E.C. Osondu, born in Nigeria, is the author of two collections of stories, Voice of America and Alien Stories, and the novels This House is Not For Sale and When the Sky is Ready the Stars Will Appear. He is a winner of the Caine Prize and the BOA Short Fiction Prize, among others. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, AGNI, n+1, Guernica, Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, The Threepenny Review, New Statesman, and many other publications, and has been translated into over half a dozen languages. A contributing editor at AGNI, he has been a Visiting Professor at UT Austin and is currently a professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Monday, November 13, 2023, 6:30pm Poets Nick Flynn and Nathan McClain Design and Media Center (DMC) Lecture Hall, first floor

Scituate, Massachusetts native Nick Flynn is the author of five collections of poetry, including I Will Destroy You (2019) and Low (2023). His bestselling memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro, and has been translated into fifteen languages. Other recent books include: This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire and Stay: Threads, Collaborations, and Conversations, which documents twenty-five years of his collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and composers. He is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he is in residence each spring.

Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry: Previously Owned (2022), long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Award, and Scale (2017). He is a recipient of fellowships from The

Frost Place, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and he is a Cave Canem fellow. He earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. His poems and prose have appeared in Plume Poetry 10, The Common, Guesthouse, Poetry Northwest, and Zócalo Public Square, among others. He teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.

Wednesday, January 31, 6:30pm Alysia Abbott

Huntington Studio

Design and Media Center, 2nd floor

Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an ALA Stonewall Award winner, a winner of the Madame Figaro Prix Heroine, and finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the only child of gay poet and writer, Steve Abbott. She has written for The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Vogue, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, TriQuarterly, and Psychology Today, among other outlets. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from New School University and was a contributing producer at WNYC Radio. Her first full-length book, Fairyland was made into a feature film in 2023. The book has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese.

In addition to the above in-person events, the Creative Writing Readers Program offers the following virtual events this year.

Thursday, October 26, 11:15am

Poet Will Schutt, author of Westerly

Thursday, March 21, 5pm

Mathew Salesses, author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder (2023) and the national bestseller Craft in the Real World (2021)

Thursday, April 4, 6pm

Katherine Agard, author of the experimental essay of colour (2020), which explores color, hybridity, and art-making.

Visit MassArt’s event calendar for more information about the above virtual events.

ABOUT MASSART

Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) is a public, independent institution that prepares artists, designers, and educators to shape communities, economies, and cultures for the common good. Since 1873, MassArt has built a legacy of leadership as the first freestanding public college of art and design in the country, and the nation’s first

art school to grant a degree. MassArt offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and graduate degrees in art, design, and art education, taught by world-class faculty.

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