queer, Mad, and Anti-imperialist Filipinx Poetry. They were raised in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles.
Tomasz Różycki
(with translator Mira Rosenthal)
Monday, March 4, 2:10-3:30, University Union, Room 220
Tomasz Różycki is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose. He will be reading from his new collection in English translation, To the Letter. Over the last decade he has garnered almost every prize Poland has to offer as well as widespread critical acclaim, with work translated into numerous languages and frequent appearances at international festivals. He is the recipient of the 2023 Wisława Szymborska Prize and the 2023 Prix Grand Continent, among other awards. In the U.S., he has been featured at the Unterberg Poetry Center, the Princeton Poetry Festival, and the Brooklyn Book Festival. His volume Colonies (translated by Mira Rosenthal) won the Northern California Book Award and was a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
Cal Poly English Alumni debut Abraxas Review
Oct 23, 2023
Abraxas Review is a new pubication started by an all Cal Poly English Alumni team of editors: Marin Smith, Savannah Anderson, Sholeh Prochello, Sarah Horne, and Lacey Buck.
Follow the link to Issue 1 of Abraxas Review, which includes Kevin Anderson's short story "The Thin Dust of Summer." Enjoy!
https://www.abraxasreview.org/issue-one
Writers-at-Work Poetry Reading Series Fall 2023
Oct 11, 2023
Ama Codjoe
Pre-Register HERE
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Her poems have twice appeared in the Best American Poetry series. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Codjoe is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award.
Claire Wahmanholm
Wednesday, November 15 at 2:10 - 3:30 p.m. Building 10, Room 111
Claire Wahmanholm received her BA from UW-Madison, her MFA from the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University, and her PhD from the University of Utah. Her chapbook, Night Vision, won the 2017 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest. Her debut full-length collection, Wilder (Milkweed Editions), won the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award. Her second collection, Redmouth, was published with Tinderbox Editions in 2019. Her third collection, Meltwater, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2023. A 2020-2021 McKnight Writing Fellow, her poems have most recently appeared in, or are forthcoming from, TriQuarterly, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Washington Square Review, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Grist, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, Fairy Tale Review, Bennington Review, DIAGRAM, The Journal, and The Kenyon Review Online, and have been featured by the Academy of American Poets. She lives in the Twin Cities.
Crip Writing: Communication through a Disability and Decolonial Lens
Apr 11, 2023
Suresh Canagarajah
Abstract: Pedagogies for minoritized and multilingual writers have often led teachers to uncritically adopt models based on values such as autonomy, mastery, normativity, and efficiency. In practice, this often leads to imposing language and rhetorical norms of privileged social groups and treating deviations from those norms as indicating linguistic or cognitive deficiency. Scholars in disability and decolonial studies are beginning to question the way “ability” is defined in communication in contemporary society and education. They argue for a shift from autonomy to collaboration, mastery to dependency, norms to dispositions, and efficiency to ethics. This talk will begin by illustrating these shifts from the way the speaker’s cancer diagnosis and resulting impairments transformed his writing practice. Then drawing from his research on the writing and communication of international STEM scholars, he will demonstrate how their diverse languages and proficiencies motivate them to practice relational ethics in contexts of vulnerability for successful communication. This talk will demonstrate how approaches to diversity in education can embrace nonnormative language practices in meaning making and cultivate the ethical dispositions needed for such communication.
Time: Thursday, May 18, 3:30-4:30pm
Location: Advanced Technologies Laboratory (Bldg. 07), Rm. 002
Note: A reception will follow in the ATL Lobby from 4:30-6pm. Refreshments provided by SLO Provisions.
Speaker bio: Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of multiple award-winning books and articles on World Englishes, multilingual writing, decolonization, and disability studies. He is the former president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and former editor of TESOL Quarterly.
Sponsors: This event is sponsored by the Office of Writing and Learning, the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of Political Science, the Disability Faculty Staff Association, and the English Department’s First-Year Composition Program.